Building English listening skills at home

Listening together beats passive listening

• In a well-known study, Patricia Kuhl and colleagues (2003) exposed 9-month-old American infants to Mandarin Chinese in 12 sessions. Infants who heard live speakers playing with them learned Mandarin sounds. Infants who saw the same material on video, or heard it as audio only, did not.
• Children aged 4–6 are older and can learn more from recordings, but the general lesson holds: children learn best when someone shares their attention, points, asks and waits for a response.
• Ten minutes of listening, pointing and acting things out together usually does more than an hour of background music nobody is paying attention to.

What to listen to

• Short, clear sentences at a calm pace. For beginners aged 4–6, start with single words and 3–5 word patterns.
• The same pattern many times: "Find the cat. Find the dog. Find the ball." Repetition lets children predict what comes next.
• Words tied to pictures or actions, so your child understands without translation.
• Action songs, picture books, and your own voice. Your accent does not need to be perfect; add clear recorded audio as a model as well.

Dialogic picture-book reading

• Instead of reading straight through, stop and ask: "Where is the cat?", "What colour is it?", then praise and repeat your child's answer.
• A meta-analysis by Mol and colleagues (2008) found that this kind of interactive reading increases children's expressive vocabulary. The effect was clearest for children aged 2–4 and smaller for children aged 5–6.
• Those studies were in the children's first language, but the approach works well with simple English picture books too.

Seven screen-free listening games

• Follow the instruction: "Touch your nose", "Clap your hands", "Jump!" Act it out first, then just say it.
• Treasure hunt: "Find the red ball." Hide a few toys around the room.
• Hear and point: lay out 4–6 picture cards, say a word, your child points to or slaps the right card. Print free flashcards by topic.
• True or false: hold an apple and say "This is a banana." Your child shakes their head, laughs or corrects you. Great for careful listening.
• Count along: count "one, two, three…" and stop suddenly; your child says the next number. See numbers 1 to 20.
• Action songs: your child listens and does the actions, no singing needed yet.
• Teddy stories: "The bear is on the bed. The bear is under the chair." Your child puts the teddy in the right place. See in, on, under.

Sentences for the games

Tap to hear the model voice, then say it together with your child.

• Touch your nose.Follow the instruction.
• Clap your hands.Clap along.
• Find the red ball.Treasure hunt.
• Where is the cat?While reading a picture book.
• Show me the dog.Your child points; no need to speak yet.
• The cat is on the bed.Teddy stories.

How long is enough

• Short and regular beats long and rare. A few times a day for 5–10 minutes is plenty.
• Stop while your child is still enjoying it, so they want to play again next time.
• If you use a phone or tablet, follow the WHO screen-time guidance: see how much screen time is enough.

Using games well

• Find It! is a free listening game: your child hears "Find the …!" and taps the right picture. After a wrong tap, the game names the picture they tapped and repeats the request, so a mistake teaches one more word.
• Word Island includes listening games where children pick the right picture and match sounds, with 162 words by topic.
• Every topic page is tap-to-hear, handy as a model voice for the games above.
• Best of all, sit with your child while they play, ask about a few words afterwards, then bring those words into real-life play.

Sources

1. Kuhl, P. K., Tsao, F.-M., Liu, H.-M. (2003). Foreign-language experience in infancy: effects of short-term exposure and social interaction on phonetic learning. PNAS, 100(15)
2. Mol, S. E., Bus, A. G., de Jong, M. T., Smeets, D. J. H. (2008). Added value of dialogic parent–child book readings: a meta-analysis. Early Education and Development, 19(1)
3. WHO guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children under 5 years of age