How to Teach a Foreign Language to Young Children

Normally, young children learn language through their everyday environment. To teach a foreign language to young children, however, takes a little more effort. If you're teaching a child between 2 and 8, you'll need to collect kid-friendly teaching material and get an understanding of how children learn languages. The good news, though, is that you don't have to be fluent in the language to introduce a child to it.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Learn about early childhood language education. Teaching a foreign language to young children is different from teaching older kids or adults. Focus on activity and interaction, rather than memorization and rules. The Total Physical Response method, in which students learn by doing, works well with little kids. For vocabulary, use real communication instead of repetitive reading or writing. For example, to review the word for "nurse," you could ask "What does a nurse do?" in the foreign language.

2. Collect foreign language material for young children. Language textbooks for older kids are usually too complex (and too boring) for youngsters. Skip these and use age-appropriate material that's relevant to childen's lives. Instead of textbooks, try story books, poems, songs, comics, puppet shows, games and any other activity that uses language. You can also incorporate arts and crafts projects into your language teaching.

3. Interact in the foreign language. Using the foreign language for everyday activities brings it alive and teaches kids basic vocabulary in context. Mealtime, bath time and drive time all present learning opportunities. If you're teaching at home, start by saying a word or phrase in the child's mother tongue, then repeat it in the foreign language. Do this for a month, and then switch to the foreign language followed by the native language. After a few weeks, you can use just the foreign language.

4. Find extra learning and cultural material. Help young children experience the culture of those who speak the language they're learning. Stories and movies about the lives and adventures of kids in other countries hold young children's attention well. Even if you don't understand the language, you can still get something out of the pictures and your child will be proud to explain things to you.

5. Introduce the children to native speakers. If you speak the language you're teaching with an accent, make sure your child talks to native speakers. Young children can learn a language with no foreign accent, but it gets a lot harder by around age 12. Children need to interact to develop a good accent, so try to find native speaking children they can play with.

Tips & Warnings

• Look online for learning material. There are many online courses and collections of teaching material designed especially to teach a foreign language to young children. Websites for native speaking kids are good sources of child-friendly material, and they can teach young learners about the culture of the language they're studying.
• Young children usually go through a silent period. When you begin speaking a foreign language to a young child, she'll most likely understand long before she answers in that language. Don't worry if the children you teach only answer in their native language at first. Keep using the foreign language and eventually they'll respond.

Resources

• Linguatots.com offers tips and products for teaching children languages.
• Here's a list of language learning resources for young children.
• LanguageLizard.com teaches kids language through culture.
• Find childrens' books from around the world.
• Get fun educational software, CDs and DVDs at edutainingkids.com.

[gulce]

on 10/21/2009 thanks for sharing this article..IT's so important for my study.But I Also want to learn the advantages of teaching young learners a foreign language..where can I a find some information about this topic?

[Gardengates]

on 8/24/2008 All solid and helpful tips.

[CazT]

on 4/23/2008 I should like to know what the received wisdom is about including reading and writing when teaching a foreign language to young children. The Government's National Framework for KS2 MFL includes reading and writing from the age of 7, when children are to first start the language and I think this is too soon, preferring to concentrate on speaking and listening through games, songs, stories etc for the first two years. Any comments welcome.

[SandraC23]

on 1/5/2008 Thanks for your help , this article is very interesting. I am french , I live in the USA with my husband and our 2 daughters ,Chania5 , and Justine 1 1/2. They are both bilingual , and I notice that they have a very flexible cognitive system. I am starting teaching little ones french , in my home , and it is very exiting !! If you have any more tips , I would to hear them.
Sandra