More often than not, parents find themselves desperate and concerned about their kids not actually learning english, even if they’re taking lessons at school.
Because of this, sometimes they seek for help outside of school, paying for extra services such as Open English.
But is it actually worth it to pay for extra lessons when your kid is already learning english at school?
Does Open English for kids really work?
While any external service that you decide to hire such as Open English for kids or any other can be helpful for your kid, you need to first take into consideration how it will impact him first.
Imagine already having english lessons at school, which can be boring and tedious, and then getting home to have to keep on taking english lessons and also do your homework. This kind of situation would make most kids hate english.
One of the most important things for kids to learn is to be comfortable and have fun while doing so, if they start seeing it as something that bothers them then it will be much harder for them to learn.
So would making them take lessons aside from the ones they already take all morning in school really be a solution? Not really. So what can you do then?
Identifying the problem
It’s important to understand what the true issue is, maybe it’s not even fault of the school that our kids are not learning english as fast and effectively as we wish they would, it can be because of other several things:
- The school isn’t offering enough sessions.
- The teaching method is dull and boring for kids.
- Kids are only practicing english at school.
- Kids don’t know how important it is to learn english.
- Kids don’t use english on their daily life.
Kids really need to have a good and extensive regular interaction with the english language in order for them to become used to speaking and listening to it. Otherwise it will never have the necessary impact to help them become bilingual.
Is my school good enough for my kid?
Most schools nowadays are bilingual, which means they include english as a subject in their program, but in some cases they teach it only two or three times a week, which is not nearly enough to make kids learn the language properly.
Even if the lessons were every day it would still not be enough to achieve a proper english learning process, since just sitting one hour listening to a teacher saying words in english and writing simple sentences is not really the best method.
Sometimes this can even result boring and tedious for kids, which would automatically close their brain to keep receiving information and will never reach their full potential, and that wouldn’t even be your fault as a parent, or your children’s fault. We need to understand how a child’s mind works.
It would be ideal to have english lessons divided into several sections, for example have an entire subject dedicated to just grammar, another one to writing, and so on.
So what do I do then?
Luckily enough, there are bicultural programs, which teach english as a subject but also teach most of their subjects in english, making kids more engaged with the language.
This way they practice it more and more every day, which helps them get used to it entirely and start looking at it as part of their daily life, almost as if they lived in an english speaking country.
They become interested in english as a language and become eager to learn more and more, maybe even start to watch movies and tv shows in english instead of recurring to dubbing.
This kind of method is really helpful for kids, since they can have fun while learning and also understand the importance of why they should learn english and how much it can do for their future.
How can Colegio Washington help your kids
In Colegio Washington we have a bicultural program that not only teaches english successfully, but also does it in an innovative way in which kids have fun and are happy while learning.
Through the use of technology and modern teaching methods, kids play and learn by themselves, in some cases teachers are there just to ensure they’re on the right path, kids are curious and question themselves and their teachers, truly achieving their highest potential.
Kids today need to learn english properly since it can be a huge differential for their future, so it can’t be something that we as parents take lightly, it needs to be considered thoroughly. Click in the link below to get to know more about Colegio Washington and how we can help secure your children’s future.