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Teaching to young kids! help please! | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| kthorg Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5218 days ago 50 posts - 62 votes  Speaks: English*, Norwegian*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 1 of 6 05 September 2010 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I live in the US but I speak fluent Norwegian because my mother used that language to speak to me when i was little and I've visited Norway for at least one month out of every year. My dad is American and doesn't speak any Norwegian so obviously i speak to him and the rest of my environment in English. My parents are divorced and now my dad is married to an American lady and has two other children (age 5 and age 7). He asked me to attempt to teach the younger kids Norwegian (even though Norwegian isn't so useful on the world front, it's still worth it to know another language.) I was wondering how to do it because I don't know the anything about teaching. I've heard it helps to just start speaking it to them, but I'm only at my dad's halftime and I'm worried I'm not around them enough for it to anything other than just noise they can't understand... suggestions?
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| vexx Groupie Australia Joined 5209 days ago 81 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 2 of 6 05 September 2010 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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They will learn if you speak to them entirely in Norwegian and use no English around them. It will definitely help as
they will pick things up as children normally learn a language. So basically just talk to them in Norwegian, and perhaps read them a familiar bed-time story in Norwegian before bed, they will absorb more and more over time depending on how much you speak to them. If you are really motivated, you can always sit there down (if they are willing, you can always convince them) and have a lesson for a few minute periods throughout the day as well, or a long one, you don't have to be a teacher to do this. 'Hello in Norweigan is ___', 'How are you is ____' Now say, 'Hello, How are you', and keep repeating the norwegian word until they get it, maybe with more advanced things with less English. Edited by vexx on 05 September 2010 at 4:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi | Message 3 of 6 05 September 2010 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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As another suggestion - see if you can find cartoons, etc. dubbed into Norwegian (you can probably get movies
from Norway, like Shrek and Finding Nemo, etc. that are dubbed and not subtitled). Do definitely speak to them in Norwegian when you can - and pick some funny words. I know a friend who has figured out how to say "the toilet monster" in Finnish (she went to a Finnish language camp as a kid). If you can find some funny-sounding words to them, and catch their interest, they'll go along a little more smoothly. ;) Find a book ONLY in Norwegian, and read them parts of it - whether it's a familiar story or something interesting, with a fairly good split on pictures and text. If you find a no-words book (like the Frog books by Mercer Mayer), you can always explain what's going on in Norwegian to them. I remember my host sister in Denmark had the Madeline books in Danish, and I would practise reading those when I started with Danish. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| kthorg Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5218 days ago 50 posts - 62 votes Speaks: English*, Norwegian*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 4 of 6 05 September 2010 at 5:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oh okay, my little cousin has lots of Donald Duck comics in Norwegian, the great thing about them is that they're not translated from English-- they have authentic Norwegian, I'm assuming those would be pretty good. I'm definitely going to start using Norwegian to speak to them, I started today actually. My only worry/question is that while they learn to understand me, they use English back (not really a choice right now) should I "turn off" my English understanding? and also some of the sounds (for example the r, l, and kj sound) are not used in English, but are normal in Norwegian, they already try to use the words they know (like numbers) but I notice it sounds VERY foreign, is this just a temporary thing that'll wear off? They try to mix the (very) few words they know into English, for example they say "Nei I don't" instead of "No I don't" or "Nei det gjør jeg ikke" because they don't know enough Norwegian (obviously) to say it for real and don't know that Norwegian has different sentence construction, so they use English where their Norwegian lacks to try to talk to me... which brings me back to the "English understanding thing." Thank you for the help you've already given me! (oh and by the way, Norwegian dubbed movies are locked for the northern European "zone" and can't be played on American DVD players, but I'm not sure about computers) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| exscribere Diglot Senior Member IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5270 days ago 104 posts - 126 votes Speaks: English*, Danish Studies: Mandarin, French, Korean, Hindi | Message 5 of 6 05 September 2010 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Practice those sounds in little repetitive drills - if you can find tongue twisters, that's even better. Because English doesn't share the same phonemes, it can be harder to hear the differences in the sounds (like Japanese people often simply *cannot* hear a difference in r & l). Drill the r, l & kj sounds; 3x seems to be a solid number for repetition (3 different words, 3 different times over the day, and take the time to try to figure out how to explain tongue placement, etc). They'll pick up on it differently when you say "That doesn't sound quite the same--can you copy this noise?" and make an extended 'l'. When they hit the right noise, praise and get them to try to duplicate it. You're lucky, since younger kids are less ashamed of making funny sounds than adults can be in learning environments. ;)
That's fine. At this point, I think teaching them the vocab is the most critical thing, and gentle reinforcement of different syntax. You can do it simply, like "Oh, we don't say 'No, I don't!' in Norwegian, we say 'No, that did I not!'." If they know Star Wars, you can point out that it's like Yoda. ;) I know you said 5 & 7, but who knows about who watches SW these days. Just add vocab, set sentence structures ("Did you clean your room?" "Yes, I did!" "Oops, I forgot.") and they'll slowly pick up on things with the reinforcement and exposure.
You might actually be able to unlock them. Some DVD players are region-free, or you can go on and through the support page for the DVD player you can unlock it. I think some video game systems that play DVDs are also region-free. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5431 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 6 of 6 12 October 2010 at 8:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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With my kids we started with BBC "MUZZY" in french, which is a wonderful program. We used to watch it together
and imitate for fun. (But Norwegian??...) At that time we turned off our cable and only had videos. (this was some time ago). After Muzzy we started buying french cartoons and got a PAL_SECAM system. (You can now get international DVD players.) The kids got to watch french cartoons all week and English cartoons only on weekends. That was the only thing that worked. Classes, au pairs, conversation with us, nope! Cartoons. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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