The Process and the Tools to Teach a Second Language

Learning a Language with Your Little Ones

Welcome, aspiring polyglot! Approaching a new subject with your little ones can be a daunting task, but there are countless benefits and, as we will discuss, the risks are minimal. Ensuring your children’s language acquisition will change their lives, and likely your own, for the better in ways you may not have even considered. Here are the processes and tools that can help facilitate and accelerate your language acquisition with your little ones.

Process:

One of the first things you’ll do when working with your child on their language acquisition is choose the language on which you will focus. As you’re deciding this, here are some of the things you will want to consider:

• What resources do you have around you that you can utilize in conjunction with other lessons to enhance your child’s language acquisition

• Who in your proximity could speak the language fluently to/with them and you?

• Do you want to learn the language?

• Are they interested?

Some of these things are useful for obvious reasons, some maybe less so. As far as picking the language goes, it is hyper important because it is feasible that going down the wrong path and dragging your children along for the ride can completely turn them off of languages for a long time. You want to have a language you both are interested in so that you can progress together and bond over the experience. However, interest is far from the most important indicator when choosing the target language.