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How To Learn A Foreign Language With Training Toys At Home
Schools in English-speaking countries are infamously bad at teaching foreign languages. Or perhaps not bad, just completely indifferent. Although anyone who wants to get on in the world has to speak English, things are a-changing and we are waking up to the fact that we are missing out on a great deal by not studying foreign languages.
As everyone knows, it is simpler to learn foreign languages when you are younger, so perhaps it would be a wise idea for parents to start teaching their kids a foreign language at home, if they cannot rely on the state-run educational system to do it for them.
All well and good for parents of mixed marriages, I hear you saying, but what if both parents are native English speakers. Well, why not learn the language as well at your child's speed? If you begin early enough, the child will still be learning English, so will learn the foreign language slowly anyway and you will easily be able to keep up.
Especially as, being the teacher, you can manipulate the pace of the education and you could slow it down to suit yourself. The first thing to do is pick a language that you can hear spoken fairly frequently. Spanish, French and German are probably the best options. Believe me, Russian and Chinese are not!
Spanish, French and German have lots of words that come from the same ancestry as English words, so that makes it a little easier as well. So, let's say, you pick French. Now you ought to look about for ways to teach (and learn) French.
One method to start is to get some bilingual cards with pictures of everyday things like pets, household items, relatives, colours, foodstuffs, numbers and clothing. You could use three to five cards a day in a 15-20 minute lesson and when you have used a card, you could pin it on the wall and reread it every now and again.This will build up your vocabulary.
You will also have to purchase some blank card, a grammar book, a dictionary and a simple reader in French. It is all very well having a large vocabulary of words, but you have to know some verbs to be able to put them together into sentences.
So, say you have both learned the words for 'mother' and 'cat', you could look up the word for 'look', write it onto a piece of card and pin it between the pictures of mother and the cat. Then you have: "La mere regarde le chat" (mother is looking at the cat). You could repeat this with all the words that fit until it sinks in.
'Teach Yourself ...' books are usually fairly decent at offering a structure for your schooling and the best ones have CD's of indigenous speakers to help you get the accent right. Frequently the course work is mirrored on the CD chapter by chapter to make it even easier.
You can look on Amazon and buy some CD's of simple French nursery rhymes and get some good cartoon stories like Asterix the Gaul. The text is meant for children, so you will easily be able to understand it. They are fairly good too and ought to hold both your kid's and your own attention for hours, but just do a chapter at a stretch.
In order to apply your new language, try banning English at meal times or for one meal a day. This can be fun and the whole family may get involved. You will be astonished how quickly you will learn enough to say what you would like to
As everyone knows, it is simpler to learn foreign languages when you are younger, so perhaps it would be a wise idea for parents to start teaching their kids a foreign language at home, if they cannot rely on the state-run educational system to do it for them.
All well and good for parents of mixed marriages, I hear you saying, but what if both parents are native English speakers. Well, why not learn the language as well at your child's speed? If you begin early enough, the child will still be learning English, so will learn the foreign language slowly anyway and you will easily be able to keep up.
Especially as, being the teacher, you can manipulate the pace of the education and you could slow it down to suit yourself. The first thing to do is pick a language that you can hear spoken fairly frequently. Spanish, French and German are probably the best options. Believe me, Russian and Chinese are not!
Spanish, French and German have lots of words that come from the same ancestry as English words, so that makes it a little easier as well. So, let's say, you pick French. Now you ought to look about for ways to teach (and learn) French.
One method to start is to get some bilingual cards with pictures of everyday things like pets, household items, relatives, colours, foodstuffs, numbers and clothing. You could use three to five cards a day in a 15-20 minute lesson and when you have used a card, you could pin it on the wall and reread it every now and again.This will build up your vocabulary.
You will also have to purchase some blank card, a grammar book, a dictionary and a simple reader in French. It is all very well having a large vocabulary of words, but you have to know some verbs to be able to put them together into sentences.
So, say you have both learned the words for 'mother' and 'cat', you could look up the word for 'look', write it onto a piece of card and pin it between the pictures of mother and the cat. Then you have: "La mere regarde le chat" (mother is looking at the cat). You could repeat this with all the words that fit until it sinks in.
'Teach Yourself ...' books are usually fairly decent at offering a structure for your schooling and the best ones have CD's of indigenous speakers to help you get the accent right. Frequently the course work is mirrored on the CD chapter by chapter to make it even easier.
You can look on Amazon and buy some CD's of simple French nursery rhymes and get some good cartoon stories like Asterix the Gaul. The text is meant for children, so you will easily be able to understand it. They are fairly good too and ought to hold both your kid's and your own attention for hours, but just do a chapter at a stretch.
In order to apply your new language, try banning English at meal times or for one meal a day. This can be fun and the whole family may get involved. You will be astonished how quickly you will learn enough to say what you would like to
About the Author:
Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on a variety of topics, but is now concerned with the Gyro Helicopter S107. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.