How to Master a Foreign Language in Unconventional Circumstances?

The first year of the baby’s life is a great opportunity for his mummy to do what she has always wanted but never had time for. For example, it can be creative work and/or mastering of a foreign language. Not possible? Just the opposite! Natalie and I have shared our experience where to find time for it on the pages of this blog. But besides time, one should be able to accommodate him/herself to the circumstances. How? I will explain it by giving an example. The language being learnt could be any language.

Have you paid attention that there is also a little one in the picture?

How to master a foreign language when you have a baby?

When one of my acquaintances had returned after her visit to Italy, she had a dream – to learn Italian. In a year, a daughter arrived in their family. It was then when she bought an Italian textbook, audio-tapes being a very useful supplement to it. Walking for hours along the embankment with her daughter sleeping in the pram, my friend was learning the language (keeping the Walkman in her pocket). Taking into consideration that a little baby should walk every day month after month, she has really moved forward in learning that Romanic language.

One of my students decided that she should learn English when her baby-son was 2 months old. It was September which was very close to October already (zero degrees Celsius). Her tutor (me) agreed to have meetings with her on the open air. I thought that, first, when you are walking and the brain is being saturated with oxygen, you think better and, second, such walks would be useful for me, too (I was at the beginning of my pregnancy then). It worked rather efficiently as one hour and a half of our meeting was mostly devoted to oral speech (retellings, dialogs, monologues). However, it is not very easy to find a tutor who would agree to give lessons on the open air. But, as the saying goes, one should have a desire (and the circumstances would be arranged).

As you have probably understood, I am teaching English but when our daughter had arrived I could not teach more than one student (two times a week while my mum was walking with her granddaughter). I also decided to train our baby to hearing English from her first days. It gave me an opportunity to support my level of English at the same time. Reading fiction in English to our daughter (little pieces from different books, for different levels), I paid attention to the turns of speech, wrote down unknown words in my notebook, translated them with the help of Lingvo sitting outside on a folding chair with a laptop beside the pram and when we went for a walk to the Embankment I learnt the words.

Such a creative approach…

Have you had an interesting experience of learning a foreign language? Would you like to share?

Anastasia

Next time we will tell you about an “equipment” which is very handy for newly parents.

Illustrations to the Article:

1-one of the best pictures of National Geographics; 2-photo by the author