Can children learn to speak foreign languages from a CD?

Has anybody bought anything from this company: http://www.babysschool.com/ingles.php
CV Victor Lopez Montoya: https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=40074109930&topic=6587
https://www.facebook.com/VictorLopezMontoya

Apparentely he is a qualified Shichida instructor.

I just wonder about the language CDs…wasn´t it always said that you the babies need interaction with a REAL person in order to learn? And here is this company who claims they can learn it accent free from a CD through the right hemnisphere??

Thanks for sharing your experience!

My opinion is that they can learn the sounds of a language by listening, so I would expect your child to pick up some vocabulary and speak it without an accent. HOWEVER that does not mean that they will speak the language by listening to a cd. Language needs people and interaction to be learnt.

Look at it as like learning music - a child might learn the musical notes and their names from listening to a cd, but they would be unable to play the piano. They could maybe pick out a bit of a tune, but to play piano you need to learn piano and not just the notes a piano can make.

I use language cds with my son all the time - he listens to Russian and Chinese on cd and LR (LR especially helps with vocabulary as there is the associated picture). I use audio recordings of language mostly to help with acquiring a near-native accent and a more intuitive understanding of how the language sounds. I do not use them exclusively and I would not expect my son to learn much using them alone.

An example of how much more effective a teacher is - for the week that my son’s father visited and spoke exclusively Russian to him (rather than my 1-2 hours of odd conversations and reading throughout the day) the rate at which he was picking up Russian was equal (maybe even greater than) the rate at which he was picking up English, which is our primary language. He learnt (and began using what he knew) more in 24-hours of interaction with a native speaker than in several months without.

I wouldn’t say that cds are useless and a waste of money, but playing a set of cds with 1000 words will do no more than teach those 1000 words as separate sound-bytes. You would be better spending your money on some good quality childrens audio books and dvds in the target language (for general immersion and native accent) and something like Little Reader, Little Pim or Wink to Learn for meaningful vocabulary building. You would probably have some money over for a couple of hours with a teacher, too!

Hope this helps - if you know what language you want your baby to learn, I might be able to give more specific advice :slight_smile:

I think MummyRoo gave some good advice. I tend to agree that you need interaction to learn the language. Just watching DVDs is not the same thing as learning language from a native speaker.

Personally, I wouldn’t buy DVDs in the language that I don’t know and that is no one in the family knows, plant my child in front of the DVD and hope they learn something. Even with DVDs such as Your Baby Can Read, research shows that watching and interacting with the parent is more beneficial than just watching, and if you don’t know the language yourself, it would be hard for you to interact with your child during the DVD session. Say that your child learns everything there is on the DVD and asks you a question in that language? You won’t be able to answer it. It’s not always crystal clear from just watching a DVD what word is being taught. I’ve seen the same DVD clip with a green frog used teach word “frog” and word “green”. If you don’t know the language, you won’t know what word is flashing on the screen or being said, “frog” or “green”.

Also, after you complete the program on DVD, you can’t continue using the words and the language unless you have a native speaker. Language is use it or lose kind of skill, so what are you going to do after the DVD? Unless you enroll your child in a school that has immersion in that language or find regular play groups in that language, you child will forget that language. I’m sorry.

Now, if you know the language yourself or someone in your family speaks it, then I think DVDs could be helpful in building up vocabulary and learning language in general. You child will have practice after the end of the DVD course and a lot of interaction. Some DVDs even teach children to read in that language and can be very helpful.

To sum it up, if you or someone in your family knows that language and can interact with the child, DVDs can be great. Otherwise, I wouldn’t spend the money.

Has anyone tried babysschool software?