Five ways to support your child’s English-learning at home

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 what can parents do at home to support their learning? Here are our teachers’ top ten tips.

1. Learn English yourself
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.

2. Play in English
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.
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.

3. Read bedtime storybooks in English
It’s easy to get storybooks in any language now, especially online or by swapping books with other parents. Very young children won’t question the language that you are reading to them in – they're more concerned about the ritual of bedtime stories. This provides a great opportunity to sneak in some extra English time in a memorable way.
We all remember our favourite books from when we were little, and in some cases, we can still remember phrases from books we haven’t seen or read in years. Stories provide powerful language-learning opportunities, so we should use them.
Reading illustrated storybooks to your child is a great way to develop language, as every page is supported by visual clues. The language is simplified, repetitive, and introduces features such as rhyme. It widens vocabulary and encourages children to ask questions about character and plot.
A great alternative is to use audio books or online stories if you are less confident about reading out loud to your child in English.

4. Get crafty!
Kids love any opportunity to get messy; they love sticking, glueing, cutting, painting and baking things. So, encourage it … in English. The activity doesn't have to be about English, but should instead use English to complete the task or activity:
‘Could you pass me the glue, please?’;
‘Thank you’
‘Why don’t you paint a picture?’
‘Can you help me tidy up?’
These sorts of phrases are the most helpful language you can introduce to your child. If you don’t speak a lot of English yourself, you could simply follow audio or written recipe instructions as you bake cupcakes together. In the process, you are using everyday English that teachers use in the classroom. You are therefore preparing them for the sort of thing they will hear at school.

5. Make sure the Wii or PlayStation is set to use English
Every bit of technology we own comes with language options and, as we have seen, one of the main ways of developing language is through repetition. By using English as the operational language for your TV, iPad, laptop or telephone, each time your child sees you accessing something or tries to herself, she will see English in a natural context.
Nowadays, before children learn to read and write, they are often confident users of iPads or their parents’ phones. Introducing language such as 'password', 'log-on', 'choose', 'press' or 'game over' can be a useful starting point.