What are the best methods and resources for educating multilingual children?

Question

My four year old daughter speaks 3 languages - northern Thai which is dialect of central Thai, central or standard Thai and English.

I believe that a knowledge of languages is very important and I would like to introduce her to as many languages as possible whilst she is young enough to enjoy it rather than have to work at it.

- How can I introduce languages that neither I nor my wife speak?

- Are there any books, DVDs, online resources etc that you would recommend?

As well as our 4 year old, we have a 1 year old, a 10 year old and a 15 year old, I hope that they will also be able to benefit from the answers that you give.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Here's a free site:

http://www.mangolanguages.com/

They even have Pig Latin (it's a joke!)

My son is using Power-Glide and loving it.  I've always preferred it over Rosetta Stone (in the 5 yrs I've been researching).  RS works well for lots of people - just not our family.  Power-Glide is now online and there is a sale until March 15th.

http://www.power-glide.com/

The Elementary courses would be fine for your 4 y.o. and your older kids would like it, too.  My son is 10 and doing the Middle School course.  We purchased Elem. and M.S. and compared them (during their 30-day return policy) and decided to stick with M.S.   If I had younger children, we would have stuck with Elem.

EDITED TO ADD:

I forgot about Muzzy.  I don't like it much for Elementary aged kids, but a preschooler would love it.  It's probably at your public library:

http://www.early-advantage.com/Default_B...

Answer 2

Rosetta Stone is a computer program that is supposed to be very, very good. Comes in different languages. Your 4yo would be able to do just the picture and spoken word activities, your older children would be able to do a lot more.

Answer 3

be careful, with all those languages, i hope she don't become tongue tie....

you could ask your 15yr old, i heard that teenagers knows everything anyway.           I'm an American, i speak English. i can also speak every language in the world except for Greek......

outside of English, all others are Greek to me........

Answer 4

The others have given good answers to your questions, but I think you need to consider why you want them to have exposure to more languages. A language isn't a lot of good if they have no use for it. Clearly your kids have reason to be trilingual already, but do think about the purpose of learning more. If they have no use for it, they won't retain it. If you do want another, I suggest your country's sign language. Even if you don't know deaf people, there are still reasons to use it. In a house with 4 kids, a sign language would be a great thing! They can all sign instead of talking and waking you and your wife up in the mornings :) I can't recommend resources to you, as I don't know where you live. Contact your local Deaf Association for info, though. You can all learn together.

Answer 5

Second (or third) languages are best introduced in the younger years-fluency is more likely and they will retain more.  Really, how much do you remember from high school Spanish or French classes?

I have heard good things about Rosetta Stone, and they have many languages to choose from.  Check out AsiaForKids.com -that site has many resources for teaching language as well as other materials for a variety of Asian languages/countries.

My children are 10, seven and five months.  In addition to English, they are learning Latin and Mandarin Chinese.  They know basic French and Spanish, we will learn those languages more in depth in the future after Latin (which English, French and Spanish are all derived from).  They also are quiet fluent in American Sign Language.

Your local library will be your greatest resource-they have a variety of materials you can check out for free (books as well as DVDs) and decide what you like and will best suit your needs.  If your library does not have it, ask about an interlibrary loan.

I wish you all the best!

Answer 6

Rosetta Stone is really good, but you have to really keep at it and that can be hard. I'm 15 and have been trying to get through German.

It's awesome though. The little German I know comes naturally to me. This is a picture of both 'a cat' and 'eine Katze'. http://www.animalfriendsrescue.org/avail...

Instead of learning " 'Pferd' is German for horse," you learn another word to describe the concept of a horse.

You can have multiple accounts so each kid can have his or her own lessons available. It saves your progress as you go along.

It's great stuff.