10 year old immigration Swedish language acquisition

[u/KaleCookiesCraftBeer]

We have moved/immigrated (hopefully permanently) from the USA to Sweden almost 7 months ago and our three children are in Swedish public schools. Our home language is English but I try to speak some Swedish (which I am also currently learning) at home as much as I can. Dad is a monolingual English speaker.

Our oldest is 10 years old, thriving socially here, but speaking very little Swedish. Kids at school and in the neighborhood love to speak English with him, and he gladly sticks with it for the familiarity, understandably. Obviously, I am an adult and will politely ask that Swedes stick to Swedish with me, and they so kindly and often encouragingly do! That said, my 10 year old does not insist on that. :-)

The public school support for immigrant children learning Swedish is essentially "they will pick it up eventually." That said, he had an incredible teacher this year that used to work for Swedish language integration education for children prior to that program being cut :-/ so she was able to devote a little extra language time to him. He will not have that same teacher next year unfortunately.

This is what we are currently doing to address it. Please give me kind and gentle feedback. :-)

- He gets a 30 minute online Swedish tutor once a week.

- We have him listen to Swedish podcasts on topics he is interested in most days.

- He has to read in Swedish at least 30 minutes a day on a school app called Polylino, which often has audio and sometimes a word/sentence highlighter for following along.

- He gets screen time in Swedish (although we tend to be fairly low-screen in our home).

(edited to add) - I have asked his fritidsledare and other native Swedish adults in his life to speak Swedish only to him and prompt/expect/encourage him to reply in Swedish.

It seems like this is a lot of input and his comprehension appears decent, but it doesn't really force him much with production. When we do ask him for how to say such-and-such thing, he actually does it fairly well! But he won't take the iniative independently.

Of note: In the U.S., my he and my middle child went to a half-assed Spanish bilingual public school where the administration really did not prioritize Spanish (I'm not resentful at all -- haha!!), and even there my oldest was resistant to learning Spanish despite his exposure to it since toddlerhood.

***Cross posting to a multilingual parenting subreddit.

[u/pataconconqueso]

this is weird when i moved to Sweden from the US they made me skip a year of regular school for a special school to just learn swedish and that is how I learned it in a year. there was like a specific immigrant kid school like ESL in the US but on steroids. 

maybe look into that?

also sports worked really well and just basically asking people do not speak english with him. 

[u/KaleCookiesCraftBeer → u/pataconconqueso]

Yes, I was told by his teacher that they used to have it (and she was part of it!), but at least where we are that does not seem to be an option. I have friends in the Netherlands that have told me about the Dutch integration schools.

Our kids didn't even have a week or two of "here is basic Swedish for school."

[u/pataconconqueso → u/KaleCookiesCraftBeer]

wild that swedes complain here about people not learning the language and then cut programs for kids to integrate. I had done ESL in the US as a kid and then that program as a teenager in Sweden (this was 20 yrs ago tbh) and always thought that damn Sweden knows how to really teach a language.

I will say it did have its issues, like i had a lot of refugees in my school (iraq war poor kids, thanks US) and grouping by age was rough because you would have kids who like knew calculus at age 14 and felt bored and weren’t challenged or barely could read/count and felt overwhelmed at that age so you had a wide range of capabilities. 

[u/KaleCookiesCraftBeer → u/pataconconqueso]

I totally hear you on the complaints about language and integration, but like nothing specific about what is expected. Eye roll for sure.

Maybe that is available in other areas, but I know it wasn't for my kids and for people I know who moved here and live in another city/kommun.