An integral part of learning another language with Fun Languages for kids, is discovering and experiencing the different culture and traditions from the country of their target language.

Traditions such as when a child loses a tooth for example.  In France children receive a toy from La Petite Souris (the little mouse), instead of a coin from the Tooth Fairy.

At Christmas time, children in our fun french lessons are amazed to find out that if they lived in France, polishing their shoes would be an essential part of the preparations for “Noël”!

In France, Santa Claus does not come to fill stockings. Instead, children place their shoes in front of the fireplace for Père Noël to fill them with gifts. Père Noël will also hang sweets and toys on the Christmas tree. 

… don’t let your child be the one that’s left behind!

With the recent release of the ACARA REPORT on the shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages, and with more than 1100 preschools applying for only 40 places for the Australian Government’s Early Learning Languages Australia (ELLA) trial in 2015, it’s clear that there is a renewed focus and desire across Australia, to encourage students to learn a second language.

The experts have long been expounding a powerful argument for the benefits of learning another language and the draft ACARA report states that learning another language has been shown to extend students’ intellectual and analytical capabilities and strengthen their cognitive and general learning capabilities, such as creative and critical thinking.

The ELLA trial is part of a wider push by the government to promote languages in schools and to set kids on the path to languages and provide them with a head start towards language study at school. 

Research shows that learning languages develops children’s overall literacy, strengthening literacy-related capabilities that are transferable across many learning areas.

Learning a second language can improve student knowledge of concepts across the entire curriculum and enhances their employment and future career prospects.  

ASK what it means to be a global citizen and you will get a plethora of different answers from whatever source you choose. And if like us, you use Google, well then “About 24,500,000 results in 0.31 seconds” to be precise!

From “the idea of embracing an international perspective and lifestyle” (The World Economic Forum) to “someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community’s values and practices” (Global Citizens Initiative), the definitions abound!

Global Citizenship, that is a sense of solidarity between citizens across the world, is increasingly important in today’s society. And is about more than simply acquiring a set of skills; it’s  about a lifelong process, a way of “being” in the world.

For many people, regrets are a simple fact of life, but there’s one that seems to crop up time and again: language learning.

It seems that as we grow older, many of us can start to regret having not learned a foreign language when we had the chance. If you need a great example of this, billionaire software mogul Bill Gates recently said that he wishes he’d learned French, Arabic or Chinese. So it really is something that affects all of us – even the global elite! One of the best ways to avoid this particular regret, and to have the best chance of mastering a language, is to start early. So let’s look at why learning French or Spanish at primary school age with LCF Fun Languages can be a fantastic ‘no regrets’ approach to bilingualism.