How can you teach English to your kids at home?

With the increasing importance of English in the professional and academic world, parents want to teach their kids English from an early age itself. Non-native English speaking parents especially find it hard to teach their kids English from an early age as they do not know what to begin with or how to begin.

Kids are able to learn faster than adults. So it’s best to start as early as possible as learning a language, especially English can take quite some time.

5 best ways to learn English at home

Set a routine

Each day set aside some time to teach English to your kids. In short but frequent sessions do small activities with them. Like you could read them a bedtime story every night and then the next day ask them something about the story.

Repetition is crucial. As kids need to hear/read something several times before they can reproduce it themselves.

Make learning fun

Teaching a lesson from a textbook is an effective way of learning but it’s not fun. Young kids do not have the patience to sit for long listening to a boring lesson. To make learning fun, play games with your kids.

Word Games: Games like scrabble, hangman, are really fun to play and will improve the vocabulary of your kids.

You can also play online games with them based on learning English.

Use Picture Books

Children love pictures. And they’re fast visual learners. Show pictures of animals, alphabets, fruits, vegetables, birds etc. to your kids so they learn to associate particular words with those images.

For example — show them an apple and say “this is an apple” and repeat this a few times at regular intervals. Then ask them “what is this” while showing the apple, and if they respond “this is an apple” consider your job done. You can also test them by asking “where is the apple” and let them point towards it.

Repeat this for other objects as well.

Use Stories

Read short stories to your kids. This will develop their listening and comprehension skills. And once they’re familiar with a few stories, you can ask them to read the stories out loud. This will improve their reading skills.

Sing Rhymes to them

Most popular rhymes/songs are available on the internet, specifically YouTube. You can play these to your kids and make them watch these videos. They’ll try to replicate the actions demonstrated in these videos. And this way they’ll learn new words as well as understand their meaning and usage.

Most non-native English speaking adults are shy when it comes to speaking or learning English. So if you start teaching them at a young age, your kids will not face these issues.

Lastly, remember that every person learns at their own pace. So if your kid takes time, then be patient with her and don’t rush.

We hope these tips helped you!