Hello,
As many of you here, I love learning languages! I currently speak Spanish well and Italian alright, and I am trying to learn German at the moment. These are all relatively easy for native English-speakers to learn. Although I am still able to learn languages from different language families (i.e. non-Germanic and Romance languages), I know that it would be a lot more difficult for me to learn them as an adult.
Thinking back on my childhood, I wish my parents had put me in some sort of environment / program where I would have learned a language that is relatively difficult to learn for a native English-speaker (e.g. Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Polish). The benefits of this would not only be fluency in another language but also the ability to think in a completely different manner than how one would think with Germanic or Romance languages, among other benefits.
Now, I have a two-year-old son, and, naturally, I want to to offer him the best opportunities in life. He’s already two and very intelligent, but I can’t help but feel I am putting him at a disadvantage, as he has not had any experience with / exposure to any difficult languages. I think that, like me, he will certainly be able to learn Germanic and Romance languages with relative ease, so I want to focus on him learning a more difficult language as a child. In my opinion, this is invaluable and time / age sensitive, so I want to start his learning as soon as possible. On the other hand, his mother thinks it would be better to focus on him learning languages that he will likely use more like Italian, Spanish, and German (we plan on eventually relocating to Italy from the US).
Does anyone have any advice on this topic? Do you agree with intention to teach him one or more of these difficult languages? Neither I or my son’s mother speak these (although I am certainly interested in learning).
How can I best have him learn these languages? Obviously, complete immersion in these languages’ native countries would be optimal, but since we currently live in the US, what resources would you recommend for him to learn best? A language school? We are thinking about homeschooling him, so perhaps we could do after-school tutoring. What do you all recommend? Any advice you are able to provide is much appreciated!
[link] [comments]
from Language Learning https://ift.tt/VnaW94J
via Learn Online English Speaking
Comments
Post a Comment