When is the best age to start teaching English as a foreign language to a child?
Different educators hold different views on the question of second language learning and on what age to introduce reading. Children brought up speaking one language at home and another at school are in an ideal situation to become fully bilingual as they will have plenty of time to hear the sounds and grammar of both languages, and will be well placed to acquire English in much the same way as they acquired their native language. Letterland is an age-appropriate method for introducing the alphabetic principle to very young children – children as young as three often learn the character names and sounds surprisingly quickly. By bonding intriguing images into the otherwise uninteresting black letter shapes and replacing dry rules with little stories, the system makes learning to read, write and spell in English both easier and a lot more fun. Letterland has recently launched an ESL programme which is tailor made for teachers of English as a second or foreign language.
