Last month, we looked at the range of possibilities the home offers for not only language learning, but also more broadly developing skills and a good attitude towards learning in general. Parents should not underestimate these aspects of preparing their child for academic success. In this article, we will focus on suggestions for supporting second language acquisition where English is not spoken proficiently in the home.

There is much debate in educational circles as to the actual benefit of starting to learn a second language at a young age. In some contexts, such as the immersion school programmes in Canada (where native–English speaking children attend French medium of instruction schools), starting early has been shown to afford long–term advantages in some but not all areas of language learning (predominantly listening skills). This may relate to the sheer volume of exposure to listening material in a meaningful context.

The language of instruction at school and second language use around the home will affect the rate at which your child learns English. As you can imagine, children who only receive one or two hours of English a week – whether formally (at school or extra-curricular language classes) or informally (friends, books, films) – will not develop their skills as quickly as children who receive part or all of their regular schooling in English and/or whose family members use English as a medium of communication on a regular basis.

Some parents are concerned that their own proficiency in English is not high enough to provide additional support to their children. This is not necessarily true if you are willing to be a little creative with how you access language models. Even if you do not feel comfortable reading aloud for your child or having conversations with your child in English, you can provide him or her with access to spoken English by:

• Reading along to picture and story books that have supporting audio cassettes/CDs. Be sure to sit with your child and actively point to the pictures being described or follow the printed word. Even if your children have not learned to read independently, pointing to the words as they hear them spoken reinforces the connection between sound and print, which will stimulate their curiosity and provide motivation to read.
• Watching English medium children’s television programmes. Children’s television will often use simple language that is repeated throughout the show or series. In addition, most children’s programmes have an educational focus, for example maths, science or geography. Again, you need to watch with your children so that you can focus their attention to repeated words/phrases and understand when they use them in similar situations in their own lives.
• Watching children’s films in English. Please note that for this choice, it is advisable that you let your children watch the film in their first language initially, so that they fully understand the story/plot before letting them watch in English. For some children, watching it in their first language with English subtitles is also helpful. However, other children find this very distracting and focusing on the written word would make them miss valuable visual clues; it is best to try this and ask your children if they like seeing the words or prefer the movie without them.

All of these media provide visual support and a clear context for the language use, which will help your child make sense of the language used. Allowing your children to read or watch favourite books and films again or regularly watch their favourite television programme in English will enable them to pick up vocabulary, phrases and structures in a very natural way. This can be encouraged from a very early age and right up until their teens.

So if meaning and context are so important to learning a language, why do some teachers send children home with long lists of vocabulary and spellings to learn? The simplest answer is that they are easy to test. As long as the children have been introduced to the language in a meaning–rich context, practising spelling or recognising words or pictures can help put the language into their long–term memory.

Here are some methods for helping your child learn words and phrases at home:

• Mime. This includes noises or gestures. Miming is great for action words (verbs) and describing words (adverbs). You can easily turn this into an enjoyable, game-like activity to review and revise words your children have been learning at school or have learned through reading. Start out by either saying the word or showing them the word and letting them mime the action, for example the parent/carer says ‘walk’ and the children mime walking. Then, as they get more confident, you can do the action and get them to say the corresponding word. This can be made more challenging by moving above the level of the word and onto phrases, for example ‘walk slowly’, ‘sit down angrily’ and ‘sing loudly’. At the sentence level, children can be encouraged to read a sentence, or even make up their own, and then indicate how many words there are in it by holding up their fingers; finally, they can mime or act out the sentence for you to guess.
• Pictures. This includes photos and drawings. These are very useful for when the words you are trying to teach are objects; they are less effective if the language is an action, for example ‘to peel’, or a concept, as in ‘poverty’. Drawing a quick picture can very simply convey the meaning of words that come up. Again, if you involve your child in the drawing, then this can make the learning more memorable. This way, your children can create their own picture dictionary or scrap book of language related to a theme.
• Realia or the real thing. This relies on the words you are teaching or practising being objects and you being able to access the object at home, but it can be effective for students who are tactile learners and who need to touch. It is especially useful when dealing with words that describe textures like fluffy, rough, smooth, furry and hairy, which have very subtle differences that would be hard to explain. For objects around the house, you can create labels and stick them on furniture and objects. This activity may be of particular fun for small children, as there is something boundary breaking about writing on things that aren’t normally written on. With or without labels, you can play simple games like ‘I-spy’ or ‘Simon says’ to recall and practise vocabulary around the home.

It is essential to mention that younger children are generally slower at learning the grammar of a language, and studies have shown that there are few advantages gained in this area by starting to learn a second language young. With this in mind, it is generally accepted in educational fields that the younger the child is, the less use there is to trying to ‘study’ the grammar of language (first, second or additional) as a separate thing. This is why many second language teachers avoid using scientific terms for language items (verb, noun, adjective) and the discrete teaching of grammar (tense structures) with kindergarten and lower primary aged children.

Research has shown that for most young children up to around the age of 8 or 9, teaching grammar in a formal style is far less effective than helping them to learn more naturally by using their innate ability to ‘read the situation’ or context of language use. Being able to interpret the meaning is how young children begin to understand the grammar and vocabulary of language, and this meaning-based understanding helps them to remember it.