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Benefits of Parental support on children’s English Language Acquisition

Introduction

Learning English is one of the necessities for surviving in the globalized world, as even a single discussion, speech, letter, or email is in the English language. The children whose mother tongue is English don’t need parental support as much to start learning English as those from foreign languages. The children whose mother tongue is some foreign language could find great difficulty in getting introduced to English. The main problem that the teachers even feel when they are about to start the first class of English is the elimination of barriers to communication, or the flow of information continued among the children. It is highly required that the parents contribute equally to keeping the children engaged with the new language (English) so that they will be ready for the next lesson prepared by the teacher and can keep their memory strong about the previous lecture. All these things can only be done by the parents. The main aim of the paper is to discuss whether parental support is more effective in the native language of the children while learning English or in the direct English language.

Discussion

When a child with a background in the English language enrols in a language class, he finds no difficulty in learning English and its basics, pronunciation and vocabulary issues because he lives in an environment where English is being practised by his parents, family, elder siblings, relatives and other people with whom he is interacting. These children are deemed outstanding in the class and always lead only because of their strong English language background. These children don’t need the extra support and concentration from the adults to get on the track of learning English as they already know the meaning of most of the words and the basic sentence structure. They also have fluency, interact, and make conversations in English, which keeps them on the right track of learning (Barac & Bialystok, 2012).

The real problem comes for foreign language learners. The students and children whose native language is not English didn’t find any experience of proper interaction with the language or the usage of it in the necessary routine (Barac & Bialystok, 2012). The main problems they face are the higher levels of anxiety while pronouncing the words in the English language classes. People from all over the world are trying to learn English and they have intentions to learn the language on their own but the children don’t know the real benefit of what they are doing and at any difficult stage, they may step back. The teachers could not be counted as the only individuals who are responsible for making the children learn English. The parents also have an important role in helping them learn the language.

Children from the background of other languages who are enrolled in learning the language need complete support from the school, teachers, parents, and the community. The teachers obviously play the basic role in introducing the lessons, but the enhancement part is done by the parents (Leidy, Guerra & Toro, 2010). After school, all of the children’s time is spent with the parents; they could be supportive in engaging them with the homework and the literature provided by the teachers. There are many ways that the parents can enhance their speaking skills, generate fluency, and elaborate on the structure of the sentences. The teacher mostly provides heavy literature which seems boring to the children, but with the help of their parents, they find interest and learn quickly. The children are not mature enough to understand the language, new vocabulary, and sentence structures at first sight, but the parents can help them practice the words and their meanings (Chaffin et al., 2009). It will help the children to at least get adjusted to the new language’s environment, and they will always be prepared for new words and vocabulary.

Most parents wish their children to learn the English language at an early age, many believe that getting their kids to learn English as early as the age of two to three could help children live in a better way in the globalized era of the current world. The first and foremost crucial factor in encouraging English language learning for kids is their parent’s involvement and interest in their learning process. The initial learning of kids starts at home, and parents can facilitate their English language learning by using many tools and techniques (Havighurst et al., 2010). The best that parents can do to facilitate English language learning for their kids is to learn the language themselves. If the parents are native speakers of English, it will be an advantage for the kids to be native speakers of English. The actual problem occurs when children are to learn the English language as a foreign or secondary language.

While having a holiday, it is necessary to have a good connection with the new language with which the young children are engaged. If they don’t find any chance to practice, the anxiety of losing the taste and flow seems to evade them (Havighurst et al., 2010). Parents are helpful in removing that anxiety. Such anxiety is often supplemented with the bad experiences and memories of learning a second language in school, which can have a bad impact on your children. There are different studies which evaluated the parent’s role in English learning. In a study conducted by the British Council in the UK, forty per cent out of 2000 adults, reported that they get nervous while speaking a foreign language and can provide their kids a “go” which is counted in the worst acts, besides committing mistakes in speaking is far better than getting a sentence prepared perfectly to utter (Paradis, 2011).

Kids have a natural tendency to learn things without the intervention of adults through playful games and without proper caring for the mistakes they make along the learning process. To get the children to learn the English language faster, the parents may use it while playing with their kids at home and on vacations (Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011). This way they can learn the secondary language the same way they learned their primary language. It helps to develop beautiful English learning memories for kids to remember when they become adults and can assist their children. Normally, people remember and can re-utter the phrases they learned in storytelling time even though reading English storybooks to children at bedtime is also an effective technique that parents may adopt to make English learning kids faster and more effective.

Very young kids normally do not question the language the stories are read to them in, the only thing amazing them is the ritual of listening to stories at bedtime. This way they learn the language in the unintentional natural flow (Cheung & Pomerantz, 2011). They never read those books but still remember the phrases out of those stories in a cherished way. Bedtime storytelling is a powerful tool to instil secondary language in kids’ memories. The stories with visual illustrations even enhance the learning process of the respective language. Audiobooks can also be used to improve listening skills and learning, and this may be more useful for parents if they lack the confidence to read the stories aloud to kids (Rogers et al., 2009). Learning a language is typically considered a process in classrooms, with textbooks and supporting classroom material, and it involves memorizing the verbs and parts of speech. However, the process for the kids should start with getting them exposed to the language through untraditional tools and methods, such as watching cartoons in the English language is found to be very useful in learning English as the kids repeat the dialogues of their favourite cartoon characters and try using those phrases where they find it to be relevant to the situation in reality.

In the early ages of the children when they are exposed to the language, the main aim is to introduce them to the rhythms, pronunciations and the calculations of mouth movements for speaking a specific word. In the schools, the teacher does not have enough time to help every child to speak the best as expected and there is also no possibility to stop the lecture or the learning period for a single or a couple of students (Rogers et al., 2009). The parents are the only source that could be used to grow the children’s language skills. Parents can use many ways to enhance their children’s speaking and listening skills in the English language. For the natives, English are a necessity. Still, for families where English is the secondary language, the parents’ contribution is highly appreciated and will also benefit the children (Kubota & McKay, 2009).

Some of the most important tips from the Chinese multilingual learning guidelines are taken, which could elaborate ways through which the parents, guardians, and caretakers can play an important role in helping the children improve their English skills.

One of the best techniques being used by the multilingual learning guides is not getting afraid of using the native language as a helper for learning the English language. Since the child well knows the native language well and has plenty of vocabulary. The unfamiliar words and phrases could be explained with proper help from the native language. Parents can help their children learn English by relating the words to their native language so that they can also remember the meanings (Clarke, 2009). This technique will help the parents to correlate the English language and culture with the native language and the culture respectively, and establishing the connection between the two languages will remove the complexities in learning English and academic literacies.

Another important and very effective technique that parents can use, highlighted in many learning forums, is maintaining the routine of doing homework daily. It is highly requested that he does not miss a single homework assignment as it will break the flow, which is very precisely being maintained by the teacher for the student so that he can learn the language properly and adequately. The parents’ help is necessary for developing the children’s interest in making the daily routine of studying. Parents are supposed to provide the environment with the necessary resources remove the necessary disturbances and minimize distractions.

Parents are also advised to help their children learn the English language better. One of the known ways is to study the same thing and the same pattern of words in several new ways (Kubota & McKay, 2009). The best ways include folktales or tiny children’s storybooks, in which both the child and the parent are familiar and know the story natively. It is known that a young child would not be able to remember several phrases or will not be able to understand the words in the first flow so it is required to repeat the story in front of the children by explaining the plot in different ways which will help in strengthening the concept of the book. Language games could also be a very good example of understanding the English language in some better ways.

The parents would be requested to involve the children in the extracurricular activities for example in the participation of the school’s yearly book or in speeches and dialogues which could be prepared under the parent’s influence (Clarke, 2009). These activities help the children develop their language and literacy, which helps strengthen their language skills. The extracurricular activities help the children to manage their selves including communication, leadership, perspectives, roles and responsibilities and many other skills. The teachers do use the language inside the school and the rest of the part is supposed to be completed by the parental support only as the teacher is not able to give the possible time for these things and hardly completes its lecture and other basic things that are needed for a child to cover the syllabus.

The parents are requested to always get in touch with the teachers so that they would know the progress level of their child in learning the language and maintaining his academic and social progress inside the school (Parkay, Stanford & Gougeon, 2010).  The coordination and the partnership between the home and the school will help the child succeed in learning the new things that are necessary for securing a successful future. It is known that if the parent-teacher interaction were completely ended, there would be no checks and balances on the students from the school or the teacher’s side (Barac & Bialystok, 2012). Millions of children are enrolled in learning the English language, which is necessary to find diversity in their careers. They would be able to improve their academics as it is known that most of the education delivered worldwide is completely English-based.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, it can be explained that parents play an important role in learning the English language among early-age adolescents and children who spend most of their time with their parents. The problem in learning English comes to the non-English children who have little or no interaction with the English language at all and find learning English to be one of the most difficult tasks because of the lack of support and practice. Parental support is required highly and the parents/guardians are highly required to help their children learn English if they don’t know English as a language then at least create and maintain the learning environment. It would help them keep engaged with English properly and precisely. In the end, it can be concluded that the English language is necessary, and without it, survival would be impossible for a human living in a globalized village. Parents must engage their children in learning English at very early stages.

References

Barac, R., & Bialystok, E. (2012). Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child development83(2), 413-422.

Chaffin, M., Valle, L. A., Funderburk, B., Gurwitch, R., Silovsky, J., Bard, D., … & Kees, M. (2009). A motivational intervention can improve retention in PCIT for low-motivation child welfare clients. Child maltreatment14(4), 356-368.

Cheung, C. S. S., & Pomerantz, E. M. (2011). Parents’ involvement in children’s learning in the United States and China: Implications for children’s academic and emotional adjustment. Child development82(3), 932-950.

Clarke, P. M. (2009). Supporting children learning English as a second language in the early years (birth to six years). VCAA.

Havighurst, S. S., Wilson, K. R., Harley, A. E., Prior, M. R., & Kehoe, C. (2010). Tuning in to Kids: improving emotion socialization practices in parents of preschool children–findings from a community trial. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry51(12), 1342-1350.

Kubota, R., & McKay, S. (2009). Globalization and language learning in rural Japan: The role of English in the local linguistic ecology. Tesol Quarterly43(4), 593-619.

Leidy, M. S., Guerra, N. G., & Toro, R. I. (2010). Positive parenting, family cohesion, and child social competence among immigrant Latino families. Journal of Family Psychology24(3), 252.

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