A Helping Hand for a shy child to become confident in speaking English

As per the survey conducted by Education Development center for parents of three year to seven years old child , regarding their children English language abilities, 88% of parents wanted their child to read well, use proper vocabulary and most importantly they want to hear them speak in English with confidence. Parents have `Speaking English with confidence` on top most of their wish list.

Parents and educators play a major role in transiting the children to speak English with confidence.

Home is the first place to encourage and initiate language speaking abilities, so then the parent-child conversation plays a essential role. Parents should dedicate a routine time in a day to make it happen, and support them to converse in English. For example start with yes or no options then move to small words … I do , I can , I will , Yes I can.

During this conversation, mistakes are very common . so parents need to correct them with out disappointing them . Always motivate them to take harder words to pronounce and repeat or use them often .

Lets encourage the children with short answers them move on to long sentences, each child has a unique pace of learning. Never forget this .

Parents can give opportunities to use different and new vocabularies . for example - children usually answer I am fine, so replace the word fine with I am good, I am doing great, I am doing well. And so on.

Children feel sometimes challenging in participating in discussions. So Parents can gradually ask few open end questions and motivate them to speak or discuss about the topic with key words and new vocabulary and suitable corrections.

Listening to audio books, it’s a great idea to inculcate English listening and speaking through interesting stories. These audio books always attracts the children to enjoy learning language with amazing imagination experiences and help them speak English fluently with unique pronunciation. Here are some audiobooks your children are bound to enjoy.

Learning English would be easy and fun way through apps. The apps which are designed with games, interactive activities and puzzles. These apps not only make English easy but also entertain and encourage them to use it often and hence it becomes a habit of continuous learning .

Parents can give a choice what to watch on TV , please take some time to choose few TV shows or websites which helps in language development. Example Cartoons in English, BBC short videos. Listen to the lines with English subtitles to identify individual words. This is the best way of developing both listening and speaking skills with lot of entertainment.

Few of them maintain dairy to pen down and learn through it . This habit will not only help English speaking even the writing too. Help them to maintain a separate book or dairy and note down the day to day happenings including at least 5 new vocabularies.

Playing word games like word wipe, Scrabble, spell tower will develop the vocabulory of the children. They will search new words everyday and enhance the knowledge too.

The younger ones can always go with rhymes and songs in English , with more familiar and repetition of words they get very good hold on pronunciation of words .

Parents can help children find a friend or partner to speak in English for at least 10 to 20 min per day . Make a rule to speak only in English with simple sentences and then shift to complex sentences . With this practise they feel comfortable and secured with small groups later on teams and moving to huge crowd.

Recently one of my student`s mom asked me a question - My child knows to read and write English but cants speak fluently Why is it so ? Yes this is because most of English sessions in school are focused on reading and writing and not on communicating. By reading a story book they would not be able to speak since communicating needs practical hands on.

Another possible reason would be if the child is shy and have many students in the class and loud voices . Though they may try for few attempts yet not successful . for such children they need individual sessions with teacher to make them more confident .

One of the best way of engaging and guiding the children to speak in English is to video recordings, first discuss about the characters and let them speak along the video and later give voice to it . We can try with cartoons for younger ones and Movie clip for older ones. The outcome of the activity is enormously high .

Children like to craft many things using painting, drawing, cutting and sticky. Here the children are out with creativity and as well as follow all the instructions given in English , to do the activity they need to listen well. Focused on pronunciation and vocabulary too.

Even with listening comprehension is one of the best activity recommended for enhancing listening and speaking skills . Children would listen carefully the audio with no video or minimal video and later answer the questions related to audio .

In this blog let me Easy and best ways of building confidence for speaking :

While reading the story or any text , read it out loud .
Always follow the language teacher for good outcomes.
Find English partner to speak .
Join online english speking courses.
Join few clubs or groups to discuss.
Remember - Mistakes are ok .
Maintain the dairy .
Engage yourself in various word games.

Parents can support the children with these ways on daily basis and will be able to notice a big difference in your child. Apart from all of the above, to build positive attitude towards the development of language is must . Do spend time with the children at home and create a positive environment .

Lets build confidence to our children to push off their shy and come out with flying wings to speak English.

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Article Author

Rupa Vanagundi

Rupa always believes learning is fun and turns to be a great life experiences. Teaching is my passion , yet explored myself in various fields of human resources, administration , counselling , quality control too. Wish to always play challenging roles so that I am learning every day and keeps my mind and thoughts young . Currently working as Educator at Bambinos.live. When not working also enjoy travelling ….

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