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is dedicated to young children’s education!
Our goal is to provide children's foreign language education of the highest quality.
By exposing young children to foreign sounds, grammar, and vocabulary, we make paths in the brain flexible and strong. And, by strengthening their foreign language skills, children are in turn better prepared for future academic experiences and higher social functioning in an increasingly global society.
Our method is uniquely designed to take advantage of a young child’s developmental stages and their desire for play.
All of our instructors are native or fluent speakers and are specially trained in our unique method. Instructors speak only in the foreign language. They use a theme or story to play with children in the target language. They encourage children to move, sing, dance, and engage. We do not count or learn the alphabet– rote memorization is not true learning, and it does not take advantage of the flexibility of the young brain. Our children have fun and learn without effort, in the same way that your child naturally absorbs and eventually speaks your household language: by living it.
We as parents and educators share the happy challenge of giving our children the skills to succeed in all areas of life. And learning a second language has been shown to strengthen not only verbal skills, but the brain’s activities overall! It is best if children use the foreign language outside the classroom in order to maximize benefit. There are many Things You Can Do to help your child learn — while having fun with them.
A child who consistently experiences, hears, and eventually produces a second language at a very young age will keep those connections forever.
Experts agree that very young children learn language from a different part of the brain than older children. After the age of 10 or 12, language is learned much like other academic subjects, via memorization and effort.
Yet for children under the age of 10, all languages are processed in the same way. Babies are born being able to speak any language in the world! This is because a young child’s brain is in a state of neuroplasticity, when the brain is growing more synapses and connections. And connections that are made and strengthened before the age of 10 or 12 remain active throughout life. This also means that it is extremely difficult and rare to master skills that are not introduced and practiced in the first 10 or 12 years of life.
Studies have shown that multi-lingual children have an edge in school, on standardized tests, in the workplace, and in life. They demonstrate maturity and skill functioning in multicultural academic, social, and work environments.
The following articles are just a sample of the many descriptions of what multi-lingual children gain in linguistic ability, overall academic ability, and life skills:
Foreign Learning as a Strategy for Closing the Achievement Gap (PDF)
Why Your Child Should Study Foreign Languages (PDF)
Benefits of Learning a Foreign Language
Being Bilingual Boosts Brain Power
Speaking the Language of Globalization
Early Learning Library Insightful Articles on Langauge Learning
Young children can learn a foreign language in the same natural way that they learned to speak their first language.
Language acquisition (for both first and foreign languages) at this age is very different than what you might remember from your grammar school days. There is no dull memorization or boring verb conjugation. A young child’s growing synapses and neurological connections treats all languages equally. Here are some articles about a child’s unique way of learning languages:
Learning Language & Becoming Multilingual
Neuroscientists have discovered why children excel at learning languages
How Young Children Learn Language
Learning a Foreign Language (PDF)
Finding a Voice: Perspectives on Language Acquisition
We also recommend reading books about children’s language acquisition and brain development. The following is from a book that is easy to read and very helpful in explaining what’s going on inside your child:
A young child’s environment directly and permanently influences the structure and eventual function of this or her brain. Everything a child sees, touches, hears, feels, tastes, thinks and so on translates into electrical activity in just a subset of his or her synapses, tipping the balance for long-term survival in their favor. On the other hand, synapses that are rarely activated—whether because of languages never heard, music never made, sports never played, mountains never seen, love never felt—will wither and die. Lacking adequate electrical activity, they lose the race, and the circuits they were trying to establish—for flawless Russian, perfect pitch, an exquisite backhand, a deep reverence for nature, healthy self-esteem—never come to be.
- Lise Eliot, Ph.D., What’s Going On In There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life, Bantam Books: New York, 1999.
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