From birth to five years old, babies are learning language at an amazing rate. This includes any language. It can be spoken language, sign language and even written language.

Babies are able to learn to read effortlessly and easily from birth through 3 years old using the whole word method. Not only are they able to learn to read, they learn to read intuitively as opposed to those of us who learn to read much later by learning the rules of the language.

This means that babies absorb language in the written form and the brain figures out the rules on its own. The incredible thing about teaching babies to read using the whole word method is that they learn the rules on their own and are able to use them to read words they have never seen.

When you teach a baby to read, you don’t need to spend a lot of time teaching, they learn at lightening speed and they are able to read fluently almost overnight. They are able to read well and they generally are able to read more quickly and with a higher level of comprehension than children taught at an older age.

Babies that are taught to read develop a love of reading that lasts a lifetime. When they are being inquisitive and want to know that answers to many things, we can point out the books that will give them those answers. We teach them from a young age to find information from books, giving them the ability to learn for a lifetime.

Many people love learning languages or would like to learn a language and use their language skills in a job. In today’s global economy the demand for language skills continues to grow as governments, businesses and organisations build relationships with foreign interests.

1 MAKE THE FULLEST USE OF YOUR MP3 PLAYER.

If you have one and you’re not using it for language acquisition, you’re losing an opportunity for gaining in fluency. You can record snippets of vocabulary or grammar instruction whenever you have a few moments of free time, or pages and pages worth when you’re at your leisure. Then, during times that would otherwise be wasted – washing up, lying dozing in bed, going for a walk – you can play it back and simultaneously be improving your language skills.

2 DUAL TEXT BOOKS

What a wonderful thing dual text books are. Often novels or short stories, these books have one facing page in, say, Spanish, and the other in English. This speeds progress through the book and aids idiomatic comprehension enormously. Sadly the stock of dual texts is limited. However the same effect can be achieved by obtaining two copies of the same book, one in your chosen language and the other in English. It takes a little more juggling this way, but can still have a very beneficial effect on reading comprehension.

3 GET YOURSELF A NATIVE SPEAKER PENPAL

In the age of the internet this is something that’s increasingly easy to do. Check out Livemocha.com or one of numerous alternatives currently available. Your French/German/etc. improves, your penpal’s English improves, everybody wins.

4 SIMULATE LANGUAGE IMMERSION AS CLOSELY AS POSSIBLE

‘Immersion’ is the catchphrase, the most popular concept amongst language course providers and teachers at the moment. And it’s a good one: the trouble is we don’t all have the money, time or resources to dump everything and go live in our country of choice for six or eighteen months.

5 USE YOUR HOLIDAYS TO THE MAX

This is another point related to the ideal of immersion. Often when learning a language we will book a holiday in the relevant country, and think hopefully of all we will achieve in terms of language acquisition as a result. As you may know, this does not always pan out!