Helping Your Expat Children to Learn a Foreign Language

Need for communication – The more your kids will have a desire to communicate with their teachers and classmates the more effort they will make to learn a foreign language. However, in some schools you might find that there are teachers or other kids that speak your native language. While this help your kids to feel more comfortable it might slow down their second language acquisition.

Motivation – The more motivation your kids have to learn a foreign language the faster they will acquire it. Why? Because they will have a positive attitude and therefore they will invest time and effort to learn and speak the foreign language. But, if your kids are lacking motivation, due to anger about the move, anxiety, embarrassment, etc’., then the acquisition of the second language can be much slower.

 Educational Environment – If schools at the target country have a supportive system and they manage special programs for kids who do not speak the local language (like ESL programs) then the acquisition of the second language will be much simpler.