5 Easy Ways to Teach Your Child English at Home 05

This is our fifth and final portion of our series about helping your child learn English at home!  If you didn’t get to see the first four parts, please read them first by clicking here.

The last point for discussion is more like two points in one…

This is something many people may think is difficult but it may not be as difficult as you think.  The difficulty is really in beginning as the famous quote by Horace goes: “He who has begun is half done; dare to know; begin!”  Success in any area of life requires a consistent effort.  That means to practice a little bit every day and don’t give up because the results in the beginning seem much lower than your expectations. 

I notice how willing people are to put away some money every month, no matter how little, either in savings or investment to provide for the future and this is a great idea.  How much more ought we to invest a bit of ourselves in the form of our time and effort for our children?  We’ve got to invest in our children’s English education from the time they are very small, just a tiny bit each day and the rewards we will reap will be manifold.  You will also find your own English improving.  Actually, it will be a double investment, an investment in bettering your own English skills and habits as well.

Furthermore, whether or not we choose to enroll our children in English schools or purchase English programs for home use, there still MUST be a regular daily habit of practice at home.  Therefore, we can’t satisfy ourselves with thinking our kids being enrolled in a great program will take care of everything.  That is because we are dealing with humans, language is living, and the habit of language usage is what really helps people learn a second language well. 

On this note of a small yet consistent daily effort I wanted to end by offering a little encouragement from this lovely poem by Julia Fletcher Carney…enjoy!

Little Things
 Little drops of water,
 Little grains of sand,
 Make the mighty ocean
 And the pleasant land.
  
 So the little moments,
 Humble though they be,
 Make the mighty ages
 Of Eternity.
  
 So the little errors
 Lead the soul away
 From the paths of virtue
 Far in sin to stray.
  
 Little deeds of kindness,
 Little words of love,
 Help to make earth happy
 Like the Heaven above. 

5 Easy Ways to Teach Your Child English at Home 04

Welcome back to part Four of this series about helping your child learn English at home!  If you didn’t get to see the first three parts, please read them first by clicking here.

In our previous three posts we discussed that starting early, focusing on listening first, and avoiding electronics as well as poor “children’s” programming are all great ways to start learning English with your child at home.  Today we will discuss our fourth point which is…

The word verb comes from the Latin verbum which actually means “the word” That is because verbs are THE most important words your child will learn.  When you start from verbs and phrases in daily life it will be so much easier for the child to understand and speak complete sentences correctly right from the beginning. 

I don’t understand why we often have a tendency to try and cram our children’s brains with a bunch of nouns from the get go.  That doesn’t mean you can’t teach these things but the verb must take precedence and your child will learn all the nouns alongside and learn them better because there is a context in which to use these words.  For example, rather than just teaching what all the items in the bathroom are called like toothbrush, bathtub, sink, toothpaste, etc. I would say things to my child like: “take..I take the toothpaste, I take my toothbrush, put… I put the toothpaste on my toothbrush, brush… I brush my teeth, rinse…I rinse my mouth, I rinse my toothbrush, I’m finished brushing my teeth.”  I would say each thing I’m doing as I do it.  Here the student is learning the verbs take, put, brush, rinse in meaningful phrases that include noun vocabulary.

Verbs are one of the most difficult things to master in English because they are often changing.  The child who is used to hearing and using verbs in all their forms from the beginning will not be confused, on the contrary he will learn it more quickly and easily, and will have better spoken and written grammar in the future.  Again, the key is to think of the natural way that children learn to understand and speak language: with real experiences and real people, in real, everyday life…not from flashcards or a textbook or set formulas that are contrived to make things “easier” for them.  The time may come for those things when the child gets a bit older but very young children just don’t learn best in that way and it can end up robbing them of the kind of activities and interactions they need for healthy development in other areas. 

Let everything flow naturally and joyfully with your child in your adventures of learning together, do not be anxious for results but just put forth a little consistent daily effort!  Please watch for our fifth and final segment of this article about learning English with your child at home.  Happy learning!

5 Easy Ways to Teach Your Child English at Home 03

Welcome back to part three of this series about helping your child learn English at home!  If you didn’t get to see the first two parts, please read them first by clicking here.

In our previous two posts we discussed that to help our children learn English at home we should: 1. Start early and 2. Focus on listening first.  The third thing we need to do is…

I mentioned in the first point that the very young child has acquired language skills rapidly simply by listening and observing.  We can follow this method by letting the child have plenty of chances to hear spoken English and connect those spoken English words with ideas in the environment.

I strongly discourage putting your child in front of the TV, or cell phone app to learn English.  Robots and electronics as well as online games and apps should be avoided at all costs.  These things are known to be detrimental to the social and emotional development of children because they often end up replacing the much-needed interaction between parent and child.  They also hinder a child’s ability to form the good habit of attention and make it difficult for children to sleep among many other things.

Children under 2 should really have zero screen time throughout the day.  Once they are a bit older and can have some screen time it should be very little, no more than a half an hour a day, even then it should be limited to only the highest quality content. 

The greater harm that comes from screen time in young children has a great deal more to do with content than with the actual viewing of the screen.  Much of what is considered children’s content on youtube and on TV is of very low quality.  The more human interaction and interaction with real things and real life, the better. 

Children need real experiences in real life and if your English is not quite good enough to give it to them, then you can view our real-experience videos with your child and then practice with him or her in your daily activities together.  When a child is young, she needs plenty of interaction with her parents for all of her developmental needs, especially language.  We cannot separate human people from language and replace them with robots.  The purpose of language is the connection of human minds with each other. 

I hope you have found our series about learning English at home informative so far.  Please watch for our next post and until then, happy learning!

5 Easy Ways to Teach Your Child English at Home 02

Welcome back to part two of this series about helping your child learn English at home!  If you didn’t get to see the first part, please read it first by clicking here.

So, the last time we discussed that the first and most important thing to do in helping your child to learn English is to start early.  The second thing we need to do is…

I mentioned in the first point that the very young child has acquired language skills rapidly simply by listening and observing.  We can follow this method by letting the child have plenty of chances to hear spoken English and connect those spoken English words with ideas in the environment.

So how can we help our children then?  We let them listen to English songs, rhymes, and stories DAILY.  We can do this casually or if we like something more structured, we set up an English time each day where we listen to stories, songs, and rhymes with our children.  Even if you think, what is the point, they don’t understand?  They are taking it all in and they WILL understand if you are consistent. 

As the child gets to be around 3 to 6 months old, we must be careful to connect the spoken words to ideas in the environment in order for understanding to come.  This can be done very easily through the actions and objects we come into contact with in daily life.  The child will also achieve understanding through connecting the language with pictures.  So, what does this look like in real-life? 

When we read a story with our child, she is looking at the pictures connecting the spoken words to those ideas she sees in pictures.  When we go about our daily duties like getting dressed, we talk to the child about what we are doing as we are doing it.  For example: “Let’s put on your shirt, and now your pants, etc.”  Songs and rhymes likewise should be connected with ideas, either in pictures or everyday objects. 

We are not worried at this point about trying to teach our children anything, we just make our best daily effort to expose them as much as possible to English, while also continuing exposure in their native language. 

When your child is around 1 year old he will begin to form words.  Continue with the English listening practice and also give the child a chance to practice speaking.  If he has been listening to English for a while, he may begin to speak English words spontaneously.  It is really excellent if you have any English ability yourself, to encourage your child to speak about the things he sees in the stories as you read together. 

Your story time will become more interactive and allow a bit of conversation or even just repeating simple words that the child sees from the storybook pictures like “ball” or “cat”.  Before the child was simply listening to the sounds and getting used to them, now she is going to start forming the words herself.  Remember, everything should just be very natural, not contrived and we need not pressure our children. 

5 Easy Ways to Teach Your Child English at Home 01

One of the most common questions I get from parents whose children are learning English is: “How do I help my child with English at home?”  These parents have a great understanding of the way language learning works.  They are wise enough to know that simply sending their kids off to an English school is not enough to help their children learn English well.  They also have a firm grasp of the ever-important role that parents and home environment play in the education of a child.  This is an important question that I’ve answered many times in person and now I’m going to share it again with you here today. 

I’m going to do a series of posts to let you know the 5 most important things you can do for your child at home if you want him or her to really learn English well.  These “secrets” I’m going to share with you are EASY and INEXPENSIVE things that EVERY parent can do….and guess what?  They have nothing to do with sending your child to English class!  So, if this is something that interests you, then keep reading.

Most parents want their children to learn English well.  Obviously it is so important for securing good job prospects, future financial security and availability of information..just try googling a term in English and then the same term in Chinese, right?  How many more millions of pieces of information are available to English speakers than Chinese-speakers?…Plenty!  So, wanting this skill for our kids is indeed a no-brainer but how to go about it?  Bi-lingual Kindergarten, cram school, private tutor?  All expensive options with greatly varying degrees of quality.  But no matter how you plan on providing for your child’s English education, you must remember the first key thing and this is SO important….

In my experience as a mother of bi-lingual children and a teacher I cannot tell you enough of the benefit of starting as soon as your child is born.  Children who have not had exposure to English on a regular basis before elementary school, and then enroll in English class are put at a huge disadvantage.  Unless they have some natural skill in the area of language or have formed excellent habits, learning English will become difficult and grueling work for them.

I don’t know where the idea came from but I have often heard people say things like, “Won’t children get confused and not learn their mother tongue well?” The answer to that question is a resounding NO!  Especially because you are speaking with them in their native language much of the time and you won’t cease doing that.  This question reveals a lack of understanding of child development stages and the scientific research behind brain and language development.  Even if we don’t understand these things it will be easy for us to come out of the “dark ages” of thinking that children and babies are poor, little, weak creatures who have no powers of their own and know nothing.  We will do this by using our common sense. 

Let’s find out how all of us learned our mother tongue and how bi-lingual children all over the world simultaneously have learned more than one language quite easily.  Everybody learned to speak by HEARING the language first, and for several years.  Children develop so rapidly in the early years and acquire SO many skills in such a short amount of time, it is mind boggling.  Just look at the growth of the body in just one short year, can you imagine the growth of the brain?  Think of how many words a child learns in his mother tongue by his 3rd year. 

He is fully able to communicate with others on many topics.  The child will know even more words if he has been in a loving and caring environment where adults spent time talking and reading with him.  All the while, the child has learned to walk, feed himself, go to the bathroom, and a host of other skills.  You cannot duplicate this rapid progress in later years.  And the child has done it all effortlessly, simply by listening to the language of those around him and observing the things in his environment. 

On the other hand, in the child’s school age years he can spend 6 to 12 years attending an English class and still not have attained the kind of proficiency that a child of 5 may have who spent his early years listening to English on a regular basis. 

If you want your child to easily become fully proficient in English and save time and money, you must start early…waiting is not an option!  Stay tuned for the second part in this series on “Five Easy Ways to Teach Your Child English at Home.

For those of you who are sitting there thinking, well…great my kid is already school aged, what now?  Don’t worry, you still have a chance, it may be harder for you, that is true, but you can use the same techniques I’m going to describe in this series of posts.  You will just have to put in a bit more effort to establish a good habit and routine with your child. 

How well the older child fares in learning English has much more to do with his habits and character than with his natural abilities.  That is why the focus for older children should be in character and habit training actually. 

This is something I hope to address in a future post.  Good-bye for now, and happy learning!