Play kids' way into 2nd language

Editor's note: The following article was written by Trevor McKee, who founded International Language Programs in Brigham Young University's Family Studies Center.

Like many in this area, I speak a second language. I wanted to share it with my children but was a horrible failure when I tried to teach our first three children. Later, I made the object of my academic interests the study of second language learning in children at home. It seemed like a terrible waste to be fluent in a second language and fail to pass it on to my children.

Like finding a rare and precious seashell just washed upon the beach, we finally found a way to pass my language skills on to our other children. As a result, our fourth and fifth daughters grew to speak Spanish fluently.

How did we pull it off? It is really quite simple — we played. I simply use the second language while playing. How enchanting it is to play with your child in your own "private" language.

Let me share a few simple steps.

Pick activities that are partylike fun to the children, speak only in the target language while playing, introduce new language only with familiar content, seldom exceed 20-30 minutes per activity, spend about three hours per day (or 15 hours a week) in the target language, sing a lot of songs, and keep the child expecting a laugh-a-minute.

Around our home we found six play "posts" for duo-lingual fun: kitchen play while mixing, baking and eating; shop playing in the garage while assembling and disassembling wooden toys; family room play for carnival and table games; patio or driveway play for sports; table play for crafts and art projects; and rug play for telling and acting out stories.

Kids learn the meanings of most words and phrases by seeing what things are and what they do. Target useful, practical phrases that they need to talk about during play. At first, the child will just follow directions. Later, he will repeat simple strings of words he has heard you say. Finally, the child will generate his own sentences.

It was thrilling to see our daughter, Sabrina, come full circle. My wife and I recently visited her in Russia while she was serving as a volunteer English teacher. She is one of some 75 college-age students participating in one of the International Language Programs.

It was great to see her teaching Russian children English by playing with them exactly the way we had played with her when we introduced her to Spanish. In an atmosphere of play, the children were unaware that they were quickly picking up English.

After one year (about 500 hours) in an ILP program, children are functionally fluent.

But what if you can't find three hours a day — are your kids doomed to speak only one language? Not on a bet. One simple strategy for getting help to cover the three hour exposure time per day is to invite a college student, a native speaker of the target language, to live with you.

Another successful strategy is to form a duo-lingual, neighborhood playgroup with other parents who speak a second language. Learning is a lot more fun in a social context with peers.