The Gift of Language Our children are growing up in a very different society. One where the largest retailer doesn’t own its stock (Amazon), a global taxi company doesn’t own its vehicles (Uber), and the most popular hotel chain doesn’t …
We love teaching Spanish in nursery schools. But, you might be thinking that teaching pre-schoolers is futile. Not true – in fact we now know that the best time for a child to learn another language is in the first …
Lena is from beautiful Brittany. She’s 26, and has been in the UK for 5 years teaching French. She took time out from her busy schedule with la Academia to tell me about herself and to encourage you to learn …
Save the Children’s report (Lighting up Young Brains) states that a child’s early years are a ‘critical opportunity for the brain to develop key skills’. Toddlers’ brains are twice as active as adults and form connections at twice the rate …
There have been some depressing headlines recently about the state of foreign language learning in UK secondary schools. BBC analysis highlights language learning drops of between 30% and 50% since 2013 in the numbers taking GCSE language courses. This is …
Alan Watts the British philosopher, writer and speaker, said that ‘We seldom realise . . . that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did …
How do children learn languages? What all children have in common is curiosity and an ability to learn. Research tells us that babies begin to understand language about twice as fast as they actually speak it. According to Dr Patricia Kuhl, what’s …