How To Learn Foreign Languages At Home Schools in English-speaking countries are infamously bad at encouraging foreign languages. Or maybe not bad, just totally indifferent. Although anyone who wants to do well in the world has to speak English, times are a-changing and we are waking up to the fact that we are missing out on a lot by not studying foreign languages. As everybody knows, it is simpler to learn foreign languages when you are younger, so perhaps it would be a good idea for parents to begin teaching their children a foreign language at home, if they cannot rely on the state educational system to do it for them. All well and good for parents of mixed marriages, I hear you saying, but what if both parents are native English speakers. Well, why not study the language too at your child's pace? If you begin early enough, the child will still be learning English, so will learn the foreign language slowly anyway and you will easily be able to keep up. Especially as, being the teacher, you can manipulate the pace of the learning and you could slow it down to suit yourself. The first thing to do is select a language that you can hear spoken reasonably often. Spanish, French and German are probably the best options. Believe me, Russian and Chinese are not! Spanish, French and German have lots of words that stem from the same roots as English words, so that makes it a little easier too. So, let's say, you choose French. Now you ought to look about for methods to teach (and learn) French. One way to begin is to buy some bilingual cards with pictures of everyday items like pets, household items, relatives, colours, foodstuffs, numbers and clothing. You could use three to five cards a day in a 15-20 minute lesson and once you have used a card, you could pin it on the wall and refer to it every now and again.This will build up your vocabulary. You will also have to purchase some blank card, a grammar book, a dictionary and a easy reader in French. It is all very well having a large vocabulary of words, but you need to know some verbs to be able to put them together into sentences. So, say you have both learned the words for 'mother' and 'cat', you could look up the word for 'look', write it onto a piece of card and pin it between the pictures of mother and the cat. Then you have: "La mere regarde le chat" (mother is looking at the cat). You could repeat this with all the words that fit until it sinks in. 'Teach Yourself ...' books are usually pretty good at offering a structure for your schooling and the best ones have CD's of native speakers to help you get the accent right. Often the course work is mirrored on the CD chapter by chapter to make it even easier. You can look on Amazon and choose some CD's of easy French nursery rhymes and get some good cartoon stories like Asterix the Gaul. The text is meant for children, so you will easily be able to follow it. They are pretty good as well and should hold both your kid's and your own attention for hours, but only do a chapter at a time.
In order to apply your new language, try prohibitting English at meal times or for one meal a day. This can be amusing and the whole family may get involved. You will be astonished how quickly you will learn enough to say what you would like to Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on a number of topics, but is now involved with the Nerf n-Strike Stampede Blaster. If you would like to know more, please visit our website at Smart Toys for Kids.