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Learning Another Language

© Beverley Paine, April 2006

Language is central to culture. Kill the language and you wipe out the culture. When we teach our children another language it's not just about learning to have a conversation or understand the language. Learning another language as a homeschooler widens a person's understanding about culture and building tolerance and respect for diversity.

It's easy to incorporate learning another language and culture into home education when we treat it as a series of 'unit studies'.

Pick a language - say Indonesian - and then learn about the people, the history, the culture. It's impossible not to learn a few words here and there of Indonesian. When you focus on learning the language in context though you create a rich learning experience and the information about culture, history, geography, etc will be retained more easily.

You can also make learning the language an integral part of your every day life. For example: Learn the names of cooking utensils, and then when cooking dinner at night, use those words instead of pot, pan, cup and plate!

Learning another language can be easy and fun, if you do it like this. I began doing this when my children were toddlers. We never ever got to the level of conversational Indonesian, but the kids can recognise the language when it's spoken on the radio or television and do understand a few words. More importantly they have developed that respect for diversity and other cultures...

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The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.

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