How to Teach English to Your Baby (as a Non-Native Speaker)

If English is not your first language and you do not live in an English-speaking country, but you would like to teach English to your baby or

your young child at home, this video is for you. I'm an English teacher and I

for you. I'm an English teacher and I also am raising a bilingual child, English, French, and my husband and I have been introducing him to Spanish as

well. Today I'm going to share with you

well. Today I'm going to share with you some of the things that I think we have done wrong or that we could have done better in raising a multilingual child.

And I'm going to share with you the things that I think you should do right now if you have a baby or a young child to give them the best chance of success,

the best chance of learning English at home before they even start kindergarten. And if you don't have a

kindergarten. And if you don't have a baby, but you have an older child, so maybe 2 3 years old or older, don't worry. It's never too late to start

worry. It's never too late to start teaching English. Listen to the

teaching English. Listen to the techniques and the strategies in this video. And at the end of the video, I

video. And at the end of the video, I will give you something a little bit extra to help you with an older child.

If your child is a baby, so a newborn zero years old to 12 months or maybe even 18 months, you are very lucky. You

should start right now, today. The

earlier that we begin with English, the better. And I'm going to tell you why.

better. And I'm going to tell you why.

Your baby is very much still learning their first language right now. There's

some interesting research actually that shows us how little babies are actually able to hear the difference between all

of the different world languages. They

have the ability to hear the differences between all of the different sounds of all of the different languages until I think about 12 months old. As our

children grow a little bit older, they start to lose this innate natural ability to distinguish sounds. Now, it's

never too late. It's never too late to become very good at pronunciation, but when they are a little tiny baby, they have a huge advantage. And so, we should

use that. We should use that to start

use that. We should use that to start language learning, start English learning early if we can. Another huge

benefit of starting English early with your baby that a lot of people don't realize is that you, as a mom or a dad,

a caregiver, you are training yourself to speak English around your baby. It's

a lot harder to start speaking English with your child when they're a little bit older, when you already have a pattern, a practice in place. You

already have a language that you're speaking with them 100% of the time. But

when you start when your child is a baby, you don't yet have a language practice in place. And so it's easier.

It's still weird. It it probably will feel weird to speak English to your baby at first, but it's a lot easier to start at the beginning before you have any

practice already in place. It's not a struggle for babies to learn an additional language. They don't

additional language. They don't necessarily need to put effort into it, conscious effort. we can put the effort

conscious effort. we can put the effort in for them while they are little so that they do not have to struggle like we did later on with the language. This

was honestly a huge motivation for me because I know how difficult it was for me to study French in school as a

teenager, as a young adult. And I didn't want my son to have to struggle this much with the language. I wanted it to feel more natural for him from an early

age. And that's the gift that you can

age. And that's the gift that you can give your child by surrounding them with English as much as possible from the earliest possible time, from the moment

they're born. If you can, we need to

they're born. If you can, we need to surround our babies with English, creating a languagerich environment all around them, making allowing their brain

to make those connections long, long before they even say their first words.

We are filling their heads with language, filling their heads with vocabulary and phrases way before they are able to speak. And one day when they

are older, they are going to say, "Thank you, mom. Thank you, Dad, for giving me

you, mom. Thank you, Dad, for giving me this gift early on." Okay. So, there are two major things that you're going to do with your baby every day to make this

work. And I'm also going to tell you

work. And I'm also going to tell you what not to do, what to avoid. All

right, the first thing, singing. We are

going to harness the power of song.

Babies love music. You have probably already noticed this. Sing to your baby in English every day. And you have to be

the one to sing. This is very important.

Not a recording, not your Spotify playlist, not YouTube, but you. Your

voice. Your baby has been listening to your voice since the time they were in the womb, since before they were born.

They know your voice. They love your voice. I know that sometimes when we're

voice. I know that sometimes when we're tired, it feels a lot easier to just play something from a playlist or a music player. I totally understand that.

music player. I totally understand that.

But this is really similar to when we want our children to learn English from cartoons or from a video game, a tablet.

Those things are great tools to use sometimes, but those things alone are not going to teach our children English.

They're not going to teach our children meaningful longlasting skills that they need to be speakers of English, to be fluent speakers of

English. Think about how you learned

English. Think about how you learned your first language. We learn our first languages naturally through people

speaking to us, through interaction with other caring people, other caring adults who give us a lot of real meaningful

words in real conversations and songs.

So, it doesn't matter if you can't sing.

It doesn't matter if you have a terrible voice. I have a terrible voice. My son

voice. I have a terrible voice. My son

doesn't care. He loves when I sing with him. It doesn't matter if you don't

him. It doesn't matter if you don't speak English perfectly. It doesn't

matter if you have an accent. Your baby

will still benefit more from listening to your voice than from listening to a recording of a person who they don't know. And of course, we need to know the

know. And of course, we need to know the words in order to be able to sing the songs in English. If we want to sing the lullabies, we need the words, we need

the lyrics. And you can do this simply

the lyrics. And you can do this simply by printing the lyrics out or writing them on a piece of paper and sticking them to the wall in your child's bedroom

or wherever they sleep, wherever they take naps, wherever you're going to sing to them. It's okay to have a cheat sheet

to them. It's okay to have a cheat sheet to look at. When my son was a little baby and I was doing a lot of late night feedings, I had the lyrics to my

favorite baby songs in a note on my phone and I would look at it all the time to sing these songs to him because sometimes I just couldn't remember the

words, but I wanted to sing the the correct lyrics. I'll put a PDF, a free

correct lyrics. I'll put a PDF, a free PDF download in the description down below for you that will have a list of some songs and lyrics. So, popular

lullabibis in English with lyrics that you can use to uh post on the wall and sing to your child. And then the last thing that I want to say about singing,

and this is going to become more and more important as your child gets older, becomes a toddler and a preschooler.

When choosing songs to sing with your child, choose songs that have gestures, songs that have actions to them. For

example, the itsybitsy spider went up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the

spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sunshine and

spider out. Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain. And the itsybitsy spider went up the spout again. Or maybe

you're familiar with head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees, and toes. There

are a lot of English songs like this that have gestures. Or if you don't know the gestures, you can create your own.

Using gestures, using actions as you teach a song, as you sing a song, makes it so much easier for that child to remember the vocabulary words. It makes

it memorable for them and more fun for them and they are more likely to store that in their brains. This is how memory works for children, but also for adults.

When we can match an action, something that we can see, something that we can do with our bodies with the vocabulary word that we're hearing, we are more

likely to remember it. Sing to your baby as much as possible. Look them in the eyes, smile, be positive, use gestures, and make it a fun moment of connection

and love between you and your baby.

Okay, so we've talked about singing.

What is the other big piece of the puzzle for teaching English to your baby early on? For babies, the other huge

early on? For babies, the other huge thing that you can do to boost their pre-speaking skills is to narrate

everything that you do or as much as possible to narrate what you are doing to your baby and in front of your baby.

So that means when you are changing your baby's diaper, when you are feeding your baby, when you are giving them a bath, when you are dressing them, you are

explaining what you are doing in English to your baby, even though they can't understand you yet, even in your first language. This is a great way to boost

language. This is a great way to boost your child's vocabulary skills early on, but you can do this in English as well.

If you are not sure what to say in these situations, you're not sure how what phrase to use, use a translator. That's

okay. You can always consult your translator. I also created a pack of PDF

translator. I also created a pack of PDF uh sheets that you can print and put on your walls. So, you can put these in

your walls. So, you can put these in your kitchen, in your living room, and use these natural phrases around your child throughout the day in your home.

So, you can get that from the description down below. I want to tell you about a major mistake that we made with my son that I well I think it's a

bit of a mistake and maybe you can avoid it in your own family. From day one, from the day that my son was born, we were speaking to him in two languages.

So, I spoke to him in English and my husband who is a French speaker, a franophhone, spoke to him in French. and

I'm really really proud of all that we have accomplished with those two languages. My son is doing really well.

languages. My son is doing really well.

It's really working for our family.

However, we always dreamed of adding Spanish as well. And knowing what I know now and being very honest with myself, I

think that we waited too long to start introducing Spanish. And because of

introducing Spanish. And because of that, so we started Spanish around 3 years old, 3 and 1/2 years old more seriously.

And because we waited until he was a bit older compared to French from day one, I have seen how much more challenging it is. It's still very possible. He's doing

is. It's still very possible. He's doing

great with his Spanish as well, but it is very different and it's more challenging in my opinion, in my experience. A lot of the reason why we

experience. A lot of the reason why we waited is because we already had a second language. But I think a bigger

second language. But I think a bigger reason why is because I thought my Spanish was not good enough. I felt like

I I couldn't really teach him a lot of Spanish because of that. And I see now that that is a very limiting belief that

I I don't think is correct. I think that parents can pass on a lot of language skills to their children. Even if their

language skills are not super high, we can still give our children so much vocabulary. We can learn along with our

vocabulary. We can learn along with our children. And that was my missed

children. And that was my missed opportunity. I think that I could have

opportunity. I think that I could have learned a lot of Spanish with my son as a baby. I could have sung a lot of

a baby. I could have sung a lot of Spanish baby songs, baby lullabies to him when he was little. I wish I had done that because now we're listening to

a lot of Spanish songs and he really loves them. So, I could have started

loves them. So, I could have started that early. I could have done some

that early. I could have done some simple narration of everyday activities, changing his diaper, all of that. And so

I just want to tell you about this so that you don't wait so that you start today because it is possible to learn the language to improve in the language

along with your child. You don't have to wait to be perfect if you wait. It's

going to be more challenging. If your

child is not a baby, if your child is a little bit older, so 2 years old or three or a little bit older, of course, it's not too late. My advice to you is

to find some space in your day where you can start English time. And this can start very very um like just 5 minutes a

day at first and you can slowly expand this to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 45 minutes. But start small. Make English

minutes. But start small. Make English

time a time when you do a fun activity together in English. Maybe just starting with one word, two words. It should be fun. Try to be very patient with your

fun. Try to be very patient with your child. Give them all of your attention

child. Give them all of your attention during these 5 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is. Choose something fun that you can do in English. Some kind of

game, a craft. Focus on making it enjoyable, especially at the very beginning, so that it is something that your child wants to do, so that your

child is excited about English time.

This is a time when you get to connect with each other, spend time with each other, and learn something fun in English together. I don't recommend

English together. I don't recommend speaking only English to your child for most parents because it is important

that you are communicating your feelings and your emotions in the language that is most comfortable to you, most comfortable for you. If you are very

serious about teaching English to your baby or your child at home and improving your own English with your child, I highly recommend that you watch this 30

minute master class next that will give you all of the foundations for how to do this in uh an effective and successful way. I'll see you there. Bye.

way. I'll see you there. Bye.