Don't be too happy when you see your 2 year old speaking English.

"Seeing that our 2-year-old grandchild could already say the letters in English, and when he saw an apple, he said apple, the whole family was delighted and thought our child had a talent for English. But unfortunately, that is not the truth," expert Anh Duc shared.

In the era of technology explosion, children are accidentally exposed to modern devices that parents at their age do not have the opportunity to know. The most popular and also the most attractive to children are cartoons and songs on Youtube which are made very lively and attractive to children. Popular songs about the English alphabet, songs about matching object names with the alphabet, and even songs about numbers... have completely attracted the attention of children, making them absorbed and say what they hear and see.

In fact, 2-year-old children have no concept of characters or letters, and even less of how the sounds associated with those letters are pronounced. They simply “capture” both the images and sounds of what is happening vividly before their eyes. If you pay attention, you will see that children will watch dozens, even hundreds of times a few clips of movies that they like.

The high frequency repetition of some letters, songs and images of objects makes the child "know" the images and sounds of those letters and objects, so when seeing familiar letters, balls or apples appearing in reality, the child will naturally say what they know. And this behavior happens to most children whose parents let them watch a lot of English songs on Youtube, it is not a strange phenomenon or a special talent. Any normal child who watches many movies and repeats them many times tends to repeat the sounds of the objects they often see when they encounter them in reality.

Dr. Ben Williams, an expert in early childhood education, is guiding children in their learning.

There will be many questions from parents, and the first question is whether it is helpful for children to see and repeat English words like that?

The answer is yes, but not much. On the positive side, it makes the child realize that those objects or concepts have different languages ​​to express. It creates a multilingual awareness for the child from an early age. And it also helps children have a standard native English sound perception from an early age, so later on, learning English will be much easier. Seeing pictures and hearing the sounds of the names of objects, letters, and numbers is quite similar to the process of learning the mother tongue. That is the process of direct language learning. It is just a pity that it is similar.

Parents should note that this “learning a foreign language” process is not responsive. That is, children only absorb language in one direction and there is no real communication process. Therefore, when the child grows up, parents and grandparents will be disappointed to see that the child’s English ability is still at a standstill when the child only talks about those letters and names of objects.

The next question is how to help children develop these positive qualities and develop English in a real way?

According to statistics from Colin Rose, an influential educator in the world, if children know 3,000 words, they will understand 90% of common daily English communication, and 65% of books written for children will repeat the 400 most commonly used words.

But the problem here is that all vocabulary is embedded in the state of phrases and in context, not existing alone, alone. It is the state of phrases and the context of communication that is the core key to the process of training English for children. But children do not learn by writing, they learn by hearing, seeing and experiencing themselves directly. Even when children know how to write, learning by sound, image, movement and experience is always more effective than learning by writing and going into the details of grammar.

It should be added that English grammar is ultimately a habit of a series of sounds repeated in a certain order to create sentences, not a pure connection of written words. Another very interesting physiological characteristic that affects children's learning behavior is that children tend to learn with the right brain, which processes information about melody, rhythm, wholeness, color, and imagination... rather than with the left brain, which processes logic, sequence, numbers... as much as adults do.

Therefore, one thing parents should do to help their children truly develop their English skills is to train them to listen to and watch comics in English with the correct native accent. Every night, before children go to bed, parents should play short stories in English for their children at a language level appropriate to their ability to receive, and at the same time let them hold and watch the story in pictures. The parents' task is to simply turn each page of the book corresponding to the audio being told, and repeat that for many days. Sleep and the subconscious will do the rest for children, which is to help them absorb English in a story state with correct phrases and sentences, along with writing for each sentence naturally.

In addition, if parents want to send their children to English centers to study, we also need to note that the younger the child, the better they tend to learn the language directly, that is, learn English in English rather than through Vietnamese. Therefore, sending children to training programs taught by native English-speaking teachers with good pedagogical qualifications is a good thing to do.

For children under 10 years old, learning English with Vietnamese teachers is not really beneficial, because children will learn non-native expressions as well as unnatural pronunciation from Vietnamese teachers. English learning programs with native teachers that are rich in experience, movement and interaction will help children learn English directly instead of thinking indirectly through Vietnamese. This process absolutely does not cause children to confuse English and Vietnamese with each other, because these are two processes of encoding language in both English and Vietnamese in parallel and independently of each other.

According to VNE