Getting my five-year-old interested in French

[Sedge]

Disclaimer before I continue: I have no children and I grew up in a completely monolingual family (also, I've always been fascinated by languages, so I'm a terrible example)... but my mom was sometimes brilliant at getting kids to engage with subject material. (she also was sometimes terrible at it. but more often, she was successful).

The number one thing was to use the kid's preferences and interests. For instance, my brother liked "experimenting" in the kitchen, as well as just helping my mom to cook. We helped cook on a regular basis, but because "experimenting" made a huge mess, it was a special treat. So if my mom had wanted to teach him French, she might have started by teaching him the words for different foods and for actions you do in the kitchen, and then as he learned more, reward him by letting him "experiment"... but he has to tell her what he's doing, in French. Or maybe he gets to tell her what to do, but he has to give the instructions in French. He liked sports, especially soccer, so teaching him vocabulary relevant to sports as he is playing them, and then engaging him with the French soccer team, would have been another avenue. And, he liked engines and mechanical things, so teaching him vocabulary relevant to that and then giving him an age-appropriate engineering activity to do where the instructions are in French (at his age, perhaps a YouTube video; as he learns to read more, written instructions are also great).

If I were trying to teach a kid that age French, I would probably style the language as a secret code and give them mysteries to solve or scavenger hunts to follow by learning the language as they go; this is something that Mom and grandma both did to keep kids occupied (and to be educational while making things seem like a game). Mom did in-home day-care for about fifteen years; Grandma was an elementary school teacher.

[Cavesa]

My kids are similar in age. They have been responsive to reading books in French. I do sentence by sentence translations, but with each additional repetition I translate less and less. I read preschool books because they tend to describe everyday living situations, and the text correlates well with the pictures. Popular titles include T'choupi, Lou les Loup, Petite Ours Brun and Léo et Popi. A notch more complex is Calliou. All of these are series, I was able to find “coffret”, collections, on Amazon.fr. The vocabulary in these books has *a lot* of overlap and really reinforces a core kid vocabulary of a few hundred words.

ETA: Stephanie Blake books are hilarious and popular with my kids. We love ”Je veux pas aller à l'école”. (Despite her name, these are books originally written in French.)

I love this idea. The main strengths, as I see them, are:
-it is an activity done together. Reading to children has many benefits. Here, you also get language learning on top of all those.
-there is new content (=value) for the child. They discover a new story they can fall in love with and want to reread.
-there is real language learning included, they are not watching totally foreign stuff they cannot understand
-it normalises language learning and use. If Mom reads in more than one language, it is a normal thing to do.
-with well chosen books, the kid uses elements of normal development of their own language to learn a new one. nice

I read somewhere about a kid getting fluent in mandarin when the parents spoke cantonese (or other way round, who cares) just by watching mandarin language tv. In the end what you really want it for the kid to hear the sounds, as it's the hardest to catch up on later.
Can you have Netflix on a VPN so that it is in France or Canada, so it shows all the French shows? Might even work just by setting the language to French. I do that for Korean.

That's what this family has been doing, and it doesn't work well.

I have no doubts the Cantonese speaking family you've heard about exists (and probably a number of them). I know of people who learnt a lot of German thanks to tv during communism as kids (they lived near the borders and could catch the tv channels in times of extremely few opportunities to learn a language. They usually didn't get to a too high active level, but they learn enough to have a hell of an advantage over majority of the society). But in both examples, the kid had a strong motivation to learn from the tv, to stick to watching it. The content in new language was widening their cultural horizons, offering more entertainment, and competing very well with content available in their native language (and probably winning).

This is different. You and I watch content in the foreign languages both to have fun and to improve our skills. But the anglophone child is primarily looking for fun and the content in a different language is not bringing them anything new or better. The motivation and fascination is simply not automatically there.

Don't worry about any kind of rapidly closing development window. That could lead to frustration if he doesn't pick it up as you think he should, and he'll feel that pressure and wonder why this is so important to you and his mom.

I totally agree. Yes, it is true that starting early can be an advantage. But it is overestimated in some ways, and the pressure on parents (and secondarily the children) can be counter productive. And again, this is different for an anglophone and for someone else. A child with an internationally worthless native language understands why their monolingual parents pressure them to learn a foreign language. An anglophone one might see it just as another unnecessary obligation invented just to spoil their free time, and hypocrisy.

As other commenters have said, it's good to even just have the language in the air so that he can hear it. I think it's important to set an example as parents that you and your wife both enjoy learning and using French. Be open that this is something you do for yourself as well and enjoy it instead of a goal for you to specifically have your son learn.

Yes, this is extremely important.

People are often obsessed about early language learning for accent, or vocab, or whatever. But the most important part is nurturing a good attitude. A warm relationship towards language learning. A way to see plurilingualism as the norm.

The only language that a kid that age understands is fun.

....

If all else fails, and you're not able to succeed in getting them to enjoy French, stop; don't destroy forever their chance of loving such a beautiful language by forcing it.

It's very interesting to hear from someone actually teaching kids, thanks! It should just be noted, that it requires specific skills and personality. Not every teacher is able to pull this off. When I was a child, I had the "pleasure" to attend such classes too (and I can tell you that they made no impact in the long run. I was starting from zero a few years later and I was the worst in class). Some teachers try this and it is fun and the child learns stuff. Many try, and it is just not efficient in the better case, or as well stupid and not fun in the worse one.

I'd totally agree with the last bit. It is far too easy to destroy curiosity and potential love for something.

[rdearman]

You could always speak to your wife in French about him. This would make him pick up an interest. It is the reason I started learning French, so I could figure out what they were saying about me.

[PeterMollenburg]

For a child to truly become bilingual there must be a need to use the language. It's simply not going to happen at 2 or 3 years old let alone 5 years old if there is no need for the child to use the second language - meaning it's simply much much much easier to use English instead - especially after five years of exposure and use.

A bit of background first. I have two children (a 5 and a half year old and a nearly three year old). For the first 5 years of my eldest's life, I've only communicated in French with her. Only read to her in French, only spoke with her in French, only watched TV in French. And for much of our youngest, I've done the same (not English, no. Not only French because I"ve started to introduce a third language, more on that later). We live in Australia and have no French relatives, friends or family. Today my children speak to me in French only, because I created that all important need - to have to speak to me in French or they simply won't be able to communicate with me.

However, for a little while there was a challenging period in which she simply wanted to answer in English. This is because earlier on I would sometimes respond to her in French when she would talk to me in English (although I tried to discourage it my mind would get lazy as I found it a bit overwhelming at times perhaps). It became semi-habitual, in that it was on the odd occasion okay for her to respond in English if I spoke to her in French. She was frustrated because of two reasons. First it was easier for her to use English, as it came to her easier, being the dominant language around her. Second she simply didn't have some of the necessary French vocabulary.

At this point, this is where many a bilingual situation has failed. I've met people in my life and read about people attempting to raise their children bilingually who gave in in the end and either let their child respond in English, or gave up altogether because they feared damaging their relationship with the child. This is why I've met people who understand Italian as adults (lots of Italian immigrant families here) in that they can understand spoken Italian, but cannot speak it. As for the emotional concern of the child's well-being. I think it's down to clear boundaries and that need - give the child the clear need for the language and stick to your guns (boundaries).

When my daughter could not reply to me in French I would give her the answer in French initially and get her to repeat it. Then I moved to giving her the start of the answer and getting her to use her own mind and finish the sentence (in French of cousre) - or the start of a word and she would finish the word. No English ever anymore (not that I ever allowed that much). You create the need that your child must reply in the second language, and they will soon learn to do so. But help them. Be kind, engage, be happy, be fun, give them the tools. Btw, I was at B1 level when my daughter was born and when I lacked vocabulary or the ability to say certain things along the way, I'd look it up, then say it, or I'd use a workaround and look it up later on my own.

This doesn't help you so much, as your child is five now. However, if you begin and work towards creating more and more of a need (that is, converting your conversations gradually to French and only French some day), this is achievable. Something else in my more recent experience may be of use for you.

I've now started introducing Dutch to both of my children. However, although the idea of immersion is great from birth, introducing it cold and overnight is harsh and mean to a child who's been using another language for a while. So what to do? And if your French is still beginner level as well? Here's my advice (and what I'm doing with Dutch). Learn as much French as you can every day to increase your repertoire/ ability to engage in French with your child. Your wife could do this too. By picking up a course yourself and committing to an hour of learning a day (or more if possible - whatever your tolerance, available time and enthusiasm allow for). Aim to improve your French daily - make it your mission. Once you are good enough with the pronunciation, begin reading simple books to your child. Reading by far outweighs screens.

Although sitting your child in front of screens may bring some level of linguistic comprehension eventually and be of some use (I do utilise screen use as well), research shows that screens are far from perfect for child brain development and more specifically for those under 3 years of age, it's clearly harmful. In fact, I heard recently that a child can learn new vocabulary from real conversations much more efficiently than from watching TV/screens, particularly if they are left to their own devices. Children love their parents to watch their favourite show with them. Imagine a child suddenly thrust into a foreign world of TV (fun is gone) AND they're doing it alone. I despise where screen use is currently and going in future with regards to schools, but I won't get into that any further at the moment. Reading aloud to your child is so much better for so many reasons. It will also force you to focus on your pronunciation and learn new vocabulary. If it really scares you, go for either audio books and or bilingual books in the beginning. With audio books you can listen to the page first with your child, then read it again aloud yourself. This will provide engagement and reinforcement in reading it twice. Bilingual books will give you the ability to explain to your child what's going on in the beginning, and give yourself a reference where you might be a bit lost.

Read to your son daily in French if possible and eventually aim to increase the amount of time as well. Look up words you don't know. Keep studying yourself daily, and little by little, every single sentence you say to your child in English, repeat it in French. It will take some getting used to, but promise yourself every time you forget to do it, that you will instantly begin doing it again. If it's uneasy around others, just do it at home, but absolutely remain committed. Say English first, then French for a while (a month, two months). Then mix it. French first, EN second, EN second, FR first for another couple of months as an example. Then move towards French always first and English second for some time, again weeks, months, whatever feels right. Then, move towards French first but only providing the English duplicate/translation for your child if he needs it.

Quick note- People probably think this is impossible. It's not, it's very doable. Just remain dedicated. Your child can become bilingual and you (or your wife) will be learning the language simultaneously. More of the process below.

Play around with it with your child at times - get him to repeat French here and there if he can without making it stressful at all so he starts becoming comfortable with speaking it. Accept him responding in English to your French for a good while after you've dropped the English repetitions until you are capable of totally communicating with him in French. Then start having French only days, where you do not repeat in English the same sentences, but allow him to always be able to ask you what something means and then you can tell him in English to explain. This will become less and less, and you can even, once good enough begin providing descriptions in simple French. Eventually, what you'd be aiming for is eliminating English. But who or where will be French ONLY?

We use a one parent/one language approach. Thus, either you or your wife could use French ONLY at some point, and once you reach that point, you must not use English anymore. OR, you could make your home French only and outside of the home English. Anyway, you can by the above methods, eventually, rather seemlessly but with much effort have your child completely understanding French. Then (or during the above process) you follow as I did with French with my daughter to get him to speak more. Get him to repeat his English in French. Eventually your aiming for the same thing, eliminating his own use of English in place of French. You need patience, dedication and trust in the process.

As others have indicated, engaging content is very important. I see reading as a MUCH more important factor than screen use. Conversation is also important. Find French song books - sing with your child and follow along in the books. Completely convert any media, eventually to French only. I have French audio books for car trips. Little disney books they can hold and follow along with when we drive anywhere. With TV you could use a reward system initially. Watch 30min French and we'll reward you with 30 min of English TV, for example. But eventually, you'd bee seeking to getting your child to watch more and more French (in place of English). Do you buy DVDs? Dowload content? Try to get options that have both EN and FR audio (I never buy a DVD anymore without French audio). Play with your child in French. Anything you or your wife might do now in English, repeat as much of it as possible in French and so on...

Anyway, that's my advice. It takes much dedication. Don't underestimate the power of influence of the majority language, but definitely do not underestimate your ability to create a bilingual child with effort and application.

Edit:
Another thing I have done recently is to have a subscription to a few children's French magazines. My kids get pretty keen on seeing what's in the magazines when they arrive in the post every so often. One of them comes with a CD so can be used as an audio book. There's a good range of kids magazines - learning to read, stories, animals etc.

Btw, you mentioned Netflix. It's a pretty decent resource actually when it comes to watching (i'm definitely not completely opposed to TV, I'm just mindful of it). I created a profile and on the website itself I changed the language settings to French. This will open you up to much more content being available with French audio (and subtitles) than would normally be the case simply within your standard English as your main language for your account. I'm thankful for whoever originally on this website explained this and consequently I now frequently switch between French, Dutch and Norwegian as my language settings to gain more access in those languages while watching Netflix. A VPN can be useful for even more content as well. Also, if you use apple, creating a foreign ID can provide you with more content.

Also, as someone else mentioned, if there's a local Alliance Française or another similar French group, that can help. My daughter has attended on and off a French group once a week. You can get ideas from some of the French teachers, borrow books, magazines, audio books and movies. You can also get feedback on your own French. Such a group is not essential, but it would be nice if you child could hear some more French from outside from the home and networking is generally a good thing in language learning - the more connections you have to French, the more chance of engaging with the language.

Disclaimer: My wife and I are planning to homeschool and thus won't have the issue of our children being flooded with English 5 days a week at school. This does not render all the above useless. It just means you need to ensure your boundaries are firm (not mean) and stick to your plan(s). It's definitely achievable. Good luck!

PS: If you decided to be the 'French parent', you might want to reconsider your language learning yourself. If I were you, I'd be dropping the learning of any other language for a good while to focus on improving your French and being there for your the mission of improving your son's French as well. The better you are the better he can become and you can learn together. I am still learning new French words and expressions regularly and doing so side by side with my children. It's just a thought, not a must. It depends on time and other factors. If quitting German was going to mean you'd resent French, then don't quit but worth considering how to approach the learning of languages at least.

[mentecuerpo]

I hope this helps!

When my daughter was five, I bombarded her with French songs.

I had an Ipad, and we would watch French songs for children in YouTube, every day, before she woud go to bed (fortunately, there are so many on songs with nice videos in youtube). We had so much fun!

I played a French song CD (the same one) for kids every night before she went to sleep. I would turn it off after she was sleeping.

This is the CD I played for her every night. It has 48 classic songs for children.
See below

https://play.google.com/store/music/alb ... towa&hl=en

I hired a French Tutor who came home once a week. To this day, she tutors my daughter every Sunday.

At one point, I was thinking of hiring a French nanny from France to my home in Phonix, but I decided not to do that at the end (I did want problems with my wife).

We try to travel to France every year during summer break, and she gets classes in summer camps in France.

I think the Ipad with French music videos was an activity that my daughter and I enjoyed so much. Unfortunately, my daughter is now hitting puberty, young teenager, so I am not "the king" anymore. Oh, well, it is just for the next ten years, she'll get over it for sure.

When she was five, I even put the following song as my ring tone on my cell phone; my medical students were learning the lyrics too!
This is the one on my phone back then:

J'ai faim, j'ai soif par Alain Le Lait
(CD: It's So Good, Alain Le Lait: 2003•12 songs•28:46•Children's Music:
https://play.google.com/store/search?q= ... usic&hl=en)

https://youtu.be/LFAHXJwUGKI

Here are other examples for youtube:

https://youtu.be/CisINDlpwFk

https://youtu.be/1T9b0cax6s4

https://youtu.be/W0aMIKXajw8

https://youtu.be/LB-RUwDaz20

Triva:
Au Clair de la Lune - By the Light of the Moon (April 9, 1860)
https://www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php
Scott recorded the French folksong "Au Clair de la Lune" on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Académie des Sciences in 1861. It remains the earliest clearly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered.

Beautiful song, Au clair de la lune, the kids version:
https://youtu.be/IYLTc3tGdzc

https://youtu.be/mkKgGyFTBm8

[Stelle]

Where do you live? Do you have access to French or French immersion schools? Because that would be the easiest solution! Otherwise, a good tutor with experience teaching children might be worth exploring.

I teach early French Immersion in a Canadian public school. Kids need human interaction to learn - so stories, songs, nursery rhymes, games, conversations. Your child will not learn a language by watching TV!

[Iversen]

Simple advice: use French with your spouse to speak about 'secret subjects' and let the kid know that this language is none of his/her business. And hide all books in French, but not so thoroughly that a dedicated youngster can't find them.

[mentecuerpo]

Where do you live? Do you have access to French or French immersion schools? Because that would be the easiest solution! Otherwise, a good tutor with experience teaching children might be worth exploring.

I teach early French Immersion in a Canadian public school. Kids need human interaction to learn - so stories, songs, nursery rhymes, games, conversations. Your child will not learn a language by watching TV!

The problem is that there are very few bilingual schools in the USA.

In Phoenix, for example, there is one, but it does not provide high school education, just till 8th grade.

There is another French school in Tempe, AZ, but too far from Phoenix.

Then, a French tutor and songs and youtube media to supplement.

[Cavesa]

Just a practical note: PeterMollenburg describes one of the learning ways, when a parent basically becomes "a native" for the purpose of the child's education. It can work well, but only if you are good enough at the language. If you are not that good, it works well in combination with the rest of immersion (a classical example: immigrants in a new country. They often speak the country's language at home, even though the parents may not be good at it. Yes, the children learn it well, but also thanks to school, they don't learn the language of their parents).

But if the parent is the only daily source of immersion, they need to be excellent. I've heard of a few examples of this not being the case (for example a sibling's classmate). So, one of the native languages of the child was Very Bad English.

The OP doesn't seem to be at a too good level, intermediate is not enough for becoming a "native parent" in a foreign language.

[PeterMollenburg]

Just a practical note: PeterMollenburg describes one of the learning ways, when a parent basically becomes "a native" for the purpose of the child's education. It can work well, but only if you are good enough at the language. If you are not that good, it works well in combination with the rest of immersion (a classical example: immigrants in a new country. They often speak the country's language at home, even though the parents may not be good at it. Yes, the children learn it well, but also thanks to school, they don't learn the language of their parents).

But if the parent is the only daily source of immersion, they need to be excellent. I've heard of a few examples of this not being the case (for example a sibling's classmate). So, one of the native languages of the child was Very Bad English.

The OP doesn't seem to be at a too good level, intermediate is not enough for becoming a "native parent" in a foreign language.

I agree. However, even if the parent starts out at a lower level, provided the parent is super determined, and uses as many resources as possible, it's achievable. My daughter is attending a French children's class once a week at the Alliance Francaise and she's already complaining that the other children to not speak enough French. I started at B1 when she was born and I'm perhaps now C1 at a guestimation possibly beyond. It's taken a lot of hard work, and as many know I'm a perfectionist with my accent, but the point is you can start out at a lower level, provided you are absolutely determined to improve (along with your child).

Okay, I started from my daughter's birth and it's easier speaking to a baby than a 5 year old, but even now beginning with Dutch with my daughter (and she's 5 y.o.) I'm again at a lower level it can be done. These are the important factors, imo for a non-native parent who speaks a language at a lower level-

1. Try to match the natives accent ALWAYS as close as possible and if you can't then they must have access to better pronunciation as often as possible (preferably other speakers, but there are audiobooks, TV shows, podcasts in the form of stories, classes/groups)
2. Only speak to your child using the words and grammar you know and you know are correct (grammatically and pronunciation), but....
3. ....keep adding new vocabulary/grammar to your repertoire and use it when are confident with your child.
4. Read a lot to your child out loud with CORRECT pronunciation (if you can't do it yet, then aim in your studying to reach learn the language good enough so that you are at the point that you can at least read with correct pronunciation - then you will be in a position to expose your child to more of the language AND you'll be learning too - you don't have to know the meaning of every word, just know that you are pronouncing them correctly, AND you can use a dictionary here and there or learn from context).

If you only are starting out with basic words, greetings etc it does not matter. Basically the more you can learn yourself the better your child will become, but you can learn together. If you're not native-like you can aim to get there in 5 years for example, or 10, but hey even if you only ever make it to B1, you can still speak B1 level to your child but English will still dominate. However, with exposure to more advanced content your child should get a passive understanding of more advanced vocabulary, but much of my advice has been around getting your child to become fully bilingual, which definitely requires determination to raise your language level.