Paul Rogers, author of Little Bridge, explains the secret to help your child learn English; making friends!
The problem with practice
Imagine you have a beginners’ class. They know how to ask somebody’s name and have just learned how to say how old they are and to ask someone else their age. The key to becoming really confident with this new language –with any new language – and to prevent their forgetting it as soon as they move on, is to make sure they get lots of practice. But how can you achieve this? How can you generate lots of speaking on so limited a topic?
In most classes, asking and telling each other how old they are soon loses its momentum as they are all the same age! And besides, asking questions to which you already know the answer is not very motivating. Generating extensive oral practice of a single question and answer is difficult.
Equally, to write the same question four or five times is plain tedious. Yet again, the truth is that unless you write it a number of times, you probably won’t remember it. So how can you stimulate repeated writing practice without it becoming boring?
The secret to help your child learn English? Making friends!
DigiPals*, the global, online community in Little Bridge, offers the perfect answer. This enables students to make contact with other young learners of English from different countries around the world and ask them how old they are. To type the same question a number of times is not boring when you’re asking different, real people. And students will get plenty of reading practice on the same theme when some of those people send a reply.
So where does the speaking come in? Easy! In the next lesson, ask students to report back on the new friends they have made – to tell the class their name, where they come from, and how old they are. The information they share will be varied, worldwide and authentic.
Of course, this is just an example. You can use the world of DigiPals to bring all sorts of topics to life: family, school, sports, hobbies, animals, clothes, music…anything! Having learned and practised new language with the activities in Little Bridge, students can use it to genuinely communicate with each other internationally. And then, in class, they can share and exchange what they have discovered – all in English!
Written by Paul Rogers, author of Little Bridge
If you enjoyed reading ‘The secret to help your child learn English? Making friends!’, you can read more blogs by Paul Rogers here.
Help your child learn English using Little Bridge! You can get started for free, find out more here.
* All messages posted on DigiPals – apart from those generated using the Sentence Maker – are moderated by a team of people in real time to ensure that they are in English. The messages contain nothing offensive and neither give nor ask for any personal contact details. So teachers and parents need have no concerns about internet safety.
