Poly The Expat Wife
Hello everyone, I am the expatriate wife from Taiwan, and our family has returned to Malaysia after the Lunar New Year! Now my son is five years old, and as he will be six next year, he’ll have the chance to go to elementary school in Taiwan!
It wasn’t until recently that my son suddenly became interested in learning English for some reason. He asked me and was very eager to find online English courses for children, in order to learn some interesting English at home.
How I found KIDLingoo
At first I didn’t have a clue, so I started searching the internet and Youtube and saw several children’s English advertisements. In the process of collecting data, I found that there are two main categories of children’s English:
– One is the app type of teaching without real teachers, which achieves the effect of learning through animations or cartoon-like streaming, much like in front of the TV. Sometimes the children can even use their fingers on the tablet.
– The other type is online teaching by real people, which can be done with ordinary laptops. I found some trial videos on Youtube, and after showing them to my children, I asked them how they felt. My elder son said he prefers teaching with real people, so I started to search in this direction, which made me find KIDLingoo.
Soon after I left a message on KIDLingoo’s official website, I was contacted by them, and a free trial teaching was arranged, and after that my son was very satisfied and liked the teacher a lot. She was full of positive energy and we could see that she was very experienced and professional.
I spent some time discussing the way we want to teach, because my son is a child who loves to interact with others, and he likes to take lessons with children, so I chose a group course.
No payment for trial class with KIDLingoo!
I was surprised that KIDLingoo offers their trials lessons for no cost at all. With other online English learning companies I have to pay for my child to participate in a trial lesson, so of course I said Yes! We were provided with a suitable time, and soon afterwards we scheduled the lesson.
Anyhow, a few questions came to my mind: If this teacher is not available at a certain time and we have to go to class again, we can only choose another teacher. So will we have the problem of inconsistent teaching? They assured us that their teachers are all of a similar highly qualified standard. Only time will tell.
The interactive KIDLingoo Lessons
Although Kidlingoo’s courses are taught by real people, they also contain many interactive elements. For example, pineapples or kittens appear on the teacher’s head, and dogs and cows and frogs appear on the screen, which is proof of of a professional technology behind the scenes. At certain times the lessons contain videos or animations (both math and English) to maintain concentration.
When we started the lessons, I would accompany my son to class, but now as soon as the lessons starts, I can do housework and other things, and only occasionally check on my child’s condition. As an expatriate family with no maid, the tasks at home are really piled up to the ceiling. Which means that even if it is only 25 minutes, it allows me to buy some time to catch my breath.
Some words to our teacher: she likes it a lot to interact with children, and uses a wide variety of ways to attract children’s interest in learning English, and even uses star stickers to give them a sense of accomplishment after completion of a certain task. I think it is the sense of accomplishment that further stimulates the child’s desire to learn!
Rock Paper Scissors with Teacher
Thank you KIDLingoo for staying with us and accompanying us all the way until the number of confirmed Covid cases dropped! Time flies, and we already took online courses for nearly a month! Now it’s time for both children to go back to school for half a day.
Step by step, we slowly got our original life back, however still waiting for the number of cases to decline and waiting for the environment to become a little safer. During this period of time, not only did my son improve his English, largely thanks to KIDlingoo, but there were also no problems with getting him back to school. Even his younger brother who sometimes accompanies me would say a few English words!
Recently I asked myself: Will young children learn English too early? The answer for me is not an easy one. In the past I did not encourage my children to learn English, because in my personal learning experience, learning sooner or later is not the key point. It might help children to learn as early as possible, though. However, I think that continuous learning on a regular basis will create and maintain a high level of language proficiency. Even now I am learning while doing my professional business translation!
English learning is so interesting!
When people live abroad, such as in Malaysia where we live, English has become particularly important. Just like I have been in Malaysia for seven years, the Malay language isn’t very prominent, as most people mainly communicate in English. There are some phenomena in Malaysia that are very special, e.g. some Indians can speak Chinese, and some Chinese cannot speak Chinese. What should I do if I meet a Chinese who can’t speak Chinese? I can only speak English! So I told my children, “If you don’t learn English well, you won’t be able to communicate with others in Malaysia.”
But I don’t force them to review or write every day, even though KIDLingoo’s teacher sends great additional learning material for homework to print out and complete. Generally, when children see that we are all communicating with others in English, they will always be very curious and want to know what we just said to others.
If the child is not willing to learn English
If you want your child to be exposed to English but the child’s willingness is not high, it doesn’t matter, you can try again later. Because of the ethnic diversity in Malaysia, the school began to teach English and Malay from an early stage on. He had homework and had to practice writing ABC. At that time, he felt that class was really uninteresting, and he didn’t want to learn English at all. Now it’s so different with KIDLingoo! He loves each lesson and is always eager to attend the next one! This is really a magical change!
So what I like to say is that even if your child doesn’t show a lot of interest in English right now, there may be an event or situation that stimulates children’s interest in English, such as it was the case with us and Kidlingoo. I always hope they my children get familiar with the English language, aren’t afraid and listen with open ears, because in our globalized world English is still the most commonly used and accepted language worldwide.
To sum it up, I am truly happy with Kidlingoo and their way of teaching English through native western teachers, and more often than not I am astonished that my son can better understand everything now. He will definitely learn more and more vocabulary, and one day understand and speak the English language completely.
KIDLingoo Article Source: https://bit.ly/3uPj7Qd
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