Our guest post this week is written by Franck Koestel, a Dad-With-App who created Princesses Learn Chinese with his wife Cristina Santamaria to assist his family’s goal to learn Mandarin. As you will see when you read, the app is just the icing on the cake. The experience this family is living to encourage a multilingual environment is fascinating. Franck, if there is space at your dinner table, count me in for a 10 minute visit – I need the practice!
We are a family that loves languages. My wife is from Spain, I am from France, and we met in the United States. Elena and Pablo, our children, are 6 and 3 years old. My wife speaks to them exclusively in Spanish, I use only French, and they learn English at school. We believe that teaching our children more than one language will have a positive impact on their future. It will help develop their overall communication skills and make it easier to build relationships with people from different cultures.
The whole learning journey is also a lot of fun. Having children that soak things up, make mistakes, struggle and eventually improve is a lot of what parenting is about. As parents we feel proud to see our children progress.
However, we are also very much constrained with time. We live busy lives. We often wish we could spend more time with our kids. Isn’t learning a new language time consuming? Doesn’t it require a lot of effort? How can I do that as a parent when I am tired in the evening?
This is why we believe that it all starts with 10 minutes. Having our children learn a new language starts with a commitment: making 10 minutes count! We can take advantage of what we do every day to make it a language learning opportunity. Some days we only have 10 minutes. Some other days we might be able to squeeze in 2 or 3 different 10-minute activities together. These 10 minutes will add up. Making 10 minutes count is all it takes to have fun together and inspire our kids to learn a new language.
My market share of French in our family is limited. Both of us work full-time. I therefore use a “guerilla language learning” technique with Pablo and Elena. Talking and listening to French whenever I am around the children. A few examples:
- Singing French songs whenever I gave the bottle
- Reading a 10-minute story while gulping down Cheerios with bananas at breakfast on days off
- Doing play-by-plays in French when we play soccer together on the lawn (“And I pass you the ball. Kick it!)
- Listening to a 10-minute story or a couple of songs in French on CD while driving in the car
- Using the iPad for 10-minutes at a time to have them listen to a story in French while I am paying the bills.
At the beginning of the year we started to learn Chinese as a family. We had an idea: let’s build an app to make it fun for our kids to reinforce their first Chinese words and expressions. At the same time, it will help us learn hands-on about technology. That is how we created “Princesses Learn Chinese”, a free iPad and iPhone app with one complimentary book, and more titles available via In App Purchase.
We believe that an app will not replace a teacher or parents when it comes to language learning. But we believe that an app can inspire and motivate kids and parents on the exciting journey of language learning.
Very true we do too speak to our kids in 2 different languages and it works to be consistent. Its amazing how little kids absorb and learn what may seem difficult for an adult.
There are two things I really like about this: the emphasis on consistency and the emphasis on intimacy. Consistency seems to be the real trick to any new skill or habit, especially to language learning. And intimacy seems to be the real payoff to learning a new language: you become more intimate with the speakers of that language but, as this post shows, the actual process of learning a language with friends and family can be wonderfully intimate.