Teaching children a foreign language

I am a mother of two daughters ages 7 and 1. 

At a very young age, my 7 years old has learned how to speak the English language by watching Youtube.

She even got the intonations correct similar to a native speaker,

Aside from Youtube, I also require her to read English storybooks to train her speaking.

She has also made English vlogs herself without me knowing.

Kids are really smart nowadays. Do you agree?

How about you? What ways do you use to teach your children a foreign language?

I don't have kids but the 2nd time I went to the Philippines I went to a friends house full of kids and several of them had "standard" west-coast American accents. Their parents all had the pleasant Tagalog/hispanic sort of accent, but not the kids. I was surprised.

Another reason could be that there are some private schools also that require children to speak English.

AppleMae.Soriano wrote:

I am a mother of two daughters ages 7 and 1.
At a very young age, my 7 years old has learned how to speak the English language by watching Youtube.
She even got the intonations correct similar to a native speaker,
Aside from Youtube, I also require her to read English storybooks to train her speaking.
She has also made English vlogs herself without me knowing.
Kids are really smart nowadays. Do you agree?
How about you? What ways do you use to teach your children a foreign language?

Yep, that sounds a lot like how kids learn English here in Serbia. A lot of us spent a significant portion of our childhood days watching Cartoon Network in English (Dexter's Laboratory was some good stuff, man), and after a while we just passively started to understand English words and the cartoons made more and more sense. I also played a lot of video games which were all in English and contained a lot of heavy duty vocabulary. It's genuinely really interesting how kids work, I didn't really speak a lot of English at the age of 9, but I was able to understand what was going on in Warcraft 3, which is a game with a complicated story that definitely doesn't shy away from using big words. Kids are really, really smart, in fact, I really think I was smarter as a kid than now haha.

I can only imagine that today it's even easier to find tons and tons of English-language content for children. When I was teaching kids, I loved playing little games with them like hangman or guess-the-animal, but also encouraged their parents to give them some cartoons in English instead of their native language. It's really effective to surround yourself with the language you're learning, and children take in that information even better than adults.

Kosta.Cirkovic wrote:

I also played a lot of video games which were all in English and contained a lot of heavy duty vocabulary. It's genuinely really interesting how kids work, I didn't really speak a lot of English at the age of 9, but I was able to understand what was going on in Warcraft 3, which is a game with a complicated story that definitely doesn't shy away from using big words. Kids are really, really smart, in fact, I really think I was smarter as a kid than now haha.

Hey that's so true! I totally agree with you to surround yourself with the language you are learning. I also played a lot of video games during my childhood. I didn't understand a word that they were saying to the cinematic scenes. But I always play right after school so I guess I was able to apply what I learned in class to understanding what they characters in my game are saying. It's really nice doing it that way. Before I knew it I was able to understand the phrases that the characters are saying and it's the same with the English subtitles that comes along with it. I wouldn't be surprised if kids nowadays would be smarter than us now that they can learn almost anything they want through the internet.

To add to this conversation, I'd like to present you my latest discovery: Pokemon TV, an official place where you can watch Pokemon in 13 different languages for free! As someone who grew up with Pokemon, this is one of the things I dreamed of, a way to learn a language with Ash, Pikachu and the rest of the squad. I'm currently a few episodes into first season and I'm watching it in Danish, it's super fun. And they have all the episodes ever made, it's awesome.

https://watch.pokemon.com/en-us/

Kosta.Cirkovic wrote:

To add to this conversation, I'd like to present you my latest discovery: Pokemon TV, an official place where you can watch Pokemon in 13 different languages for free! As someone who grew up with Pokemon, this is one of the things I dreamed of, a way to learn a language with Ash, Pikachu and the rest of the squad. I'm currently a few episodes into first season and I'm watching it in Danish, it's super fun. And they have all the episodes ever made, it's awesome.
https://watch.pokemon.com/en-us/

I was addicted to Pokemon, too. This is awesome!

I do not have my kids yet, but I agree on your opinions.

Nowadays, kids are surrounded by technologies such as Ipad, computer, Phones, etc.

I see this is the advantage of advanced technology for kids education.

If I remember back in my childhood, the only way I could learn was through my teacher or books. Those choices were so limited. 

However, in these days, there are so many ways to learn other languages for kids. It is also a good opportunity to discover kids potential strengths.

This will be the most effective way to educate kids and develop and improve their knowledge.