How to speak english for child

How to Teach a Child to Speak English at Home: Ideas from Experienced Tutors

Teach your child to speak English, and you’ll open up a world of opportunities for their future. It’s well-documented that English speakers often earn more, have access to the world’s top universities and enjoy greater opportunities for travel. Who wouldn’t want that for their child?    

If you’re determined to help your child learn English, you’re probably considering getting some expert guidance, whether that’s through an online English course, or finding a tutor who specializes in teaching kids.

But as a parent, you’re probably also wondering “What can I do at home to support my child’s English education myself?” We asked Preply English tutors who specialize in teaching kids that very question, and this is what they said. 

1. Sing songs with them   

A number of tutors mentioned that music is a great way to capture a child’s attention, and help them remember new words without stress.  

Nyuyki “For me, the best way is through singing and watching interactive videos. This has been tested and so far came out positive. Most children love songs and can easily retain things through music!” 

2. Use English in daily life

If you are comfortable speaking English yourself, use it in daily life alongside your mother tongue. Early exposure to more than one language at home has dozens of perks for your child. To name just one, studies show it’ll make pronunciation easier for them in the long term.

Interactive classes for kids

Learning with a tutor is more fun. Give your kids English lessons they’ll love!

Meet Preply tutors

Magdalini “Make the learning process as natural as possible. Don’t treat English as a foreign language but include it in daily activities, games and songs as you do with the child’s first language. While coloring, name the colors in English, while dancing, repeat the names of the moves in English, and so on.”

3. Set a regular learning routine  

It’s well-known that kids love routine: it inspires a sense of security and helps them to develop self-discipline. It’s also really helpful for learning a second language! 

Mirela Z.“If you are teaching your children English at home, I would advise you to have a routine for your children! Set up a schedule that is consistent every week; schedule days and times in which your children will be studying English. Have them choose the topics or themes to study, to keep them interested. Give them fun projects to do; like drawing the solar system, the USA map, holiday pictures, etc., and record them doing a presentation about the project. They will feel important!” 

4. Play with your child in English 

Several of our tutors suggested you should encourage your child to use English whilst playing. After all, studying a language won’t feel like studying if they’re having fun! 

Rajesh “To help your child get ahead with English learning, get them to play in the language. At home, try playing dress-up games, hide-and-seek, Simon Says, charades and other popular games, whilst speaking in English. In other words, get them to learn the language in the same way they learned their first one!” 

5. Ask them to act out something they see on TV 

On the subject of play, one idea for a creative game is to have your child role-play an English-language commercial that you find on YouTube or the TV. 

Miriela “Have them watch a commercial, and ask them to repeat it, as if they were acting in the commercial. This will help with their communication skills, and if they are shy, it will help them overcome their fear of making a mistake.”

6. Read comics together 

If your child is slightly older, English-language comic books can be a great step towards reading English independently. Not sure where to start? Marvel comics are a classic starting point for those learning US English, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid is great for teaching contemporary British English. 

Jamie “I think comic strips are a great way to motivate a child to learn English, depending on their age and ability. If they read a comic featuring their favorite superhero, for example, they will feel excited to learn. Also, the pictures really help them to understand the language as they provide great context.”

7. Praise them! 

Children thrive on encouragement and their parents’ encouragement above all! If your kid is trying their best to learn English, let them know that their effort makes you proud.    

Leonah “Praise your child to create a sense of success, and encourage them especially when they keep going with difficult tasks. Create a reward system for when they work hard! It doesn’t have to cost anything – extra free time, more visits to friends or activities of their choice. Don’t criticize them too often or correct every mistake, it’s okay and very normal to make mistakes when learning a language. In short, PRAISE, PRAISE, PRAISE!!” 

8. Ask them open-ended questions in English

If your child is younger than ten, they’re probably always asking you “Why?” Now, it’s your turn to do this to them! 

Nickoi “My strategy in the classroom is to ask open-ended questions that allow my students to speak and express themselves as much as possible. Parents can do the same, engage their children in conversation which allows them to use the language as much as possible.”

9. Have a tea party in English 

If your children are very young, a teddy bears’ tea party in English is a very cute idea that they’ll enjoy!  

Clare “The best way for parents to help young children learn English at home is to incorporate learning with play. With very young children, why not try to have a tea party in English? The child can invite their soft toys and the parent can come along, perhaps with younger siblings who won’t mind what language is being spoken, as long as they get to join in with pretend tea and cake!” 

10.

Creative writing in English is a fun activity for little people with big imaginations. 

Clare “With older children, try writing a story together. As a tutor, I like to create stories with my young students about a toy they have brought to the lesson. The child is then involved in directing their learning from the start. Once the story is built up, we take turns reading it aloud. When the child reads the story back, they recognise the vocabulary, as these are the words they have just spoken. Other keywords can also be added to make the story flow or to introduce new vocabulary. I use the story later on as a base for exercises or homework.”

11. Use puppets

Two of our tutors mentioned that puppets are a fun way to help younger children overcome their fear of speaking in English. 

Sally “I love playing games with my students using my puppet, Ziggy. Sometimes he hides part of a flashcard, other times he acts out actions for them to guess. When I ask a question and can see the student is unsure of how to answer, I ask Ziggy so they can hear his answer. It gives them the confidence to try the next one! We can correct Ziggy’s mistakes too —  it stops them from being afraid of making mistakes which is so important and we can laugh together.” 

Catherine Anne B “I am currently teaching English to Arabic children and I use puppets as my main tool in teaching English. I found the children loved the puppets and even put on puppet shows, demonstrating what they had learned.” 

12. Talk to your child’s tutor

If your child has an online English tutor, it can be tempting to leave them alone during lesson time. Especially if your child is a little shy and you don’t want to distract them! 

However, several tutors mentioned that children make much faster progress when parents check in with their tutors. It can help them stay up-to-date with what their child is learning, and practice it between lessons.  

Yolandi “My young online students who show the fastest improvement are the ones whose parents are actively involved in their learning and development. The parents who ask me to make videos of their children’s classes, to re-watch together afterward show rapid improvement. Children and teenagers who get little to no support from their parents during their language course show slower improvement.” 

She was keen to stress that there is a lot that parents can do to help their children learn, even if they’re not fluent in English themselves.

“Parents who don’t speak English, but want to support their children/teenagers in their English studies, can attend my classes together with their children (at no extra charge) so they can learn too. This will empower them to help their children with homework, or to complete worksheets at home, since they have also followed the lessons, and learned the same things that their child did. ” 

She went on to deliver one final message which all parents will agree on.

“Love, showing interest, and giving support in the process of learning, are three of the most important contributions that parents could ever make towards their children’s development.” 

The golden rule from our tutors? Make it fun! 

We spoke to more than 30 tutors, and at least half of them pointed out that the most important advice for teaching a child English is to make it a process they enjoy. Don’t push them too hard to work on grammar exercises, and focus on playful activities and speaking skills. After all, they are still young enough to learn a language simply by being around it often, and it’s important to let kids be kids. 

Give your child happy memories of learning English, and they’ll grow up with positive feelings towards the language. This will make them more likely to stick with it, and develop their skills to fluency! It’ll also be a much nicer experience for you and them.  

Jackie “My biggest piece of advice is to make English fun! A child’s creativity and excitement will help him or her succeed. Practice spelling using games. Read interesting stories. Make a yummy recipe together in English! It isn’t just about the results; it’s also about the journey along the way. The more hands-on and interactive the learning becomes, the more the child will retain the information down the line.” 

Hopefully, these tips gave you some inspiration for creative ways to teach your child english at home. If you’d like some more guidance, a few English lessons with an online tutor who specializes in teaching kids can be a source of inspiration for bringing English into your home. Private tutoring doesn’t have to be expensive either, with prices starting from just $5 per hour (and half-hour lessons available for little people with short attention spans!). 

If you’re reading this, you’re planning to do a very responsible thing for your child’s future. Being able to speak English is a remarkable gift, and will set them up for success later in life. It’s also much easier to learn a new language as a child than as an adult! If you start them young, by the time they need their language skills, they will have a high level of fluency, and speaking English will feel effortless. 

How to Speak English with Kids at Home: 6 Fun Ideas for Daily Learning

By kitlum Last updated: July 25, 2022

If you speak English, you’re able to communicate with 1.35 billion people–or around 20% of the people on Earth!

Why not give the kids in your life such amazing communication opportunities?

There’s a world of fun online English resources just for kids, plus plenty of simple language learning techniques for the whole family.

Here are six of our favorites!

Contents

• 6 Practical Ideas for Family Language Learning
• • 1. Make Learning Fun with Online English Tools
  • • PBS Kids: Vocabulary Games
    • FluentU
    • LearnEnglish Kids
    • ESL Games Plus
  • 2. Establish a Family English Routine
  • 3. Pick English Topics That Interest Your Kid
  • 4. Use Props, Gestures and Facial Expressions
  • 5. Don’t Obsess over Grammar
  • 6. Look for English Opportunities During the Day

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

6 Practical Ideas for Family Language Learning

1. Make Learning Fun with Online English Tools

The best way to start is to make English learning such fun that kids won’t even realize you’re trying to teach them a new language. The online English language tools below will grab their attention with fun animations, songs and stories.

PBS Kids: Vocabulary Games

PBS Kids has some of the most creative online resources for teaching kids through games, songs and videos that make learning fun. The site is designed for native English speaking kids, but the vocabulary section is perfect for teaching words to English learners.

There are matching games, interactive stories, word puzzles and lots more. Many of them use characters your kids might already recognize from internationally-known kids’ shows like “Sesame Street.” With such fun games and activities, it’s easy to keep kids motivated and learning.

FluentU

FluentU is a program that immerses learners in the English language. It has entertaining short video clips like movie trailers, cartoon clips, funny commercials, vlogs, music videos and more.

The program makes all these videos easy to learn with thanks to interactive subtitles. Hovering a mouse over a word shows an instant definition and clicking on it opens a flashcard with more information. You can read example sentences or watch clips from videos where the word is used. You can also add words to vocabulary flashcard lists and study them with personalized quizzes.

On the iOS and Android apps, kids can practice speaking English out loud through questions that let you speak their answers into the phone.

FluentU lets learners practice all areas of language learning in an engaging way. It uses video, audio, text, images, interactive exercises and more to keep you and your family learning.

There’s plenty of content that’s sure to be appealing to kids and teens alike. Be aware that the videos aren’t filtered for kids, so I recommend hand-picking videos, or watching them first—which will also give you a learning boost, while you’re at it.

LearnEnglish Kids

The British Council offers this site specifically for English-learning kids. It covers all the essential language skills like listening, reading, writing, grammar and vocabulary. You and your family will have fun exploring the site—you can skip right to the Fun and Games if you want!

Plus, there are lots of printable materials you can use for English practice either in the home or when traveling with the family.

ESL Games Plus

ESL Games Plus offers more challenging interactive online videos and activities for older kids and teenagers. There are lots of interesting games for learning vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. If your kids love playing on a smartphone or tablet, there are even mobile games that’ll turn digital time into English time.

Kids might especially enjoy the “sentence monkey” games for practicing grammar and sentence construction.

2. Establish a Family English Routine

Make English learning a routine in your family. Pick a time of the day when your kids are most alert and easy to work with, not when they’re sleepy or hungry. Give it a name like “English Time” that they’ll recognize and look forward to every day.

This will be the daily time that you spend with English activities, lessons or speaking together in English.

Younger children usually have shorter attention spans, so start them off with maybe 10 to 15 minutes per session. Extend the time as they grow older and are able to hold their attention better.

While it’s important to stick to your routine as much as possible, it’s okay to be flexible, too.  Quite often, your child’s mood and energy level may affect their motivation to learn. Children aren’t attentive when they’re very tired, distracted or unwell. So use your child’s mood and energy levels as a guide—some days, you may want to move “English Time” later or even take a break for a day.

3. Pick English Topics That Interest Your Kid

To get a child excited about speaking English, teach through topics that they’re already interested in. Begin by noticing your child’s interests so you’ll know which games, songs or activities will motivate them to learn.

For example, if your child loves dogs, you could read “The Hundred and One Dalmatians” to them before bedtime or watch the animated version of it together on a Saturday morning. Then during “English Time,” you can teach vocabulary such as bark, puppy and paws, and have your child use the dog-related words in a sentence.

Since you’re focusing on a topic that your child cares about, it’ll be a lot harder for them to get bored!

4.

Use props, gestures and facial expressions to capture your child’s attention and get them interested in the words you’re teaching.

Props are objects a child can see and touch. If you say the word spoon while handing your child a spoon from your kitchen, they’ll form an immediate connection between the word and the object. Younger children enjoy holding and touching things and imitating (copying) your movements.

Gestures (like waving or blowing a kiss) and facial expressions (like winking or making a funny face) are actions and movements that add an element of fun. If you wave your hand and blow a kiss while saying “goodbye” in English, you’ll hold your child’s attention and make the vocabulary itself more memorable.

5. Don’t Obsess over Grammar

If you hear your young child using incorrect grammar as children often do, what should you do? Should you correct them every time?

I say you should let small mistakes go and allow them to speak and express themselves freely instead.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t correct them. You can and you should, sometimes. But don’t focus too much on pointing out their mistakes. Correcting them too often may cause them to lose interest in learning and discourage them from speaking English.

Instead, be patient with them, even if they forget what you’ve taught them or keep making the same mistakes. Children often learn through repetition. If you repeat a word or grammar structure often enough, chances are they’ll naturally learn it the right way.

6. Look for English Opportunities During the Day

Be on the lookout for opportunities to point out new vocabulary to your child as you go about your daily life. For instance, if you often take your child on nature walks, you could bring their attention to interesting words for birds, insects, animals and trees that you see along the way.

You could draw your child’s interest by pointing out something exciting. “Come look, there’s a butterfly climbing on a leaf! Isn’t it beautiful?” This may lead your child to ask questions like “What is a butterfly?” giving you the perfect opportunity to introduce and discuss more new vocabulary like insect, bug, wings, etc.

This type of regular, everyday learning makes English seem more relevant to kids’ lives. It also helps them practice English and learn new words in a relaxed, fun environment.

Plus, if you’re studying English yourself, the benefits will extend to your own vocabulary knowledge!

With these practical ideas, you’re all set to get started on your role as your child’s first and most trusted English teacher. Keep up the English practice with your kids and watch them become more fluent and confident each day. And don’t forget to have fun while you’re at it! Good luck!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

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Very often, when communicating with parents, we can hear complaints that the child cannot squeeze out words in English. For example, in a lesson at school, a child studied a new text, and at home the mother asked the child to tell about the content of the text in his own words, but the child could not retell it. Parents are surprised that the child knows a lot of words, but cannot communicate in English. Speaking is a complex and complex skill, the development of which will require a lot of effort from both the child and the teacher.

The practice of speaking is the most revealing and productive aspect in learning a foreign language. It is very important from the very beginning of learning and getting to know the language to start practicing the conversational part and present this activity as a means of communication and information exchange. A communicative technique is based on this idea, which is best used with teachers who are native speakers, since by learning from them, you can best understand the structure of the language, acquire the correct pronunciation, accent and intonation.

Speaking consists of three parts: first there is an impulse to talk, then there is a formulation. It all ends with a statement as a result. This process is very individual, as it passes through the prism of our emotions, experience, knowledge, mood. Learning to speak is possible only through communication. The support for the development of the conversational part can be any texts for reading, listening, photographs, tables, diagrams, keywords, and so on.

Speech is always situational. Teaching speaking is necessary with the help of the situation. Before choosing the topic of a situation and starting to talk about it and in it, we carefully prepare the student. We choose and study vocabulary on this topic, read texts, study grammatical constructions that are necessary to explain this situation. For example, the topic is going to the doctor. Each child roughly imagines how this happens, so you need to read the text about doctors, familiarize the child with new vocabulary.

Any speech can be monologue and dialogic. When interacting with the interlocutor, we generate a dialogue, with continuous speech - a monologue. It is better to start with dialogical speech. You need to start teaching dialogue in such a way that the child does not realize this. Involve a little exchange in your work. The essence of the micro-dialogue is simple: the first participant gives a cue, the second one reacts to it. Start with the simplest ones, like "Do you like this book?" - Yes, I like it. The conversation took place. In the future, our goal is to push the child to more spontaneous and unplanned communication.

At the heart of any dialogue are speech stamps: greetings, farewells, politeness, and so on. Even the most banal dialogue should not be just muttering under your breath. The child can play the main role, he, as an actor, takes the place of the interlocutor. After you have finished the dialogue, switch roles.

Monologue speech is continuous, independent and consists of approximately 5-7 phrases. Work on monologue speech should also begin with the stage of speech exercises. In order for the child to want to speak out, it is necessary to set him an actual speech task. Examples of tasks: advise where to go for the weekend, explain how we can get to the subway, school, recommend a funny fairy tale, advise a cake in a cafe.

As always, let's not forget that the subject of communication should be relevant for the child. Many parents claim that the child is not interested in anything other than computer games. But with constant attempts and searches, an object of interest will be found. The child just needs to get used to the fact that you share with him and wait for his opinion, and over time, conversations will really liven up.

Teaching speaking requires a lot of patience on the part of the teacher. After all, it is with this skill that the concept of a language barrier is associated. This barrier occurs when it becomes difficult for a child to express his thoughts for fear of making a mistake and sounding stupid. Therefore, it is very important to be patient and be gentle in correcting mistakes.

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