Inside: Top Tips for Helping Your Child Learn a New Language. Collaborative post.
Learning a new language is an amazing and inviting experience for children to truly embrace. It gives children a range of new skills and makes them stand out among the rest, as well as showing your child how it can be fun and engaging for them. In this guide from an independent prep school in London, we look at some tips parents can use to help their children with learning a new language.
Show your child a range of media
TV programmes, films, games on your phone or tablet, and music are all ways for you to show your child about how to naturally pick up a language. Regularly listening to different mediums will get your child understanding how to pronounce words, the different accents they may encounter and different ways to say the same things. It’s also a fun way of memorising different words and important bits of vocabulary.
Play a range of language-based games
Game-based learning is always going to be exciting for a child. You can look up a range of resources online to play games, or you can download some apps onto a phone or tablet to let your child explore in their own time. Let your child work on something new on these games once a day, in short bursts, to test their knowledge. There are thankfully a wide variety of apps to explore these days that will help both children and adults with their language learning.
Repetition is key
Ask your child often about what they get up to in their language lessons and see where you can offer your own forms of support. It’s important to keep repeating the work that your child’s been getting up to in class so that it can be remembered much more often. Repetition is a big part of any person’s learning journey and should be explored at least once a week with your child.
Learn the language alongside them
Having a partner to learn alongside a child is a great way of really honing in on your knowledge. Your child effectively has a practice buddy they can use every week to practice different words, phrases and conversations at a time that suits them. They can also lean on you for when big tests come up, where you can both test your knowledge on what you know. Your child will also greatly appreciate you making an effort to help them with their studies and you can both work together on similar goals.