How do I get my whole family on board to learn a new language?

If you have big dreams of traveling with your family to Italy and strolling through the neighborhood market while casually speaking with the natives, but the rest of your family doesn’t share the same dream, you may find yourself feeling frustrated.

Speaking in a foreign language together as a family is, well, a family effort! If you have a spouse or child who is resistant, here are a few tips to get everyone on board.

First, you can discuss as a family what language each person would like to speak, and then give everyone the chance to give their reasons as to *why* they chose that language. What if your family is split between two languages? Maybe make a compromise by promising to learn the second language later, or perhaps your family can work to speak both at the same time! (And yes, there are multiple TalkBox.Mom families who do this!)

Secondly, make it fun! Play games in the language! Have competitions with the language! I love this one idea where there are two jars: one for the kids and one for the parents. Every time a parent forgets to say a phrase in the new language, the kid get a pom-pom dropped in their jar, and vice versa. The first jar to fill up first wins a prize. Trust me, kids LOVE to hold their parents accountable – and they will be listening very intently to make sure they get as many pom-poms as possible. 😏

Implementing these things can really help when it comes to getting your entire family on board with foreign language speaking. It can be an enjoyable and rewarding experience for everyone!

HOW DO I GET MY WHOLE FAMILY ON BOARD TO LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE?

Answered by Eileen

  • Have the members of your family choose what language they want to learn.
  • By choosing the language, they will have buy in and a vested interest in learning the language.
  • Let the children choose what they want the phrase of the day to be.
  • Make the learning fun!


To see all of the languages TalkBox.Mom offers, click here!


TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO

How do I get my whole family on board to learn a new language?

Answered by Eileen

Hi! It’s me, Eileen, again, from TalkBox.Mom!

And a question that comes up often is: how do I get my

whole family to buy into learning a foreign language?

You might have some people who are kind of dragging about

it, and they’re not sure they want to do it.

So what I decided to do with my family is, I first had them

decide what language we were going to all learn together.

I think that’s important for the buy-in. You sit down and

have a family discussion about what language you want to

learn as a whole family because that means that your children,

and your spouse, are going to be into it.

So we have family members who talk in German, and we have

family members who are still able to talk in Spanish.

So we decided that which one would be best for us.

We wanted both, but we didn’t want to learn two languages

at the same time.

I know some families do actually do that, but we wanted to

just focus on one.

So we decided to go with Spanish because my children do have

Spanish speaking cousins, and a Spanish

speaking aunt, and we live in South Texas,

so there are a lot of Spanish speakers around us, and we thought

it would be pretty cool if we could actually have conversations

with people out in our community.

So we decided on Spanish, and I think that that’s what you

should do with your family.

Choose what’s going to be meaningful to your family. As far as how

you’re going to keep them interested: TalkBox.Mom

is perfect for that because there are phrases that you’re

going to be using in your home,

so they’re going to want to learn more phrases.

There’s phrases about brushing your teeth, washing your

hands. You kind of make it fun like, “Oh, let’s start a new

phrase right now!”

So your kids think it’s fun to be able to try something new,

and they might mess it up, and they’ll laugh at you and, you

know, you all will have fun trying to pronounce the phrases,

and it’s just fun because everyone’s doing it, and I think

that’s what helps with the buy-in. It’s different than, like

sending your child to a tutor while they’re gone for an hour,

and they come home and have no one to talk to. So it’s like,

“Why am I doing this when there’s no one to have a conversation with?”

TalkBox.Mom is going to allow your whole family

to have a conversation, and that’s going to keep them interested.

And that’s going to keep you interested as the mom or dad

because you’re going to see results,

so it’s, in just kind of spiral out of control and the next

thing you know, you’re going to be having full conversations

in a foreign language!

So, I think that that’s an easy way to have buy-in. Let your

family choose the language and then keep adding to the conversation,

and it’s just going to go pretty smooth.

Click the link below if you would like to find out how your

family can buy-in to a new foreign language!


To see all of the languages TalkBox.Mom offers, click here!

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