May 11, 2020

How To Create A Language Learning Schedule

Welcome back to my four part series “How To Teach Your Child A Second Language: A Quick Start Guide”!

In the first part of this series I addressed the best time to start teaching your child a second language. Now that you’ve got a good idea that you want to start now (or maybe you’ve already started!) I want to show you how to create a schedule.

When my daughter was born, I hadn’t taken a Spanish class is years. I was trying to throw in Spanish words at random parts of the day and I had no clear direction or schedule.

After a few months, my Spanish hadn’t improved at all. I realized that I needed to make a schedule, a plan for language learning.

Making a schedule, however simple, will help you to stay organized and consistent with working on a second language.

I’m here to help you succeed on your bilingual parenting journey and learn how to make a schedule that fits your family and lifestyle.

Don’t forget to tune in next Monday for part three of this four part series!

Part 2: How To Create A Language Learning Schedule

One hour a day

If you’re looking to expose your child to a second language, most studies show that at least an hour of acquisition a day is ideal.

If you already speak the target language, then this is a very manageable task. You can designate times of the day when you will only speak in the target language to your children, for example, when the children wake up until they head off to school, only speak in Chinese.

If you yourself aren’t bilingual and don’t know the target language well, making an intentional schedule is even more important.

Of course, you don’t have an hour a day when you’re already not doing anything, so carving out an hour and creating a study plan isn’t really realistic, especially for a family with children!

However, there are ways to create language learning opportunities throughout the day that add up to an hour of target language exposure for your child.

Language learning should be interactive

The best way for you to teach your child another language is to make language learning interactive.

When you’re making your schedule, it’s important to look for times in your day where you can be engaged and interact with your child. Studies show that children learn languages best when they acquire it naturally as opposed to an out of context experience like flash cards.

There are so many ways to make language learning interactive, even if you don’t speak it. One way is to look for intentional times in your day where you can plan for interactive language work.

What does your day look like?

One of the first steps that you can take in building your schedule is to take a look at what you and your child already do on a typical day. What does your morning routine look like? Do you drive them to daycare/school? Do you pick them up? What does it look like when you come home from work? What does their bedtime routine look like?

After you analyze what your family’s typical daily schedule is, you need to decide which parts can be converted into active language learning time and who will be speaking the target language.

Some families choose to just have one adult speak one language and one adult speak the other language, while others decide to focus all of their efforts on the minority language at home since the child will be exposed to the majority language in public.

Here’s an example of a monolingual family that is creating a language learning schedule. In this family there are two working parents. Neither parent speaks Spanish but they’d like to start teaching it to their 5 year old.

They decide that they’d like to try and find an hour a day to work in Spanish language learning, but they’re already very busy. First, they map out their afternoons:

Afternoon Daily Schedule

Drive home from work/daycare

Dinner

TV/Play/Family time

Bath/Shower

Bathroom routine

Bedtime

This family doesn’t have any additional time in their evening routine to set aside a “Spanish time” block. When they’re creating a schedule for Spanish learning, they need to turn one of these activities into a Spanish language activity and count those minutes.

For example, “Drive home from daycare”, could be converted into a Spanish language time. Let’s say the car ride from daycare to home is 10 minutes. If they work on Spanish during that time every day, they’ve found 10 minutes a day to do Spanish language practice.

If they watch some TV in the evening after dinner, they can choose to switch the audio in one of those shows to Spanish. Another one of their activities is “bath/shower”, which can also be converted into a Spanish language time.

Car Ride – 10 minutes

Spanish Show – 20 minutes

Bath/Shower – 15 minutes

So far, this family hasn’t actually made any additional time in their evening, but they’ve converted 45 minutes of their evening into Spanish learning time.

When you’re making a plan for your family, try and think of as many places as you can sneak the target language into your day, to maximize the time that you already spend together.

Make the schedule consistent

It’s easier to plan for language learning when you’re working with a consistent schedule and you’re using it at the same points each day.

If you decide that you want to work on language learning with your child in the car on the way to daycare, but you drive them one day, your mother-in-law drives them one day, and they take the bus three of the days, it might not be a good place to insert language learning.

The results that you get are going to be a direct result of the time and consistency put into your language learning schedule. The best way for your brain to store a new language in your long term memory is to practice it daily without breaks.

Regardless of the amount of time you are able to fit into your day, it is important to include some time with the target language every single day.

Working with the target language allows your child’s brain to build more connections. According to one great article found on BBC news,

“without a consistent schedule the brain fails to engage in any deep cognitive processes, like making connections between new knowledge and your previous learning”.

If you want to learn more about the importance of spending an hour a day learning a new language, I recommend this great BBC article here:

How To Learn A Language In An Hour A Day

Stay tuned!!

Next Monday I will release part 3 in the series, “How To Find Resources To Maximize Your Language Time”.

The third part will take a look at how you can find resources to fit the parts of your day where you’d like to incorporate language learning, whether that be in the car, at bedtime, or watching TV.

Finding good materials is essential for bilingual parents who want to create a language rich environment for their child! I’ll share some resources that you can use to get started and how to find resources that fit your schedule.

Here are links to the other parts in this series!

Part 1: What Is The Best Age To Teach Your Child A Second Language?

Part 3: How To Find Resources That Maximize Your Language Learning Time

Part 4: You Can Do It! – Motivation For Bilingual Parenting

Happy Learning!

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