

By Opal Dunn, educational consultant and author




The advantages of beginning early


Stages in picking up English

Spoken language comes naturally before reading and writing.

Silent period


Beginning to talk

Building up English language







Gender differences


Language-learning environments







Parental support



Further reading:



One thing I'd add: Don't push your kids too hard!



Try listening to some of the songs on our site:

Also have a look at our article:

I hope that helps!
Best wishes,
LearnEnglish Kids team


Hi Milia,
Good luck with your dissertation!

Best wishes,
LearnEnglish Kids team


Hi, thanks for your post.
Have you seen our sister sites, TeachingEnglish and LearnEnglish Teens?
I hope that helps.

Best wishes,
LearnEnglish Kids team


Hi, thanks for writing to us with this question.
There are many different ways of learning and teaching languages depending on the context and situation.
I'm not aware of this teaching method, but in places which use a different alphabetic script then it may be considered as a useful first step. Perhaps you could ask the school to explain how this methodology works and how the students will progress to reading in English without transliteration in the future. You could try to find out if this is part of the Greek syllabus in general or just a method used by this specific school.
I hope that helps.

Best wishes,
LearnEnglish Kids team

Hi, I am a new user. I am a mother of a boy of 6 years old. Please, excuse me for my weak English and my long conversation but I think all details are important to better explain my situation. In Lebanon (my country), all schools teach from KG1 (preschool) the Arabic language + a foreign language that can be either the French (in most of the schools) or the English, or both (in private schools, and generally with the predominance of one language on the other, e.g. French will be all the week while English only twice a week, or conversely). As I am much fluent in French, and also I lived with my son in France, from his birth up to his age of 4 years, when I came back to Lebanon, I chose for him a school that has “French language predominance”. In the school that I chose, they teach French essentially, and they start teaching English from KG3 but only one hour/week while French language is taught every day. My son passed the KG2 and the KG3 in that school (he finished the KG3 in June 2015, and in September 2015 he will be in 1st grade). In the KG3 he learned almost all the Arabic and the French letters (how to read and to write), as well as lot of words in these two languages (the meaning of a word, how to copy it, but still don’t know how to write it by oneself). He also learned few things in English such as the numbers (up to 10), the alphabet, and some expressions (how to answer the questions: what’s your name? how old are you? how is the weather?). I am happy that my son starts learning new words at school. However, I start to be worried about having the two foreign languages taught at the same time: 1- In fact, the French and English languages are very similar: they use the same alphabet (as compared to the Arabic language which uses different one); the only difference lies in the pronunciation of the words. This makes me afraid that my son gets confused between the two languages. What do you think? 2- In addition, in French there are some fixed rules to know how to pronounce the vowels, while in English there are not (based on my little knowledge). I am afraid that this will make a barrier to my son to learn English especially when he starts to write words. Can you advise me how can I make learning the pronunciation and the writing of the words easy for him (and for me also, cause my English level is not so good; This disturbs me, cause i like to do with him some extra-exercises in english at home but I am afraid to teach him incorrectly !! can you advise me please). Actually, you mention in the article : "How young children learn English as another language", that “As English has 26 letters but on average 44 sounds (in standard English), introducing the remaining sounds is better left until children have more experience in using language and reading”, How can I learn these sounds in order to teach them to my son? Thanks a lot for your time and again, please accept my apologies for this long conversation.