Besides actually living in another country (or hearing it at home), I would think that immersion-style programs like the one you describe are probably the best way for kids to learn another language.

There are many immersion Montessori schools around; I’ve heard Intercultural Montessori in Oak Park, IL mentioned frequently but I think there are a lot around the US and Canada. Hopefully parents can take advantage of programs like that.

Thanks for stopping by!

It’s so nice to see a conversation happening about this. I studied Montessori in Montreal in a bilingual program. I am so fortunate that I got to hear everything twice (first English and then translated into French). It really helped things stick (I speak French).

In Montreal, the standard practice is to have one teacher in a classroom speak English exclusively and the other speak French exclusively. Since the children are a mix of both languages, within a few months they naturally absorb the other language. It is rather remarkable. People who learn a second language before age 6 have the neural network for languages hard-wired into their brain. Then they can learn other languages later in life with much greater ease. What a gift.

Also, I am working with AMI trainers on creating the Japanese and Chinese 3-part card materials for those training courses. I hope to be offering those in the near future. There is such a need!

FYI, we have an audio lesson on using foreign language materials available for free download on our website at http://www.maitrilearning.com/files/foreign_language_cards.mp3

Good luck with your work!

Julia Volkman

I like the idea of using music and DVDs too. Hearing whole sentences and phrases right from the beginning is so helpful.

I had also always heard that once you learn one language, learning another is easier. I guess I’m the exception to that rule, because I didn’t do very well in French after years of German.

I do remember that both times I visited Germany, I could speak German better after a week than after years of study. I think it’s really great for kids to visit places where their second language is spoken.

Thanks for stopping by, Hanya!

Thanks for including the link to our (you and me) Mandarin Chinese Montessori material. We will be posting more soon.

We will also be doing pronunciation and audio work for Mandarin Chinese.

Personally, I find it helpful to simply start enjoying a language by listening to music, DVDs (even if my language skills in a certain language are not yet good enough to allow me to understand the whole thing), reading (or sometimes just trying to read) the newspaper, and pestering native speakers to talk with me. I speak Chinese, Korean, some Japanese, French, and some Spanish.

Interestingly for Mandarin, I always found it hard to study the tones formally. I do much better imitating people’s voices — on the phone now, people sometimes think I’m Chinese, yay! And, a lot of people torture themselves by writing characters… I just use the Mandarin option in Word and type. It’s easier and you get used to recognizing the characters, so you can start reading and that helps kick off a good feedback loop where the characters become second nature.

You can also set a lot of mobile phones to be bilingual, so you can message back and forth (or even do a word a day) with your child.

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is that children should be encouraged or helped to learn any language that appeal to them. A lot of people want to teach their children a certain language because this or that language will be “the language of the future” but it’s hard to really know what will happen and it’s certainly easier to learn a third language or a fourth one than learn that first foreign language. So, start with passion and go from there! If your adopted Chinese daughter really wants to learn Portuguese so she can go to Brazil and study the Amazon jungle, go with it!

When I was teaching, I noticed that the Spanish teacher that came once a week mostly taught the kids nouns and adjectives. I don’t think they ever learned any verbs in one whole year!

One thing I am hoping to do is create more Spanish materials that feature verbs, and that teach simple phrases and sentence. I have some, but I want to make more.

An one Montessori school where I taught, the kids studied Japanese. The sixth graders participated in an exchange student program – they spent a few weeks in Japan and then had a child from Japan come here. It was a great way to improve their language skills.