Good Words to Know for Language Learning
Want Your Child to Learn French or Another Language? Learn These Terms.
Your child is ready to learn French or Spanish or another language, but doing research on language learning can hand you a bunch of unfamiliar terms that look more like a foreign language than what your child is learning!
There are a number of different methods and approaches for learning a second language. Some methods are practiced mainly in the classroom. Some are more often applied to the experiences your child might have while learning French or another language at home.
In both cases, the important thing to remember is that learning French or Chinese or any other language is a tremendous opportunity for you to broaden and brighten your child’s window on the world. Although each method has its proponents, part of the success—and the joy!—of learning a new language lies in the variety of ways it is experienced. And some of these don’t come with specific names or terminology!
But it’s always helpful to know the strategies and the terms the experts use, so here are some of them:
Edutainment: A combination of the words “education” and “entertainment,” “edutainment” refers to a television or DVD program that teaches young children through fun characters, adventurous storylines, silly songs, or bright-colored games—or all four. Edutainment is especially effective for language learning. Children don’t see the learning that takes place as work and often act out their favorite characters and stories—and the language that comes with them.
Immersion: In immersion classrooms children may learn French not just by speaking it and hearing it in “French class,” but also by being taught other subjects like math or history or even PE in French too. In school, immersion classes are composed entirely of students learning French—or any other language—as a second language. Submersion is when the class is mostly native speakers, with only a few students learning it for the first time.
Immersion also occurs outside the classroom, and refers to programs or environments which encourage learners to avoid transitioning back and forth from their first to their second language. Directions, instructions, and all communication are given in the new language. This may seem a bit challenging to those of us who were introduced to second languages another way, but learning through immersion happens quite naturally for children. Rather than always consulting a dictionary, using context and other “clues” to decipher—intuitively—the meaning of words, is critical for mastery of language. And after all, every child learns his or her first language through immersion!
Two-way immersion: A special version of immersion teaching in schools where the class is almost evenly divided between speakers of two different languages. The teacher spends half the time instructing in one language, and half in the other. This is often broken up by subject—students may learn French by learning science in that subject, and English through social studies. This approach encourages students to help one another and learn not just from the teacher, but from their friends.
Transitional bilingual education: A method of bilingual education that focuses more on introducing, in the case of the U.S., non-English speakers to English gradually. This approach educates non-Anglophones in their native language first until they reach fluency and literacy, then brings in English.
FLEX/FLES Education: FLEX is an acronym that stands for Foreign Language Experience; FLES stands for Foreign Language in Elementary Schools. FLEX focuses on introducing the sounds of a new language, the culture of the people who speak it, and some common expressions, emphasizing listening and speaking. FLES adds some focus on reading and writing in addition to an expansion of speaking and listening skills.
Blended learning: An approach to language education that emphasizes the use of both virtual teaching methods (such as DVDs) and physical resources (such as classroom teaching). It encourages the learner to absorb language in different ways, reinforcing through one type of experience what is learned through the other.
Grammar translation method: This method is perhaps the oldest approach to second language instruction. It consists of teaching the rules of grammar in the foreign language and providing the student with vocabulary and sentences to memorize. This method likely was the one many of us experienced in our high school years.
Total physical response method: This method seeks to mimic the process by which an infant learns its first language, but to make that process appealing to school-age children or toddlers. Infants respond to language physically first, and that parents and other adults interact with them by combining physical and verbal commands and comments. Therefore, TPR involves playing games like “Simon says” in the foreign language, or telling a story with lots of motions and questions. Toddlers and young children, it is believed, respond to this whole body approach because it is more natural to them.
Code-switching: Not an educational method or approach, but rather an outgrowth of learning a new language. Code-switching is very common among bilingual communities or among persons learning a new language, especially children. It happens when a person uses phrases or words from one language in the midst of a sentence or phrase from the other language he or she knows. According to experts on bilingualism, this practice does not indicate confusion or ineptitude. Most often it is the result of playfulness!
One parent-one language (OPOL): When raising a child to be bilingual, some parents prefer to emphasize the difference between the two languages by each speaking only one language around the baby. Other parents encourage their children to speak in one language at home, and another in public. However, many experts stress that these sharp divisions are not strictly necessary. As Drs. Kendall King and Alison Mackey of Georgetown say in their book The Bilingual Edge, “children are very sensitive to the unspoken rules about which language should be spoken to whom and when, and naturally sort this out on their own. Children do this without any explicit help from parents or teachers.” One parent-one language is typically practiced by a bilingual household—that is, one in which at least one parent can communicate completely in the desired second language.
Children are enormously adaptive when it comes to language learning in general. There are many ideas and methods that come with learning a second language, but they don’t need to be confusing. The key thing to know is that children find the process—in many of the ways it can be carried out—both fun and exciting.
It is also important to remember that, under any of the above methods or any others, second language learning is a process that happens over time. Success in language learning is most often a result of continued exposure, practice, and multi-sensory engagement. The results, however, are incredible. Some approaches are certainly more effective than others; some may be better adapted to your family or to your child. Combining elements of one approach with others can hold attention and bring endless fascination to learning. And, in the end, of course, language learning can open up the world for your children and make them happier, more successful, and more fulfilled citizens of the world.
Email This Article to a Friend
