Ways to support your children in their language learning
Friday, 13th February 2009
If your children are learning a foreign language there are various ways for you to support and encourage them with their studies, even if you have no knowledge of the language(s) in question.
If you already speak the language your children are learning, you could speak it to them part of the time. If you don’t, you could ask them to teach you what they’ve been learning and try to use the those bits of the language with them. Doing this will help your children to reinforce their knowledge and understanding of the language, and they will probably feel special playing the part of a teacher.
You could even make learning the language a family project and study it yourself. You could then enter into competition with your children to see who can learn the language the best, as well as being able to support each other.
Helping them find suitable written and spoken material will also be useful– the more the better. There might be translations of their favourite books and films, for example, or other things such as computer games and music that might catch their interest. Listening to a language as much as possible is the best way to get used to its sounds and rhythms, even if you don’t understand anything at first.
If there are any speakers of the language your children are learning in your local area, you could see if they have any children of a similar age and maybe set up a language exchange arrangement between the children. Or maybe you could ask speakers of the foreign language to help your children and you with their language, in return for helping them with your language. There might also be events and activities you and/or your children could get involved with.
It may also be beneficial to help your children find out about the country or countries where the foreign language is spoken. There will probably be some things that grab the attention of your offspring. Perhaps you could try cooking some typical dishes from the country in question. If you can visit the country, even better. This will give your children, and you, opportunities to use the language and to see that it is useful to know it.
If you can’t visit a country where the foreign language is spoken as a family, maybe you could arrange or friends for your children to go on exchange visits. These normally involve individual children or groups of children spending some time, perhaps a week or two, with a families in another country, and children from those families staying with families in your country for a similar length of time.
More about Language Courses Abroad for Juniors
More About Trips for School Groups Abroad
More about Cactus Kids’ Courses in the UK
Tags: language, italian, german, learning, french, spanish
Posted by Simon Ager 2009-02 under Attitudes to Language Learning, Making Progress,
Permalink
