I would love to teach my daugher French but I don’t speak it. I’m just wondering how everyone else teaches their child a different language when they are also trying to teach a baby to just read/recognize English words.
Do you show your baby LR flash words and then do the same exact set in the other language?
It’s overwhelming to think about teaching a second language along with doing this Doman style flashwords program in English. Althoug LR makes it 1000 times easier than just doing normal flahscards.
Any effective tips for teaching the second language with LR or anything else?
Personally, I would start teaching foreign language words once I know that my child is already familiar with those words in her mother-tongue language, and then I would retrace the same lesson plan in that foreign language. So it’s like there is a time lag between showing the mother-tongue language and the foreign language.
Dear Lucy, I teach my baby French as well - I do not speak it. (you dont have to) I use the French bits from LR very good material, audio, french music and also the cd-Rooms from Doman. They have the same information -BITS- in each cd-room in 5 languages one of those French. You can totally rely in the accuracy and good pronounciation of the Institutes (Doman) materials.
Our Picture Dictionary CD-ROMs make it fun and easy for your child to learn single words and images in five languages with correct accents. Each of our ten volumes contains 150 colorful images, and large-print vocabulary words spoken by a native speaker in English, Japanese, French, Spanish, and Italian. Each volume is completely interchangeable. You can begin your program with any volume and then move on to any other volume. You can show your child either the words or the pictures or both!
Volume I categories include:
Countries of the World
National Flags
Colors
Birds
Fruit
Musical Instruments
Mammals
Flowers & Blossoms
Fish of the Sea
Musical Symbols
Chemical Elements
Constellations
Human Skeletal System
Mathematical Symbols
Reptiles
Gloria, have you considered the “sleep learning” technique where you play a foreign language softly as your baby (or an adult) is going to sleep and apparently studies show they retain something like 70% of what they hear. It’s said that they abosorb like a sponge as they are falling into the deeper levels of sleep. There is a newer post about it on the early learning discussion board. I guess it’s similar to letting your child listen to music as they fall asleep but instead it would beautiful French! Anyway, just wondering if you have any thoughts on it?
I’m doing the same with my kids, but I am learning French with them together. I found a lots of great resources, such as Babbel and LiveMocha, but I use these for myself. I just found Coffee Break French on www.podcast.com which is very good for non-French speakers like me. The same network recently launched School Run French which is meant to play for older kids on their car ride to school. You can definitely use this for little ones, whether they are asleep or awake!
i would love my son to learn french as well…hubby speaks french fluently but he uses arabic language with our son, i guess the sleeping technique as suggested by lucky lucy can be really effective. just wondering, if i put french music/materials to my son while he sleeps and i speak to him in english n hubby speaks to him in arabic, will issam be able to learn all these languages?
Yes Jsmonton, he can learn all those languages as long as he is exposed to them on a regular basis. Your son could learn French easily if your husband spoke to him in both French and Arabic. Your son will simply be learning two words for everything. This is so easy for little kids. Think about it, you and I learned many different English words for one object just simply by being spoken to in English.
IMPORTANT - I forgot to mention, if you want to learn French yourself, or any language, I highly recommend the Pimsler CDs which you can get at Barnes & Noble. You just simply listen to one lesson a day which is 30 minutes long. You just listen and repeat. You are not aloud to look up any words for meaning or pronunciation. This is because your English will mess you up. I did Pimsler for only about a month and I loved it. I mean I was speaking perfect French, it was crazy! My girlfriend who is fluent in French said I didn’t even have an American accent, she said I was speaking perfect native French. Now granted that I didn’t understand much of what I was saying but they say that that will come along by osmosis. I think if you do the Pimsler program for 6 months then you will be conversational and then after a year you are really speaking it. This is one of the programs the CIA uses to teach their people fast.
Thanks for the info about Pimsler. I have been looking at Rosetta Stone software but it is SO expensive! My husband and I just speak english. I don’t think that two years of French I took in college is really going to help my daughter! LOL
have explained this matter to my husband but he was skeptical, thinking it would only confuse the boy, he wants arabic and english to be the first tongue of our son. sometimes, men can really be hard headed!
Babies don’t get confused by language they just absorb what’s spoken to them. Arabic, French, and English will most definitely be his first tongue if he is spoken to in all three.
You know that thing that our parents cooked all of our food in when we were little? We learned that it was call the oven, the range, and the stove, because our parents used all three words when referring to it. And if they had use 5 words to describe it, we would have learned all five just as easily and just as quickly - it’s a fact, and we are all living proof.
Your family is extremely fortunate that your husband can give your son the precious gift of being trilingual. One day your husband is going to meet a person or child who can speak three or more languages just because he had parents that spoke all those languages to him when he was little. And then your husband may have regrets.
But he’ll probably come to his senses. Men always do. It just takes them longer then it does us.
jsmonton
we are lebanese origin living overseas for years . the official language of the country we live in now is english . i was bilingual french arabic when i first came here working , i could speak a bit of english . than of course our frequent travel to the states to the institutes for our specialneed daughter therapy , educational material was easily available to us in english . we’ll come back home with a suitcase full of material from their bookstore.i taught my daughter in english first , than i introduced french than arabic .
with my second who will be 3 soon , i decided from birth to bring her up bilingual using both english (me) and arabic (when dad is home ).
although she was exposed to both languages i only did doman in english , and later on french , she chose to speak english as first language . if we talk to her in arabic she answers in english , so we knew she understood but didn’t want to speak , till mum came visiting when i had baby number three , she could only speak arabic and within 2 weeks tina was speaking fluently in arabic .
French , we have rosetta stone , we have lots of cds , dvds , french books and magazines , we love muzzy it is her favorite , i think she learned most of her french from it , she is really trying to speak french a lot . today i asked her to show her baby brother the sign for EAT ( we do sign language ) , she sat in front of him , signed EAT , said eat in english , than she told him and we say MANGER IN FRENCH .she was so cute . she continues to amaze me with what she knows but doesn’t like showing it all the time
today i ordered little pim , i read a lot of good things about it from other parents .
your child will learn tell your husband , if he can speak french let him at least read a book for him in french every day , or sing few songs .
love
viv
Pimsleur is definitely the way to go. I’ve tried almost everything else and this was the best. Did you know that Pimsleur’s daughter made the Little Pim series?
I am using Rosetta stone with my son as well as Muzzy. Rosetta stone is very well done allowing you to see a picture, hear the word from a native speaker and see it written all at the same time. I think it is an excellent program. My son also really enjoys watching Muzzy. Pimsleur sounds good too, I will have to check into it.
Can you expand on Muzzy? Is it specifically for children? Do you feel Muzzy has been effective at teaching your babies to speak French even as a parent who doesn’t speak French?
What about Little Pim, is that just as good as Muzzy? I love the regular Pimsleur program for adults. But I am sure it would never keep the attention of my 12 month old. I think she needs something more entertaining. Is Little Pim entertaining for babies? Anyone tried it yet?
Muzzy is for children. I’m probably not the right person to talk to about it though since I have used it more with my son who is now 5. We started using it when he was 4. I haven’t been terribly consistant with it but he does like to watch it even though he doesn’t understand what is being said. When he does watch it he begins to make up french sounding words. If you google Muzzy their website would be able to explain it to you best. That would also apply to Rosetta stone.
