RAR #98: Introducing Kids to Foreign Language through Reading Aloud
Many of us want to help our children learn a second language, but where do we start? And what if we only speak one language ourselves?
Anne Guarnera of Language Learning at Home is joining us today to walk us through it. Although it isn’t her first language, she speaks Spanish in her home and encourages families to learn new languages together.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- How to get started learning a new language
- How learning a second language helps us with our native language
- How books are a fantastic resource (of course!)
Click the play button below:
Listener Guide
Use the time stamps below to skip to any part of the podcast:
- 2:20 Meet Anne
- 4:12 Like learning an instrument …
- 5:57 Spanish at home
- 7:36 How books can help foreign language learning
- 10:35 Broadening kids’ perspectives
- 12:45 Parenting differently
- 13:51 The Read-Aloud Family
- 15:37 Two resources
- 19:42 Order of learning
- 21:53 Help for single language learners
- 24:43 The reason to expose kids to languages
- 25:41 Tips for finding foreign language books
- 30:03 Favorite books for getting started
- 34:48 Where to find Anne
- 36:02 Let the kids speak
Links from this episode:
- Order The Read-Aloud Family now anywhere books are sold
- Get the audio version of The Read-Aloud Family (read by Sarah Mackenzie) right her
- Use the hashtag #readaloudfamily to share photos on social media
- Language Learning At Home
- RAR #83: Why Read Picture Books with Older Kids
- The International Children’s Digital Library
- RAR #65: How to Best Use and Support Your Local Library
- Anne’s post, Three Unconventional Reasons I Read Aloud to my Kids (a lot!)
Quotes to Remember:
“I want my kids to feel ‘at home’ in both languages—not so that they can check a box on college admissions paperwork or gloat over their bilingualism, but so that they can befriend people from many different cultures around the world. It is my hope that their experience of language learning and cultural education will give them a rich understanding of our beautiful, diverse world, and a humble desire to learn from and serve others.”
“In terms of language learning, reading aloud in a foreign language offers all of the same benefits that you would get from reading aloud in a child’s native language.”
“When our kids learn other languages and learn to relate to the world through other languages they’re getting access to a whole range of emotions and experiences that they otherwise wouldn’t have known if they were to remain speakers of only one language.”
Books from this episode:
(All links are affiliate links.)
Do you happen to have suggestion on resources for learning Russian? We recently adopted two boys from Ukraine and would love to formally learn Russian as a family. Thanks so much!!!
I grew up speaking 2 languages: French and Creole (pretty much everyone in my home country of Reunion island does).
I am now fluent in 5 (English is my fourth) and am learning Japanese as my sixth language.
My 8 yo daughter is bilingual English-French and also learning Japanese.
My suggestions are:
1: If you can find a babysitter that will only speak a foreign language to your kids, go for it. There is nothing better especially when the kids are young.
2: Reserve a big chunk of “TV” time to be in the foreign language. Most of Disney’s movies will have a few soundtracks in foreign languages (mostly Spanish, French, German). Of course, youtube has a lot! I’ve looked up our favorite PBS shows and a few have been translated into French (Dinosaur Train, Daniel tiger, PJ Masks), other favorites in French are: Heidi, Doc McStuffin, Yakari, Caroline et ses amis.
My daughter knows if she wants to watch TV, it will be in the other language. When the choice is TV in French or no TV, she’ll definitely pick TV in French!
For Japanese, I usually let her watch the cartoon first in English (or French) and then if she wants to re-watch, it will be in Japanese (animes like Totoro have multiple soundtracks). Do be careful with animes as a lot of them are not suitable for children.
3: Try to pick a language you know your child will have a higher chance to practice in real life. We live in Hawaii and we get to meet a lot of people from Japan (tourists and people who have moved from Japan). Plus we go to Japan 1/year for business so it was a logical choice for us.
4: Highly recommend audio books.
5: The app Duolingo is what we used for the bulk of our Japanese practice.
6: I also do a video call with someone I met in Japan. We meet 1/week for 30 minutes and we go through a book I found here that teaches Japanese to English speakers.
Consistency is key.
Hope this helps. Aloha!
Fantastic podcast! Unfortunately, the language I am looking for doesn’t have much in the way of resources or classic book titles translated, but I did find a handful of titles from the international children’s library website. Thank you for that resource!
Any suggestions for helping kids *ahem* enjoy hearing a familiar story in English? I get a lot of push-back when I try to read a book they know in Spanish, saying that they would much rather have me read it in English and then wander away if I continue. I’d rather not require them to sit and listen, but perhaps that’s what it takes at first? BTW, I’m talking about 4 and 6 year olds, a boy and a girl.
Audiobooks, while you are driving. That has helped me tremendously to have them listen to longer stories in Spanish, because they have no other choice but to listen to the story :). I do that all the time. If they tell me they don’t want to listen (I have twin boys 6.5 yrs old), I tell them that I am the one that wants to listen to the story, and if they don’t want to listen they need to cover their ears. After a few chapters, they are begging me to put the “Spanish” story the minute they get into the car. I will say that it depends on the story, but so far the ones that have really done the trick are:
-Los Niños del Vagon de Carga (The Box Car Children), that you can find free in Hoopla, and I will recommend play them in order. I think there are like 5 or 6 of the 1st books translated in Spanish. We’ve listen to all 5 or 6. And to make it more interesting and have them pay attention, I pause it and asked them what do they think the mystery is about, and they start guessing. Involving them in the story has helped for them to really pay attention to it.
-Las Crónicas de Narnia (they have a dramatized version in Audible).
Thank you, Rocio! Nothing like a captive audience… :-)
Question for Anne: we get free books every month from Imagination Library and a lot of them are dual readers including both the English and Spanish text. What is your take on books like that?
I was so excited when I saw the topic of this podcast! My daughter has been taking online Spanish lessons for one year. It has been an AMAZING experience for her. I can’t wait to introduce her to some of the stories mentioned in the Podcast. Thank you for the great idea of getting Spanish stories onYouTube!
Here is a link to receive a FREE online Spanish class. It is VERY fun and interactive.
https://pandatree.com/invites/Meehan313
Hi Meehan. Not sure if you read through the posts, but I do have a channel with Spanish stories. Here is the information: Moldeando Valores Un Cuento A La Vez – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-gqnsYejA9F21ykkKFRQ/featured).
I am also recommending a bunch of Spanish books. Just look at the above 3 or 4 posts to go over all the recommendations.
Thank you for the recommendations! I can’t wait to check them out!
I ended up going to a college that offered a large amount of foreign languages and my last few semesters I decided to take all the Welsh classes offered. One of the classes, we met in a conference room, so we were all sitting at this big table. The entire class for the entire semester was just going sentence by sentence through the Welsh translation of the first Harry Potter book. One person would read the sentence, the next would translate, and then anyone could ask questions -vocabulary, grammar, culture, etc. It was fantastic.
Thank you so much for this podcast! I have been wanting to get more focused in learning Spanish with my kiddos. This podcast was so full of ideas and resources to help us get started. I am so thankful for RAR and am looking forward to becoming a part of the Language Learning at Home community too! Have a blessed day!
I said that I was not going to add more Spanish books, but I have to add this one. There are a bunch of Dr. Seuss books translated into Spanish. , I was surprised to find how many of the Dr. Seuss books were translated, because translating rhyme from one language to another one is pretty tricky and tuff. Having said so, I can attest that the translations on most of the Dr. Seuss stories are pretty well done!! You can find them in Amazon searching by “Dr. Seuss, Spanish,” or in your local library. If your local library doesn’t have them, a little “hint” I will share is that you can get them to purchase the books, through the “special request” that many libraries have online. In addition, you can find all most of the Dr. Seuss books read aloud in my Youtube channel (Moldeando Valores Un Cuento A La Vez – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-gqnsYejA9F21ykkKFRQ/featured). If you want to take advantage of the native speaker reading the book but you rather avoid the screen, something you can do, which is what I do with some of the English books I read to my boys, is to get the physical book at the library (or purchase it) and then use the sound of the story read in Youtube. Sometimes, I also use the TV screen to display the Youtube books read aloud, which might be better than staring at the little screen on a phone or a tablet. But I mainly use the phone/table screen to listen to the youtube stories when waiting for a doctor’s appointment or while waiting for the doctor once we are in our little “private” room. Just some ideas of when a youtube story, in this case a foreign language one, might come in handy :).
If you only want to look at a certain author, you can go to the home page of my channel and scroll down until you find “stories per authors” (Cuentos por autores).
Thanks Rocio Lucey for all of these suggestions!
You are VERY welcome. I’ve spent so much time and energy creating this channel with nice Spanish stories, that my heart leaps of joy whenever someone new subscribes to it :).
And, you really want to go to the “home” page, because I not only use the books I translate and read but I also borrow from other youtube readers (and I try to choose the ones that read the best) and organized those stories by title. So the stories of my channel are not just stories I read and/or translate, but stories of other readers and then I organized them by subject. I will recommend to scroll down all the way under the home page to familiarized with all the subjects. I hope you enjoy it!
Few more, I promise :)
-Paul Galdone stories, Spanish version
-Janet Benge and Geoff Benge stories: “Heroes cristianos de ayer de hoy”
I forgot to mention other good books that I’ve found translated into Spanish which are:
-Las Crónicas de Narnia (you can find audios of the Spanish version in Audible)
-Roald Dahl books (if you look search for “set” you can find one in Spanish in Amanzon)
-Serie: “Dios necesito hablarte de…”
-Historias Bíblicas de Jesús para niños, Sally Lloyd-Jones
-Beatrix Potter, Complete Tales
-Mi Tesoro Cuentos de Hadas
-El Tesoro de los Cuentos para dormir
-And of course, if you want more challenging sotires, all the classics are avaiable in Spanish in book or audiobook format.
I must be psychic! :). I just picked up a few bilingual books at the library today!
Great podcast! I am a native Spanish speaker. We talked to our kids only Spanish for their 1st two years of life and now at 6 they are completely bilingual. I read to them in Spanish as well as in English. I am a fan of Sara’s podcast, and between her podcasts, attendance of homeschooling conferences and reading all 6 series of the Charlotte Mason’s philosophy, I’ve become obsessed with reading aloud to my kids in both languages. Some recommendations for GREAT books that I’ve researched for my kids in Spanish are:
-Authors: Patricia Polacco, Eric Carle, Jan Brett, Jerry Pinkney, Robert Munsch, Tomie dePaola, Unfortunately not all their stories are translated to Spanish. Some authors have more than others. I would search in Amazon as follows: author’s name, Spanish
-Series (you can find these ones in Amazon): Historias Biblicas En Rima-Libros Arco, Troquelados clásicos series-Spanish Edition, Los chicos del vagon de carga (Boxcar Children, Spanish Edition), Los cuentos de la Amistad de Winnie The Pooh – animated version of the book, it is FANTASTIC! (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7_LzAsbjGrVpCEirIyqIxEjdesOrRayO).
– I have a big list of other individual books, but I wouldn’t be able to list them all here.
After all the listening and reading I have done on children’s books, I’ve become a believer that reading to children is one of the best things we can do as parents to our kid’s minds, not only to help increase vocabulary, but also as a great tool to build moral and character traits. I have spent a few years now searching for Spanish books, but mostly stories that build character. Unfortunately, there aren’t as much stories translated in Spanish as there are in English, therefore, I’ve taken a step forward. Now, whenever I come across an English story and the story, the illustrations and moral values are “wow,” and I can’t find a Spanish version of it, I translate it myself, and I download the translated version in youtube. Examples are: Love Twelve Miles Long (by Glenda Armand), Brave Young Knight (By Karen Kingsbury), Little Match Girl (Jerry Pinkney), the Golden Rule (by Ilene Cooper), etc. I translated so far over 20 books. In addition, I read others that are already published in English, but most of the books I read are moral and character building stories. On top of downloading them in youtube, on the home page of my channel, I’ve organized all the playlist under titles such as: Moral building stories from A – Z (I have thankfullness, Friendship, Honesty, etc), Religious stories, stories by authors, by series, etc. If you feel like visiting my channel, the name is: “Moldeando Valores Un Cuento A la Vez” and the link is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPF-gqnsYejA9F21ykkKFRQ?view_as=subscriber
It is an educational channel and free of charge. With this channel I am hoping to get this wonderful stories full of good, truth and beauty to all the parents around the world.
Wow! Thank you so much for your comment and all the information you provided, and also your YouTube channel!!!! My kids are bilingual because my husband speaks Spanish (I do not) and as you said finding good books can be tricky. It’s another challenge when my kids don’t like me reading Spanish (haha!) and my husband is to busy working to read Spanish to them on a frequent basis. I’m definitely looking up your YouTube channel. Thank you!!