My Daughter Not Speaking English

If she is doing well speaking English at school, why do you not want her to use the home language? Be proud that she sees the value in being Trilingual! Allow her to practice and maintain Tamil and Telugu, as long as she practices her English at school.
Also it is much better than she practice English at school with fluent English speakers and does not spend too much time speaking English with any who have a heavy accent or poor grammar. She will pick up the accent and grammar used at home rather than at school.
S. (ESL teacher)

You need to model the behavior just like anything else you teach your child. If you want her to respond in English then you have to be speaking English. She won't value it till you do. We all like to relax at home and not be forced to do something that's difficult all the time. That would be very taxing.

So, if you speak English, she will follow.
And give her a break. Nobody wants to be pestered at home all the time.

Latha, Hi! Congrats on successfully raising a trilingual child. You have done what so many of us dream of doing. It is a wonderful thing. Your lil one will someday thank you for helping her achieve this. Continue encouraging her to keep up with her languages. She is going to remain fluent in English. She is in the US. The challenge will be in keeping up with the other languages. Don't take away her gift by making her unilingual from where she is.
Good luck.
A.

Current thinking about language acquisition is that proficiency in a home language supports the continued development of additional languages. At age 7, even while your daughter is very conversant in her mother tongue, it follows that continued practice will actually further her second language acquisition. She may understand this intuitively and that is why she continues to speak English only at school. Or, it is simply two much work to incorporate the foreign language into her home environment? Either way, what a gift she will have to be multilingual!

I wonder what the school suggests? Do they want her to practice English at home (in the way of 'homework')? Maybe talking to them would offer further strategies.

Good luck!

Who in your household does not speak English well? Have them ask her to teach them English. That will help her to speak it at home, give her an important "job" to speak English for, and be helpful to her "student" as well.

Dawn

I wouldn't worry about it. If she's speaking and understanding English, let her speak her language of choice. My husband is Bolivian and his family all speak Spanish. All of them when they got to middle school and high school were embarrassed to speak it in front of others and ultimately ended up speaking English all the time. The sad thing is that most of them have lost a lot of their Spanish. When they talk now they all sound like Spanish is their second language not their first. There is a good chance as she gets older and all her friends speak English, she will start speaking it all the time.

My husband's native tongue is Arabic. When he came to the US at age 14, the only phrase he knew in English was "party pooper." He picked it up at school extremely quickly, despite speaking only Arabic at home. By the time he finished high school he was at the top of his class and earned a full scholarship to college. He's now an MD. I help him with some of his English spelling and grammar, but he's certainly proficient in English, so that most people don't realize English is not his first language.

I would say that it is more important for your daughter to continue to speak your native tongue with you, as she needs to continue to build her vocabulary and grammar in her native tongue. If she is doing well with her English at school, she should be just fine. I would worry more about her losing her native tongue. Her world will have so many more opportunities if she can speak multiple languages. She will have travel and career opportunities that I could only dream of, but only if she continues to develop her native tongue. Hope this helps!

Even of she it's on Chennai don't worry.if she is in a English medium school she well speak English eventually.encourage her to speak your mother tongue at home and with you.English will come.i also studied in a English medium school in India and spoke only my mother tongue at home.i now have a masters from the USA and speak fluent English.

Hi all. Thanks for the valuable responses... Regret for not mentioning that we are from India (Chennai)...

"translation" which is what you are asking your daughter to do.... is actually REALLY difficult.... especially when she gets to a fluent or semi-fluent stage in language. In order to be conversational she needs to not have to switch between languages. She needs to either practice fluency or conversation.... or keep up her native tongue at home and practice her english at school.

That's great she knows Tamil and Telagu.
I have the opposite problem. I want my kids to stop speaking in English (which they know) to focus on their foreign language, which is immersion in their school. They only want to speak English but I want them to practice the other language!!!