On this website you will find information about learning French, Spanish, Italian, German and English, and why it can be beneficial to learn these languages.

Learning a foreign language at a young age can be a useful and enjoyable experience.

What's the best way of learning a foreign language?

To learn a foreign language it's useful to learn lots of nouns.  Nouns are the words for people, animals, places and things.   Examples of nouns include a cat,  a banana and a coat.   There are lots of ways to learn new words, and we learn best when we are interested and having fun.  So why not try a variety of the suggestions below?

Choose a topic, for example colours or pet animals.

Learn a few words each time you study. How many words you choose to learn is up to you! Everyone is different. I would recommend anything from 3 - 10 words each time you study.  How many new words to learn each time you study depends on how much time you have or how easily you remember the words.  The thing that’s great about learning languages is that there is no right or wrong amount of words you should learn each time you study. It’s whatever you are happy with. I always find it’s easier to learn words in a foreign language if you learn them as a topic as you can then go on to build sentences with these words and your word lists are easier to refer back to. It’s important to keep looking back at the words you have learnt so that you don’t forget them.

Create your own poster with the new words written on it and proudly display it on the fridge or in your room. Each topic in the series Cool Kids Speak French / Spanish / German / Italian / English books begins with a page full of the images for that topic. You could either use this as an example to copy, or you could create your own.

Choose some pretty coloured pencils or pens and practice writing the new words in your best hand writing.

Play Guess the word Game by looking choosing a word from the topic, and someone else has to guess what the word is. If you are using one of the books Cool Kids Speak  French / Spanish / German / Italian / English series, you could look at the first page for each topic for inspiration about what word to choose / to guess what it is. 

Make word cards by cutting up a piece of card into approximately 5 cm x 3 cm rectangles. Ask an adult to be around while using scissors. On one side write the foreign word, on the other side write the English word. Test yourself on the words by looking at one side of the card, and saying what the word is in the Foreign language.

Making your own sentences

Once you have learnt some nouns (words for things, people, animals and places) you can then learn how to build simple sentences.

Learning a language is fun, a bit like putting together the pieces in an amazing jigsaw puzzle and before you know it, you are making something really impressive.

Once you can put together you own sentences you can speak another language and that is a good skill to have.

There are lots of ways of learning how to make your own sentences. The books in the range Cool Kids Speak French / Spanish / German / Italian / English introduce the new words in each topic, then practice how to make simple sentence structures. By developing sentences using the new words, you can learn how to make your own sentences. You can also practice making your own sentences by taking part in role roles.

Role play situations

Another great way to learn a foreign language is to pretend you are on holiday abroad, and role play situations like ordering something to eat or drink. It can be so much fun to pretend to be there and to have to speak in French / Spanish / German / Italian or English for a real purpose!