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Many parents would like to teach their children English at home, but don’t know how to start. It doesn’t matter if your own English is not perfect. The most important thing is that you are enthusiastic and that you give your children lots of encouragement and praise. Your child will pick up on your enthusiasm for the language. Don’t worry if your child doesn’t start speaking English immediately. They will need a certain amount of time to absorb the language. Be patient, and they will begin to speak English in their own time. More and more parents want their children to learn English from a young age. I often meet parents of children as young as two or three who say that proficiency in speaking English will help their child 'get ahead in a globalised world'. In other words, the sooner their children get started, the better. The single most important factor in a child’s success with English is their parents' interest and encouragement, no matter what their child’s age. So how can parents help students to learn English? Yes! You can help your child to gain in confidence and feel more motivated by giving them a lot of praise and opportunities to practise English. It’s easier for children to learn when they get encouragement from their parents.You could also all learn some English together. If you are enthusiastic about learning the language, they will be too. The first, children will naturally learn everything around them without any adult intervention. They do this through playful experimentation and making many mistakes along the way. To help your child get ahead with English learning, get them to play in the language. To build a positive attitude towards learning, and towards English as a language, the best place to start is with yourself. If you send your child to an English class, why not join one too? Learning English together is a great way to spend time with your kids and create a positive attitude towards learning and speaking another language.By learning English yourself, you can show your kids that ‘having a go’ and making a mistake is better than only speaking when you have the perfect sentence prepared. The second, parents can also introduce children to quite difficult language structures through song. Take, for example, ‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands’. It includes a really complex grammatical structure that a young child would find too challenging to learn from being taught. The song, on the other hand, does everything for us with no pressure, and provides an easily recognisable context for children. At home, try playing dress-up games, hide-and-seek and other popular games, in English. In other words, get them to learn English in the same way they are learning their first language. Don't worry if your child makes mistakes or doesn't start speaking in English immediately. The brain needs to go through a process of decoding and pattern-finding during the language-learning process. Language production usually starts after a long period of listening and thinking. There is some evidence to suggest that children who are exposed to a lot of different languages at once may need a little more time to put all the information into place. So perhaps in school a child learning new information in a third or possibly fourth language may seem to be a little behind a child who is handling the same new information in their first and only language. In fact, a good friend of mine recently told me that the teacher of her five-year-old, bilingual daughter is frustrated that she won't read out loud in class. When we asked her daughter why she doesn't, she says she doesn't like it because she knows the spelling and sounds in English and Spanish are different, and she doesn't want to make mistakes. This sounds like a really smart kid to me! It is also important for your child to get used to ‘English time’ language, so use the same phrases with your child each time, e.g. ‘It’s English time! Let’s sit down. Which song shall we start with today?’ Children will soon pick up phrases such as please; thank you; Can I have …?; Where is …?; Point to …; What colour is it?; It’s …; I like …; I don’t like …Whatever your approach, the most important thing is to relax, have fun and make learning English an enjoyable experience for both you and your child.
