Changing the story of language learning for British children

As you may already know little L is a bilingual toddler, we try to encourage Russian as it's my mother tongue and we would like her to speak fluently in both English and Russian. When I came across One Third Stories and their idea of language learning for kids I thought that it would be particularly interesting and useful for L and kids like her.

"Language learning is something that as Brits we struggle with from an early age. We’ve heard again and again that we aren’t good enough, we don’t need to learn a different language and frankly it’s just not that entertaining.

Language learning is flawed, especially in English-speaking countries like the UK. Despite the fact that it is compulsory in primary schools at Key Stage 2 in 2014, almost 60% of schools don’t have a specialist teacher capable of teaching them (BritishCouncil Report, page 54). It is, therefore, hardly surprising that around two thirds of adults in the UK regret their poor language education and wish that they could speak another language (BritishCouncil Report 2). 

Jonny Pryn and Alex Somervell are close friends, yet represent opposite ends of the language learning spectrum. Jonny, grew up in the UK failing to learn French, “it wasn’t for lack of trying, but I started off with a French teacher with a cockney accent and most of the resources available were either boring or didn’t help me learn very well”. Alex on the other hand grew up bilingual in Paraguay, South America. “English and Spanish came naturally to me, and having working in language education in the UK something really needs to change”.

They recently founded One Third Stories while at university, with the aim to revolutionise change language learning for children. The way they do so is through stories that start in English and end in a different language, by gradually introducing words in the foreign language using their innovative Clockwork Methodology®. It represents the first book of it’s kind, and is designed to make learning a language as simple as reading a story.

“Our Clockwork Methodology is inspired by Anthony Burgess’ ‘A Clockwork Orange’, a dystopian hyper violent novel I read while studying Linguistics at University,” said Jonny. Strange inspiration for a children’s book, however Jonny found there were words in a made up Russian dialect that he could actually understand. “Jonny came to me, being one of his only friends who could speak languages and we started working on the concept,” said Alex.

The pair have tried out various prototypes with over a thousand children, parents and teachers that have helped validate the methodology and give them the confidence do it full-time. One Third Stories has launched on Kickstarter to offer everyone the chance to learn a language through various products including a large hardback version of the story, audiobooks, apps and even the chance for you to become one of the characters in the story.

“Our mission is to inspire a new generation of multilingual children, and we’re looking for help in making this dream a reality,” said Alex. “We’re hoping we can hit our target of £10,000 to order the first print run and produce the app”, said Jonny".

Let's wish Jonny and Alex all the best with the project! 

"Further details can be found on the One Third Stories website www.onethirdstories.com or by following them on twitter @onethirdstories and Facebook".  

Review: Fisher- Price Russian speaking Laugh & Learn Keys

As some of you may know we are a bilingual family (English and Russian) and I always wanted L to speak both languages fluently. In order to do so I try to introduce to speak Russian as much possible, read Russian books with L and always thought that Russian speaking toys would help us as well.

I didn't realise how difficult it will be to locate Russian speaking toys in the UK, but I have finally found Babeltots- an online shop "specialises in foreign language speaking toys for babies and toddlers". 

"We are currently offering products in 16 European languages: Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish speaking toys and are continuously working to add new languages and products".

We were offered to review Fisher- Price Russian speaking Laugh & Learn Keys, the toy is suitable for 6-36 months and has different learning features which I was able to find with a small help from my daughter. 

The toy has the main interactive part and 3 additional, developmental toys attached to it.

 The main part aka funny face has 3 coloured buttons- red, yellow and blue. Each button is "themed", when you press in the middle it will tell you the colour, if you press on different sides of the button it can sing a song, make a noise (e.g. car, door bell), say- a house, a boat, a car depending on the button you press.

The additional 3 toys aka keys have different sensory plastic attachments. The orange key has a blue car attached which spins and clicks with every spin and textured, coloured rollers at the bottom. The blue key has a red boat which slides along at the top of the toy and rattling beads at the bottom. The green key has a yellow house with a spinning door which has different pictures on it for more fun and 2 additional toys attached for "sliding".

We have lost few keys already as L seems to be more interested in the main interactive part of the set, which we have attached to the pushchair to keep L entertained when out and about.

The price seems to be very reasonable for a bilingual/ foreign language speaking toy £22.99, which is just £10 more the original English speaking. 

I have also noticed a small progress with L's speech, as she keeps using the toy in a pushchair she hear to the same words, noises over and over again, yesterday we heard her say "blue" in Russian for the first time which made me incredibly happy and proud. It is a great toy which helps to learn first words and colours and I can thoroughly recommend Babeltots for those who have failed to find for bilingual toys for their little one.

Disclaimer: I was sent the item mentioned above for the purpose of this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.