It’s been a little bit over a month since we jumped into our language-learning adventure with Little Pim. While there has definitely been some progress – Vanessa’s vocabulary in French has expanded a bit – I must admit I have an even bigger appreciation of those who don’t speak the minority language and are still raising their children bilingual.
As I admitted to Julia Pimselur, Little Pim’s founder, during our monthly Skype “consultation,” this first month has been a real eye-opener in terms of how much effort has to go in to making sure our children get enough exposure to the language we’re trying to teach them. Honestly, it’s been difficult and I know very well that it’s not like I can just sit her in front of one of the six Little Pim DVDs and hope that she picks up new vocabulary by herself, without any kind of meaningful interaction.
Check out our Skype conversation to find out the great suggestion I got from Julia – which I’ve already implemented and will share more of with you next time – and some tips about how to effectively use media for language learning. By the way, there’s a special treat at the end when Vanessa meets Julia and they sing in French together!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxOhXbsR1C4
Disclosure: This post is part of a series of entries made possible by Little Pim. The stories, outcomes, and opinions regarding this trilingual adventure are all our own.
I am so proud of you guys!!! great video!!. And Roxana you are right…. you just made me realize that must be very difficult to raise a kid speaking another language that you are not fluent in. For me is not difficult because I speak Spanish as my first language and I feel pretty comfortable in English too. But I have some friends as you know that they are doing all the efforts to speak another language for their kids. I can’t imagine how focus you have to be.
Gracias, Mary! Yes, you have to be pretty focused if you really do want your children to learn another language. To be honest, it’s never really been too much of a struggle for us to raise our kids bilingual because we only speak Spanish to them. As you know, Vanessa learned English in preschool. But now that I’m trying to introduce French, I realize how much work and effort it takes to make it happen.
I will say, though, that I’m very lucky to have a willing participant. Vanessa loves languages as much as I do, and that makes the process completely worthwhile!
Roxana – I ADORE the video! These Skype chats are so great. Vanessa’s pronunciation sounds so good. (I don’t speak French, but it sounds right!)
Julia has plenty of good ideas and I was very entertained by Little Pim’s surprise appearance there at the end. LOL. Cute.Oh! And the i-phone app was super cool. I’d want to play with it myself.
Keep it up!
Tracy, thanks for watching it! Yes, Vanessa’s pronunciation is good, and even Julia seems to agree, so that makes me very happy!
I’ve been really enjoying our Skype conversations with Julia because I’ve been getting a lot of real-life, practical advice which I can really put to use. I hope others can use it to be inspired to continue on this language-learning journey we’re all in!
We have been trying to teach our little 22 month old French from Little Pim. I am terrible at other languages so I am hoping by starting her early, she will be much better. We would also love to have her learn Spanish and Mandarin as well. My husband speaks passable Spanish so I should have him start talking to her in Spanish. Also, we found a Spanish speaking Seventh Day Adventist church we may start going to so that she can learn Spanish and it won’t interfere with our own Sunday worship.
I’m generally a little dubious of these programs, but this video looked like the real deal so I bought a digital download of Little Pim in Italian. It seems to work really well – my daughter’s accent sounds great, and she’s really retained a lot of the words from the videos.
Pretty well focused article, nice read