The third part in my series on teaching your child a non-native language is all about different language-learning activities that you can do with your kid. So far in the series I have written about the things you need to take into consideration before embarking on such a journey and which family language strategy you should use.

Enough with the theory, today we come to what you can do to help your little one learn the chosen language! Many of the activities are simple ones for which you do not need much preparation, but others you will have to invest a fair amount of time in.

There are two fundamental principles you need to keep in mind when looking for activities: they should be fun and motivating for your child – and also for yourself!

Activities to boost language learning

New vocabulary and language structures are more effectively imprinted into memory when the learning is combined with an activity. In the below links you can find different activities for kids of all ages – try them out and find the ones that suit your child’s interests and that you enjoy yourself as well!

Three of my posts focus on activities:
Fun ways for kids to learn new vocabulary
14 fun activities for a fortnight of word play
Fun and games with words

The following three links will provide you with activities for many months!
Activities to support multilingualism at home (activity instructions in no less than 23 languages!)
50 activities to promote language-learning (dense text but plenty of great ideas)
Fun ideas for kids learning languages (for English, but the activities can be done in any language)

Reading

I couldn’t write a post about language learning activities without emphasising the importance of books and reading with your child. Visit your local library to find new books in your target language or arrange book swaps with other families.

In my post Resources for multilingual families, part 1 I highlight a few free resources for online books. In Trilingual Mama’s post you can find more online books in multiple languages.

Online tv and radio

The best way to learn a language is through interaction, so speaking, singing, playing and doing different activities in the language should be top of your list of things to do. When your child’s vocabulary increases and you need an even more varied exposure to the language there are plenty of resources available online.

Radio is an often forgotten media, but it is a great way of introducing a language in a less intrusive way – click on this link from Trilingual Children to find a list of kids’ radio stations in different languages.

With slightly older children, you might want to check out news sites aimed at a younger audience, you can find many links in Expat Since Birth’s post Online news sites for children.

… and why not learn a language alongside your child!

There are lot of free resources online depending on which language you are learning – check out these two sites to start with: Omniglot and Foreign Service Institute.

Please let me know which activities are most popular in your family!

May the peace and power be with you.

After taking into consideration all the points raised in the first part of this series, you have decided that you want to give your child the gift of another language. My presumption is that you have discussed this with the rest of the family and everybody agrees that it is a good idea. (If you do not have the support of the rest of the family, be prepared for some hard work to succeed in reaching your goal.) You also have an idea how fluent you want your child to be and are prepared to invest as much time as it takes.

The next step is to decide what strategy you are going to follow and the choice depends on how fluent you are in the language and whether you will be doing this on your own or together with your partner or someone else who spends a lot of time with your child.

You are fluent and comfortable in speaking the language

If you are the only person who will speak the language with your child, you can choose the one parent, one language (OPOL) approach. This means that you will be using the language in all communication with your child. Before you go for this strategy, I would recommend that you once more go through the different scenarios mentioned in the Considerations part of this series.

If both you and your partner feel confident about speaking the language, you can choose to go for the minority language at home (mL@H) strategy. With this option, there will only be one language spoken in the home and it is different from the majority language of the community.

You can also choose the 2 parents, 2 languages (2P2L) approach, whereby both of you switch between the two languages with your child. When choosing this option, you need to make sure that there is at least an equal amount of exposure to both languages – preferably with an emphasis on the minority language. This strategy will most likely be more successful if both languages are also spoken in the surrounding community.

You are less fluent in the language

If you do not feel that you can speak the language all of the time with your child, then I would recommend that you go for the time and place (T&P) strategy. When applying this approach you select a certain time of the day, week or month, or alternatively a room/place/activity when/where you speak the language with your child. By using this system, you have the option of speaking your native language with your child at times when the other language is too much of a struggle.

I think the time and place strategy is an excellent option to ease into a routine of introducing another language and – when it feels right – increase the amount of time you use the language with each other.

You are learning along your child

If you have chosen a language that you do not yet know yourself, then the obvious option is time and place (T&P), as otherwise you will not be able to communicate with your child at all!

How you start learning depends very much on the age of your child, since whatever you do needs to keep both of you interested. Unless you go for the option of hiring a tutor for the two of you, I would recommend that you start this as a game where you learn a few words and phrases to start with. Follow up with rhymes and songs (initially choose ones with a familiar tune) and always remember to keep it fun!

There will be one more post in this series: Activities.

May the peace and power be with you.

Children learn language best through interaction and dialogue, and singing is a great way of engaging with children long before they can speak. All babies love the voice of their mothers and fathers, so the “I can’t sing!” excuse does not fly.

“If you can walk you can dance, if you can talk, you can sing”
– Zimbabwean proverb

Frequent, child-centered, and highly simplified communication between a parent and a child is “a strategy that is eminently more successful than conventional language instruction”.

When parents sing to their babies, they naturally “adopt a conversational or turn-taking style […], pausing to accept infants’ contributions of coos, gurgles, yawns, and smiles.” Babies are very much engaged by this positive way of singing and parents can attract and keep their babies attention longer. The happy sound also develops the babies’ social skills, helps them learn to pick out individual words and to remember them.

It should be noted that the benefits were found when parents sung to their children, instrumental music or recorded songs did not have the same effect.

Not only is singing beneficial for the small child’s language development, songs are also magnificent representations of the parent’s cultures. By learning to love this part of their heritage early on in their lives, children feel closer to the culture and can go on to learn more about the music of their background.

Children who are sung to become used to and interested in music – it is great if parents can build on this and have the chance to let children study music early on. According to research children under nine who had one hour of music tuition a week showed a “higher ability to learn both the grammar and the pronunciation of foreign languages, compared to their classmates who had learned a different extracurricular activity.”

Once you get going, why not have the whole family sing together – singing is great for all ages!

… and now excuse me, I need to go and sing my little grandson a lullaby!

May the peace and power be with you.

We live in a world where those who try to create divisions between people of different countries, creeds and cultures are getting more and more vocal and who try to disrupt the stability in way that leads to discrimination, abuse, displacement of families, fear and even to devastating loss of lives.

As a parent and a grandparent, I feel that as adults it is our responsibility to do our utmost to leave our world in a safe state for generations to be. As a parent who has raised two bilingual daughters, I firmly believe that as multilingual families we are a strong force for unity and that we can counteract the divisive trends that are rife all across the world.

Speaking more than one language makes you more open-minded

Research has shown that bilinguals are on average more open-minded than those who speak only one language. When you learn more than one language, you also learn that one thing can have more than one name. You know that words for the same thing can have a slightly different meaning in different languages and through this you learn that people can look at the same thing and see something different. You learn to put yourself in another person’s shoes. When you do this, it often leads to a more tolerant and understanding life view. Tolerance and understanding is exactly what we need more of today.

Multilingual families are often multicultural

Language and culture are intrinsically linked – when you combine many languages in a family, usually you also end up combining many cultures. Multicultural families can be positive role models for celebrating diversity and showing the rest of the community the way to live together and making diversity the new normal.

Bridge-building – that’s what multilingual families do

In a family where more than one language is spoken, there are always compromises to be made – who speaks what with whom and when? Sometimes not everyone understands what is said during certain discussions – this does however not stop the family from feeling as one strong unity. Children growing up in such an environment learn to take each other into consideration and appreciate the importance of finding those all-important compromises. Add to that the language skills of the children and you have the making of a future global citizen.

More than half of the world’s population is bilingual

As bilinguals, we are in the majority in the world – we can use this position to spread the message of tolerance and understanding around us. None of us can do this on our own, but together we can be a true positive force to be reckoned with.

Keep speaking your languages and pass them on to your children – together we can build a better world for them.

May the peace and power be with you.