More and more a greater number of parents are taking note of the advantages for their children to learn a language at an early age. Many of them educate their children bilingually, others introduce the learning of a second language – but with less intensity as in bilingual education – early on with their children.
Children which are in contact with a second language at an early age, bilingual or not, require an affective emotional tie with a person that teaches the language. The parents of these children also lean on books, CDs and DVDs to intensify the stimulation in the second language.
Nowadays there are new alternatives available in addition to the traditional materials like books, CDs, DVDs. These are the so-called “Podcast”.
Podcasts are electronic files that can be downloaded for free from the web, often in a free subscription form so that the latest episodes are always at hand for you. Podcasts exist in audio or audio-visual format. Podcasts can be professional or homemade. Podcasts can be seen / listened to on the PC, the TV (when it is connected to the Internet) or in systems like Ipod or other MP3 players.
Podcasts can contain short songs, films, stories and more. Today you can find great variety of Podcasts in English. In German more and more material is available, and also in Spanish, although here the selection is still limited.
A great variety of Podcasts can be obtained on pages like Apple iTunes (http://www.apple.com/itunes/), Podomatic (http://www.podomatic.com/directory), or Digital Podcast (http://www.digitalpodcast.com). A quite complete vision of directories and finders of Podcast is in http://www.masternewmedia.org/podcast_directory/. A good catalog in German is http://www.podcast.de/kategorien/. ITunes offers the possibility of locating Podcasts that are not in its directory if you have the URL available (see http://www.apple.com/itunes/pocast/).
For kids there are interesting Podcasts which support the education of a second language at an early age. This holds especially true when obtaining materials in the second language becomes difficult in the country where you live. Older children can experiment making their owns Podcasts. Pages like http://www.kid-cast.com or http://www.teachingideas.co.uk/ict/podcasting.htm offers information of how you can make Podcasts or where you can publish them.
Here are the favourite Podcasts of Raising Bilingual Children:
Podcast for children in Spanish:
Podcast para niños hispano hablantes
Mi podcast en español para los niños de Kindergarten
Podcast for children in English:
Podcast for children in German:
If you know other Pod Cast, we would like to know about them.
Hi, great information on raising a bilingual child. I use the net as a small part of my son’s language discovery. He is 3.6 years old and he speaks Chinese and English fluently. I’m introducing Spanish into his diet. He’s a little experiment because his brain is like a sponge. It’s challenging and fun to see him discover a language. I wish I had his brain…..
Hola! Estoy encantada de ver que alguien tome tanto interes en los ninos bilingues. Al igual que ustedes, yo soy Argentina criada en Venezuela, casada con un Ingles y vivimos en Austria. Nuestros ninos, de 7 y 5 anios pueden hablar perfectamente los tres idiomas, claro que tienen un acento bastante extrano, sin embargo se hacen entender y al igual que ustedes hemos decidido que en la casa cada padre habla un idioma, es decir no mezclamos nunca, por lo tanto los ninos tampoco mezclan y solo lo hacen en raras ocaciones cuando no han aprendido dicha palabra en el segundo o tercer idioma. Aqui les mando un pequeno cuento que mi hija invento y decidi filmarlo. El mismo relato lo hizo en ingles, aleman y espanol. Saludos. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWbO4oeTuyk