I’m new here. I have one year old son and I’ve bought hime LR and LM a few days ago because I find it very very interesting. But I’m a little bit skeptical about teaching him English as foreign language first. Our mother tongue is not English and we don’t speak English at home. What kind of experience do you have with teaching your children to read in English before in mother tongue? Actually I would like to make my own curriculum in my language on the basis of LR courses programme but I don’t know how. I’ve tried to export and import courses content but I can’t create my own curriculum and save the original version at the same time. I if don’t want to lose courses in English I can just create categories in my language. But this is not the same…Does anybody have any suggestion to help me? Thx b
Hi and welcome,
I’m new here myself and have tryed to translate the curriculum to my native language and encountered the same issue.
One option was to install the software on another laptop and use 2 laptops, one for english one for romanian (havent done it yet). Other option is to translate the curriculum in your language and teach your child your language first and once done just redownload/install the english version back.
As for which language to go for first I’m not sure if there’s any problem with starting to read in enghlish as a baby naturaly makes the distinction.
Good luck!
Dalis
From our personal experience, you can teach/communicate with baby on a few different languages from very beginning with no problem. Baby’s brains are simply amazing! Our LOs understand 4 and speak/read 3 languages, and they do not mix them either. So I think the earlier the better!
The most important step that you need to keep in mind (if you want to start by editing the English content) is to use the SAVE AS button in the Edit Word window. This ensures that you’ll save your translated word as a separate “word file” so the original English word does not get replaced even if you do your translations in the same computer where you have your English curriculum!
You can try it out first before you start translating all your lessons:
Pick any English word (from Advanced Play/Edit > Categories) and click on the EDIT button (below the word list)
In the Edit Word window, replace the word with your translation, add in your recordings and other media (or do this later)
Click SAVE AS, then in the small window that appears enter a “file name” for your new word
When you’re done, click OK – Little Reader will then save your edits as a “copy” of the original English word
Close the Edit Word window (if you are asked if you want to save your changes, just choose NO)
Notice that the translated word you’ve just saved was added at the end of the category’s word list. The next step is to select your translated word, and drag-and-drop this word into the new Category that you’ve created (where you have your translations).
In case you accidentally translated many words already and the English ones got replaced, you can remedy this by re-importing your English content. For some advanced help on this, you may refer to this article:
If you have further questions about working on translations or if you need help, please visit our Support Helpdesk (http://support.brillkids.com/home) and you’ll find more articles there that may answer your question. If you can’t find the article you need you can simply send us a message using our helpdesk form and we’ll help you out! :happy:
Thank all of you! Kezia, I will try to do it soon I will have time although we have already started with english curriculum:)Can’t tell how satisfied I am! And my son too!:) Skylark, I would like to ask you how old your child is and when did you start to teach him foreign languages. Do you speak at home all this languages? And have you used LR for all of them?
Our oldest girl is 2.5, our boy is 1.5, at home we speak 2 languages – English and some Russian ( I wish we would speak a bit more), we used LR for Mandarin Chinese and English and some (few) Russian lessons. Spanish is spoken outside of our house a lot, and when we are in Europe, they hear a lot of Russian.
LR was/is DEFINITELY a huge help. We also supplement with other programs and activities, but by all means LR is a backbone of our language curriculum and they love it!
Hey Kezia, I have tried what you suggested and it works! But if I want to translate the whole curriculum it really takes a lot of time! For this reason I am not sure about doing this:( Meybe it is better to start with English:) Is there really no alternative to do this a little bit faster with export/import function for example? Unfortunately in BK Library there is no files in my language too:(
Skylark, this is amazing! Congratulation! One more question: Are you speaking just one language (the tought one) during each lesson or you mix them? Thx,
With English and Russian – speaking one language; with Mandarin – I do not speak enough myself, so I am letting the program teach and saying a few words I know. In other words, trying to not mix them, as much as I can, but of course I do sometime :wub:
Hey, our mother tongue is Slovenian, so I wanted to teach it first. But we’ve started with English. I translate him words but I am not sure if this is a good method. Do you teach them all languages parallel? How does it look like? One day English and then Russian, German etc.?
If you teach English with Little Reader – just do that, do not translate words for him. He will easily figure out what the word means ( since there are pictures and videos and sentences), and he will be able to learn it natively or by immersion. It works the best with little kids anyways ( not so confusing as with translation), and makes it easier for you.
We do not have any strict routine, when I speak one language, they answer on that language, when we switch and speak another one, they do so too. We make it fun and natural to speak different languages, definitely not a chore, and I find my little girl going around the house asking “Mommy how do you call this” ( in Russian) when she wants to know it in Russian, and then asking daddy the same in Chinese ( I do not speak Chinese )
There are different parents that did/doing it in different ways – some use different areas of the house to speak in different languages, different days, different parts of the day, different members of the family, different puppets/toys Do the search on the forum, and you can find quite a few discussions on that.
I would suggest different approaches and see what would work the best.
He will do great!
Yes, unfortunately it will really take a lot of time to translate the entire curriculum mainly because you will need to make your own recordings too (or you may end up replacing/adding different words for proper localization). Perhaps you can try translating in batches, where you’ll only work on the few categories that your son is currently learning from his LR English curriculum, and then work on another batch later on, etc. This way you don’t have to feel pressured about translating everything in one go, and you can start teaching your son Slovenian too!
Hi all,
I’m a newbie and I’m thinking about buying the LR programme. I am hoping to teach my daughter Irish along with English so I’m really interested in customising lessons. It’s great to know that others have done this successfully, even if it takes some time.
One question…
We want to teach German and English at the same time. So if I understood the thread properly, the best way is to keep one computer for German, edit all the content by translating the words and recording the audio files. This will take a long time, but it seems the only way to allow the curriculum to be played in the Little Reader system, not by going into categories section and matching the categories with that of the daily curriculum, but simply, as in LR, click on the day and press play.
So the question, if I have gone and done all this work making a German version of LR is there a way to save it and share it with the world? So I could keep it, download it on another computer at another time, switch back and forth between English or German on the same computer with the same version of LR if I wanted?
I wish they would just do the work and make it available for many languages. I am sure people would buy it.
)
Do the search on the forum, and you can find quite a few discussions on that.