Input and Output – Teach Your Child A Second Language Kids get excited to save money in their piggy banks. They shake it, wiggle it, and peek inside. Is it heavier today than yesterday? Language input is like saving in the piggy bank. What you say to your child is language input. What you read to your child is language input. The books you have at home is providing visual input. The posters with text, games with
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Work Together – Raise a Bilingual Child Together is better. When parents work together toward the same goal you have a team. It is very much like team work on a project, in the office, or at work. You will need to work together. When you lead at work you have your team on your side to work with you. It is great to have support from your team when you introduce a new language to your
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Your Time Is Precious Your time is precious. As much as you want your child to be engaged in the learning. You, as a parent, need to be in the moment as well. There are many resources but you actually only need one to start with. You can aim for 30, 45, or 60 minutes a day but I often say it is a good idea to start with just five minutes. Quality over quantity. How about
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Time and Place Approach Raising bilingual kids is an exciting journey and there are different methods that you can use. Which method will work for your child and your family? Do you need to be bilingual or have a high proficiency in the target language to introduce the language to your child? What if you are learning the Chinese language as you are teaching it to your child? The goal for the parents is the same. Parents
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Minority Language At Home MLAH – Raise A Bilingual Child Speaking more than one language is the norm in many countries. A person might be speaking one language at work and speak another one or two languages at home. This is very common in some European countries. You also see it in Indian, Malaysia, Singapore, Malaysia, Africa, and China. Bilingualism seems natural in these countries. Dr. François Grosjean, Psycholinguist, and Professor Emeritus and former Director of
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one person one language (OPOL) approach When I met Annie at a party, she was about three years old. Her Dad’s native language is English and her mother’s native language is French. Both parents are fluent in each other’s native language. The Dad only speaks English to Annie and the mother only spoke French to her. She is now in college and she is bilingual in English and French, although dominant in English. Her parents used the
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The Impact of Curiosity When there is curiosity there is learning. You want to find out where your friend buys that amazing birthday cake so you make efforts to find out. Your little child wants to know how to open the drawers so she stands there to play with the drawers and figure it out. And, a student of mine who wanted me to teach more Chinese characters to the class so he brought his brother’s Japanese
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Keep A Happy Mindset – Teach Your Child A Foreign Language Learning, mindset, grit, and resilience These are the trending words we see and hear in the classroom, at school, and in the media. Teachers want kids to have a growth mindset. Parents want kids to have grit. And, experts and researchers talk to parents about raising resilient kids. Why is it important for kids to have a growth mindset, grit, and being resilient? What do these
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Language and culture go hand in hand – Teach Your Child A Foreign Language Culture is filled with surprises. Think about what you have been sharing with your child from home culture to the community culture. Family culture starts at home so is learning about the target language culture. Every time I have a cultural event at school or at the library child participants always teach me something new as they connect what they know about their
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Engage the senses – Teach Your Child A Foreign Language Children learn with senses since birth. Simple words and expressions in the target language lead kids to connect their understanding of the environment from one language to the other. Here are the top key questions you can ask in the target languages on a daily basis. What do you hear? (loud sound, soft sound…) How does it feel? (hard, soft…) What do you see? (big, small, colors…)
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