This week I have started giving French lessons to my seven-year-old daughter and this is what I'd like to share with you today in this post.
In fact, that is not the first time I am teaching her because the French lessons started at birth with baby songs in French she listened to relentlessly. Then, she listened to other French songs while growing up, watched French cartoons and played with apps in French on the iPad.
All photos are mine and taken with my Samsung phone.
Teaching my Daughter French!
I also used the one parent, one language approach at home, speaking to her only in French. The result is a trilingual child who is learning three languages at the same time.
The other two languages are Thai, which she learns from her mother and English, which she learns from school and multimedia.
You may be interested to read the post where I talk about this: Raising a Trilingual Child
Then, last year she started French lessons every Saturday morning and for two hours at the "Alliance Française" in Bangkok and I have this post about it: A Morning at the Alliance Française in Bangkok.
I tried repeatedly to seat with her at home with a book, but she was not interested to learn that way. She learned words and sentences with me just by talking, but this is not enough, reading and writing has to come into the picture.
Teaching your kids is a very difficult thing because of the parent-child relationship, and I admire people who can homeschool their kids.
That is why we enrolled her at the "Alliance Française" last year and this has helped her progress and be motivated to learn more.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a book at the "Alliance Française" in Bangkok planning to try again because she has just started Grade 1 at school and this is a good time to get serious with it.
I thought that if I can go through with this book, then I will order the books they use in French classes from Grade 1 to Grade 6, and do the French class myself at home, in addition to the "Alliance Française" because there is no way to skip that.
So this week we started the French lesson, which will be every day at 7:00 p.m. for 10 or 20 minutes. This is how I am creating the habit, a regular time and short duration, because it has to be fun for both of us, otherwise, this won't last long.
This time, she has agreed that we seat together and learn with the book. The motivation is that being in Grade 1 she feels like she is not little anymore and that it is time to learn seriously as she is doing with English, Thai, Maths and Music.
There is also a special motivation because in October we are going to spend a 3-week vacation in France, which will be memorable with something we haven't done before. I will talk about it in a Steemit post soon.
The book we are using is "Mon premier dictionnaire en images," which is a French dictionary of 1,000 words with pictures.
Here we go, reading and writing 10 or 20 minutes a day every day. We will see how it is going, it takes 20 days to create a new habit, so in a month, this should be routine.
Thank you very much for reading this post, I hope you have enjoyed it and maybe you can tell me in the comment how you are doing when you want to teach your kids.
All photos are mine and taken with my Samsung phone.
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Michel Gerard
knowing multiple languages has several mental benefits other than knowing our native language
I totally agree with this because I am trilingual myself. Thank you for commenting @imran-aslam.
Thanks so much , I am struggling with my 5 years old son, he is not interested in learning french at all, so I am trying to find video games in french for him, as that's what he loves , especially car games!
I'll check out Mon Premier Dictionnaire En Image!
Merci Michel!
My daughter started to get interested in her first class at the "Alliance Française" because then she realized that the language was spoken not only by cartoon characters and myself, but others too. 5 is still young, the interest will come.
Very interesting post!
I have a small gift for you- your portrait:)
Great Michel i am absolutely agree that teaching is very difficult because parent child relationship.However it is a great task for you.
Thank you @tanveerali for your kind comment.
This is so impressive, @gmichelbkk. I bet your daughter will grow in leaps and bounds when you go over there this summer. Once she in immersed in the language, her smaller knowledge of it will explode.
I agree with your short time frame. She will learn a lot and not dread the time. She is so lucky to have to doing this for her.
I had the odd experience of going to Spain when I was 19 and becoming somewhat fluent in Spanish right away. I was in a place with zero English spoken and I had only had one year of High School Spanish. Somehow, all of it came back and then some. I'm not so blessed here in Thailand and still have almost no skills after two years.
I am here to ask for your vote in another Qurator contest.
Only my son @bxlphabet is entered into this one. I’m asking you if you can please go to this comment I'm linking and upvote his San Diego photo on the post.
https://steemit.com/qurator/@bxlphabet/re-qurator-qurator-s-toss-up-thursday-8-free-for-all-promotion-competition-or-rules-changed-please-read-20180608t092142902z
This is the Toss Up Thursday contest which happens every two weeks. I was lucky enough to win last time (thank you), so I am not entered. There are two winners and they get a Qurator Tier 5 upvote for 30 days if they win.
Your vote does not need to be large – it can be 1%. They only count the number of votes that come from qurator members and the value is not important. It just counts if you are a member of qurator.
If you end up looking at all the post comments, you will see others with a lot of votes. But they are faking us out by getting non-qurators to vote on them so we will give up early :) There is a lot of strategy in these contests I have come to find out.
Thank you so much for helping if you can. Every little bit helps these days and this is a big vote in the scheme of things. Take care,
Sharon
Thank you for your long comment @fitinfun. I have upvoted the picture.
lol - I am verbose! Thank you so much, @gmichelbkk.
Je ne comprend pas.
That's one of the things I remember. Not really much. I really love the trilangual part. If I have time I will read that post a bit later.
Thank you @crypto-econom1st for commenting. French is a beautiful language, but difficult.
Cool, how did you end up living in France?
I ended up leaving France!
Oh must be tough if you're English. I'm in Montreal so it's half and half.
I'm French.
This post has received a 21.26 % upvote from @boomerang.
This post has received a 4.27 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @gmichelbkk.
Thank you very much @mahadihasanzim.
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