[MyEnglishTeacher]

How do you teach "NEW BORN" "Toddlers" and "under 3 years of age" Chinese babies!?

[susan53]

Just like their mums teach them Chinese - you sing to them, play with them, help them tie their shoelaces and talk to them while you do it. You can't "teach" to that age - but the kids' brains are hard-wired to acquire the langugae naturally. So you just do exactly what you would do with a native speaker baby - expose them to a lot of "motherese", which is the technical term for the type of speech that adults use with children - you can see a video about it here

A word of warning though - your real problem is not the kids but the parents. If they think that their kids are going to visit you for an hour a week and by the end of the year will be speaking English, they're wrong. At most they can expect them to start understanding a few words.

And if it's more full-immersion (for example if you're in an all-day English language nursery school), then they've also got to be prepared for two possibilities :
a) that the kids learn to understand but don't speak. Kids of that age are very pragmatic about language use. They won't start speaking unless there's a real communicative need - and certainly not just to please an adult.
b) that they do start to acquire English but that it causes some confusion with their first language. This doesn't happen with all kids, but it does with others. The confusion will gradually get ironed out as they get older, and anyway my answer to that is that 98% of two languages still beats 100% of one hands down, but it can sometimes frighten parents so that they give up.

Here are some links that might help. It's a search page - don't stop at the first page as there's some good (better?) stuff later on.

Hope that helps.

[MyEnglishTeacher]

Hi Sue, Thanks a lot. Great Help. I also want to know, if it is true that most babies can learn several languages, by the time they reach age 3 ?!

Do you have a web site, you, should! ?

[susan53]

Kids differ enormously in how quickly they acquire languages. My own son, brought up bilingually, didn't say more than six words in any language until he was three, though he clearly understood both English and Italian. But by three months later he'd zoomed through the stages that take most kids 18 months and was speaking Italian like a normal 3 yr old. But English didn't come until much much later and at first there was a lot of interference. Now, at nearly sixteen and having attended both English and Italian schools, he's completely (and enviably) bilingual.

That doesn't mean all bilingual kids will be late speakers. Many kids don't have the early problems that he had sorting them out, and yes, three languages are feasible. I know a number of kids with parents of two different nationalities living in the country of neither who cope with three.

Can they learn them all by three years of age? Depends what you mean. I'm sure that if they've been brought up from birth with equal exposure to all three, they'll understand them. Which they speak will depends, as I said before, largely on the needs of the situation. My son didn't speak to me in English because he knew I understood Italian and if his Dad could speak to me in Italian why not him too? Nothing bolshy about it - to a kid it's just common sense. They don't see any "value" in knowing different languages - just in communicating.

Obviously, I'm very pro bringing kids up multilingually. But I do think people have very unrealistic expectations about how "easy" they'll find it. Kids have to be exposed to language for hours and hours and hours in order to acquire it - calculate how many hours of talk a monolingual three year old has heard, and how little of that language s/he actually understands and can use yet. Say they're awake 12 hours a day - it's over 13,000 hours. Not to mention that the child needs to use that language to get the things s/he wants.

And then along come some monolingual parents, decide to send their child to you for 2 hours a week, and thirty weeks later are annoyed that the child isn't fluent in English. LOL.

If you're interested, this is a list of some books on bringing kids up bi- or multilingually.

As for websites - Yes. If you look at the bottom of people's messages you'll see links to their websites if they have them. My two ELT sites are listed below. Hope to see you there!

[MyEnglishTeacher]

Fantastic, Fabulous Sue, I have checked out your sites, and they check, A Okay! You are a delight and knowledgable and thanks for sharing your know how with me, I hope to be in continuous touch with you. Oh by the way, what do you know about learning English by; Hypnosis?! or is it not possible!?

[susan53]

Wonderful! But I don't think anyone's tried that one yet ....

Hypnosis, though, works by means of suggestion - the hypnotised person is put into a state of deep relaxation and then suggestions are made to the subconcious - you can give up smoking, you can remember XXX or whatever.

One method which does use suggestion is suggestopaedia - but not at the level of hypnosis. And the suggestions don't aim to teach the language as such, but to put the students into a relaxed (but not hypnotised) and motivated state where they are likely to learn more. Those, in my experience work. It also uses various techniques which are intended to direct the language straight to the subconscious for acquisition. I'm more dubious about those. But if you go into the "Teaching ESL" forum, we were talking about it a week or so back and there are some references you can follow up.

I could see someone's language learning benefiting from hypnosis if say they were a learner who'd had a lot of negative experiences with language learning, was terrified of it and sure they'd fail - but for some reason had to succeed. Hypnotism could help them overcome the affective blocks and therefore learn more successfully.

[English-coach]

I just wanted to say thanks to Sue. Your explinations are really complete, helpful and thought provoking. Thanks for the info. This is the second or third time that I have heard about suggestopaedia and I am going to look into it more.

[susan53]

That's sweet of you. Thank you.

[English-coach]

You are welcome. It is not everyday that you come across someone as friendly and helpful as yourself. Have a good one.

[MyEnglishTeacher]

Thanks so much, first Eric, having this Forum for us, to discuss.
Second dear eslHQ Zealot!, you are super, and last but definitely not least my great friend, Sue, as always you are informative and challenging, thanks so much, and I keep this question open, as I am hungry for more, and any one of you are always welcome to China, as my guest and English Buddy!

[teachingenglishmadeeasy]

Quote susan53

Just like their mums teach them Chinese - you sing to them, play with them, help them tie their shoelaces and talk to them while you do it. You can't "teach" to that age - but the kids' brains are hard-wired to acquire the langugae naturally. So you just do exactly what you would do with a native speaker baby - expose them to a lot of "motherese", which is the technical term for the type of speech that adults use with children - you can see a video about it here

A word of warning though - your real problem is not the kids but the parents. If they think that their kids are going to visit you for an hour a week and by the end of the year will be speaking English, they're wrong. At most they can expect them to start understanding a few words.

And if it's more full-immersion (for example if you're in an all-day English language nursery school), then they've also got to be prepared for two possibilities :
a) that the kids learn to understand but don't speak. Kids of that age are very pragmatic about language use. They won't start speaking unless there's a real communicative need - and certainly not just to please an adult.
b) that they do start to acquire English but that it causes some confusion with their first language. This doesn't happen with all kids, but it does with others. The confusion will gradually get ironed out as they get older, and anyway my answer to that is that 98% of two languages still beats 100% of one hands down, but it can sometimes frighten parents so that they give up.

Here are some links that might help. It's a search page - don't stop at the first page as there's some good (better?) stuff later on.

Hope that helps.

Susan is right. Children, specifically those under the age of 6-8, should NOT receive any type of formal training, but that is just my opinion. Just playing with them while talking to them is enough to get them to learn the language. Just be sure to expose them to enough language.

[English-coach]

I worked in an acadamy for two weeks (had to quit because of a family issue back in Canada) but I taught a group of 5-8 year olds. We didn't "teach" in a formal way but basically played, colored, sang songs and had fun. I have never spoken Spanish in my classes and this class I had to speak spanish basically the whole time.

I agree though. Kids should have fun when learning. It shouldn't be forced.

A short article on ideas to make learning fun for kids.

Cheers!
Diana