Vietnamese mother's secret to teaching her 5-year-old child to speak English extremely well

By using the learning-while-playing method, many mothers have successfully taught their children English at home.

Learn from Ipad, Youtube

Ms. Lieu Thuy Tien, Lecturer of Hotel Management, National Economics University, is known by many parents for her very effective method of teaching English to their children. Her two daughters, 5-year-old Miu and 2-year-old Moon, can both use English to communicate with their mother. In particular, 5-year-old Miu can use English fluently and communicate confidently with adults.

Ms. Tien exposed her child to English from about 1 year old through Ipad and Youtube. At about 2 years old, the child began to communicate a lot with her mother in this second language.

5-year-old Miu can speak English fluently and confidently communicate with adults.

“I don’t teach according to any curriculum. All the inspiration for learning and speaking English for my child comes from the games he plays on the Ipad, or the cartoon channels he often watches on Youtube. He gets used to these things from the age of 1, and then at the age of 2 he starts talking to his mother in English. Miu often plays games on the Ipad such as cooking, washing clothes, taking care of dolls... in English.

In addition, the baby also often watches Youtube, on the Youtube channel of Miu and her younger sister - Moon, her father often adds age-appropriate channels such as Disneychannel, Peppa Pig, Story bots..., listen to songs in English. Every day, the two of them usually watch about 1 hour before going to bed, and on weekends, their parents do not limit it.

Ms. Tien believes that the mistake parents make when teaching their children English is that they place too much importance on correct pronunciation and correct grammar, so they constantly correct and remind their children, causing them to gradually lose confidence and not dare to speak anymore. She is different, she lets her children be comfortable and confident in speaking their own way.

“In fact, speaking is often not necessary like that. You should let your child express himself naturally, later he will learn more and gradually correct himself. Avoid correcting too many mistakes at that time because this will make your child lack confidence and not dare to speak anymore,” she shared.

Learn from games, cartoons

Ms. Quynh Phuong (Hanoi), a mother with a 5-year-old daughter, has also been successful with the method of teaching her child English "learning while playing".

She started teaching her child English when he was 3 years old. Knowing that her child loved watching cartoons, Ms. Phuong pre-installed several cartoon channels such as Disney, Cartoon... for the two of them to watch and learn together. While watching movies, the child often wondered "What is the little bear saying, mom?" or "The princess is crying, what is the princess saying to the prince, mom?"... She would explain so that the child could understand.

When watching movies, Ms. Phuong also encourages her child to repeat short words and sentences many times so that she can imitate the intonation and pronunciation of the characters in the movie. After watching many movies and memorizing many dialogues, Na also imitates reporters on the radio 'interviewing' her mother with questions like "What is", "Who is" or "How are you?"... and asks her mother to answer.

Sometimes, Ms. Phuong intentionally answered wrongly so that the child could detect and correct her mother, so the child liked playing this “interview” game with her mother even more. Thanks to that, now at the age of 5, the child knows how to ask for names, ages, occupations, colors, objects, etc. and is confident in talking to foreigners.

“Up to now, Na has understood many short, simple sentences when the characters in the movie talk to each other and also acts as a ‘translator’ for her mother,” said Ms. Phuong. She can also sing along to the background music in the movie and although she doesn’t understand the meaning or know the lyrics, in this way, her parents have inspired her to love English.

"Learning while playing" will create excitement for children (Illustration photo)

To change the way of learning to be more interesting for her child, Ms. Phuong also plays a game called "Who is faster?" with her child to increase her child's vocabulary. Playing this game, mother and child compete to see who can "pick up" "familiar words" and put them in their basket the fastest.

Ms. Phuong prepares 10-15 small pieces of cardboard with 10-15 vocabulary words written on topics such as family, numbers, animals, etc.

Every day, choose a few topics and mix them up so that the mother and child can compete to see who can quickly pick up more pieces of cardboard with the correct vocabulary as required, and that will be the winner. In addition, the child also loves playing the "Treasure Hunt" game because after the child guesses the correct meaning of the vocabulary according to the hints, the child will quickly find the treasure and receive a reward from the mother.

To help her child recognize and memorize the letters in simple vocabulary, Ms. Phuong made a set of 24 English letters, each letter written on a small piece of cardboard for her child to play the game "Matching letters with baby".

For example, when I asked my child which letter was missing from the word "Ba…y" (Baby), Na quickly found the missing letter "b" and put it in to complete the word "Baby". Or, when I asked my child to put together words like dad or mum, she quickly found enough letters to put together the word.

Ms. Phuong said that for children who cannot read yet, letting them play this game will help them memorize many vocabulary words and can be useful for their English writing skills later on.

According to VietnamNet