We all know that language is best taught from young. The younger you start the better the outcome is.
There were a few babies that I taught last year who had absolutely no Chinese (a second language), neither the farther or the mother came from any of the Chinese backgrounds. So how could the English speaking parent teach the baby, say, Chinese? How did we do it in our playroom on the weekly bases?
Well, you can spend lots of money buying all sorts of learning materials or engaging a professional Chinese language teacher, or hiring a Chinese speaking nanny for their services. These are all high cost ways of helping your baby to be on the path of a second language learning.
The best would be for a bilingual parent to speak to your child your home language. unfortunately, this is not always possible for us all. Most of us have only got one language.
There were about 15 babies all together since my first Mandarin baby class in July, 08. These babies are ranging from 24 to 13 months old now. 99% of them talked very early, either starting with Chinese words or English. Once they are able to talk, their language ability just matured daily. They are much happier to be around new members of the community and they are much more friendly to other toddlers. They are so confident at being with other adults/mums. Few months ago, I was telling a group of 8 toddlers (a few of them from our baby class last year) a story, suddenly, I realize that most of them are sitting with someone else's mum, not their own. But they were all so involved at the story that I was giving. I wish I had a camera to capture this moment, but I soon realized that this happens all the time with this particular group of baby -> toddler learners.
Compare this group of toddlers to the other groups of toddlers that I have, which none of them were with us from babyhood, you can see the difference and teachers actually feel that it is harder to teach these groups to the one baby -> toddler group and I often have to help the other groups of new toddlers.
This actually shows us that the new research finds Bilingual babies developing the ability of acceptance to others (people, language, cultural, foods,) more easily than Monolingual babies.
For this reason alone, we need to find ways to help our little babies and toddlers to learn a second language as soon as we can.
Low costs ways of helping your baby/toddler/preschooler to learn a second language are:
1. Organize visits and home plays with friends or community members that speaking the particular language that you would like your child to learn.
2. Join local/starting your own bilingual learning playgroup that is community minded and focus on children's language learning and aiming at providing the best outcome for families.
3. Using free on-line learning materials, and learn it with your child.
4. Install the cable TV system that provides 24/7 language access of programs that you can choose particular time frame to watch the TV show with your child. I don't suggest that you use TV as baby sitter while you get other house chores done. As some of the contents of the show may be ok to the culture background but not acceptable to you.
5. Songs is the best way of helping your child to learn a new language. Song CDs in the car, at home, in the playroom.
6. Printable flashcards, place them all over your house. Visual stimulation is so important to those little brain's development. Fill your house up with them your child will soon learn making connections with what he sees and what it means.
7. Make a space available to encourage your toddler to draw and express himself on the wall, whiteboard, if possible. Don't forget that gross motor skill development is another vital important part of language learning.
8. Most importantly, don't forget to bring fun into the learning. Children won't want to learn or participate if there is no fun. So make it fun for them to do any activities that's the aid to their learning.
Got to catch up some sleep before 8am as I have 6 classes tomorrow and will only finish at 5pm every Saturday, school terms.
Hope all above is helping and encouraging enough to get you start at helping your child to learn a second language.
Visit my website for more information regarding our classes for babies, toddlers, kinder and early primary children:
http://www.kimmba.com.au
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