Thai parents who send their children to international schools thinking that that will enable their children to become more proficiently bilingual - in English and Thai - may need to think more deeply.

English vs Thai

Thai children whose parents sent them to attend an international school at an early age may be more fluent in English than Thai, especially when it comes to the task of writing. It is important that parents and teachers know how to help students achieve fluency in both English and Thai, not only in specific skills like speaking and listening, but also reading and writing.

Parents who want their children to excel in both languages have to work closely with their offspring, according to Dr Rojas. International schools have the responsibility of teaching the English language to the children, while the parents will have to deal with teaching Thai. The Thai-language programme taught in international schools, by itself, is not enough, she says.

"Parents need to be clear in their minds why their children are attending an international school. Not a lot of parents think about that. They just send them here because it is prestigious to attend an international school. They need to be clear in their minds that their children are going to be different; for example, their writing in Thai is not going to be perfect," explains Dr Rojas.

Consequently, parents have to maintain continuing usage of the Thai language at home, not just the spoken language, but "parents need to read and write Thai with them, too", she advises. "Parents need to understand that they have a responsibility in this business of bilingualism," she emphasizes.

"The most important thing is that children are only as good in their second language as they are in their first language," she says, and stresses that "if children come to this school and we don't help them to continue developing their Thai, they are not going to be very good in either language".

Policy for perfect English

In most international schools, teachers are asked to speak to their students only in English. And in certain schools, students are not allowed to speak Thai to their peers while in school. This is to foster a perfect English environment within the school. This notion, according to Dr Rojas, might not be wise.

"Unfortunately or fortunately, many teachers in international schools are not bilingual, so they don't look at this [international school environment] like a bilingual situation. [For them] the students have to speak only English, English and English. It's not that the teachers want their students to forget their Thai, but they don't understand that both languages are involved in this process [of helping students to be bilingual]," says Dr Rojas.

"Most parents and most schools have that policy because they think that children will use their own language in order to avoid learning English. But that is not true. A bilingual student uses both languages. That's what a bilingual does," Dr Rojas explains.

In a particular school in South Korea, Dr Rojas exemplifies, students are asked to speak English all the time and those who do not comply with this policy are punished.

"I would observe the children, so when an English-speaking teacher walked by, the children would all go 'Hello. How are you?', and the minute that teacher went out of sight, they went back to what they were doing. They were sneaky, trying to use their own language. It was like a game.

"Is that what we are trying to teach our children to be - sneaky?" she questions. "And the worst thing of all is that, as the students in that Korean international school moved on to the high school level, they resisted speaking English. They were angry at the rules that were imposed on them," she explains.

When children don't understand why the rules are there and think that the rules are punitive, they have a tendency to resist what you want them to do, says Dr Rojas. "The idea is to get children to understand why they are in a school like this, why we want them to use English, and what they are going to do with the English language, like going to a university or living [abroad]," she adds.

Dr Rojas also recommends that teachers and parents have to be aware not to unconsciously impose a certain perception that a student's first language is not good.

The first helps the second

Many research studies, according to Dr Rojas, indicate that the first language should be able to assist the learning of the second language.

"Those who are bilingual tend to use both languages to contrast with each other and think about what the differences are," she says.

The first language not only helps students to compare and contrast against the second language, but it can also help explain and clarify difficult vocabularies in the second language.

For example, in a case where the teacher cannot speak the students' first language, and a student has a specific question about vocabulary, the teacher can either take half an hour to try and make the student guess in English what the word means, or the teacher can ask other students to help explain the meaning of that word in their first language, and move on with the class, explains Dr Rojas.

Parental involvement

All in all, to enable students to master bilingual skills, in addition to maintaining a strong command of the mother tongue, Dr Rojas also urges parents to think about when would be the best time to send their children to an English immersion school.

"I really want parents to think about this, because if you send a three-year-old child to an international school, when will the child learn how to write in Thai? If I send a 14-year-old to an international school, I wouldn't worry about his or her written Thai, because the child would already know how to write Thai [properly] by that age. There are a lot of decisions to make here," Dr Rojas explains.

Parents should also be aware not to cause unnecessary anxiety for their children. Earlier, a student told Dr Rojas that after she had been studying at an international school for a month, her parents called her out and asked her to speak and sing in English at a party. This caused stress and embarrassment to the child. Dr Rojas suggests that parents should give children a waiting period of around five to seven years to build confidence and have less anxiety when using the second language.

Parents should also supply bilingual materials and get involved with the school, and finally, parents need to be a bilingual role model for their children.

"Thai parents should speak Thai to their children, but, for example, when they travel and take their children abroad, I want to see those parents speak English with foreigners, acting as a role model for the children," explains Dr Rojas.

After this exclusive interview, Dr Rojas gave a thoughtful talk at the seminar entitled "Dispel the Myths", which was addressed primarily at parents and designed to dispel the myths of language learning. See the table at below left entitled "10 Myths of Language Study". She also conducted a workshop for teachers at SHB the following day.

The opinions and conclusions in this article are Dr Rojas'. For more information on bilingualism, you may visit http://www.multilingual-matters.com.