The perfect after school language courses for your child

How world language courses benefit your child

In our competitive society, many children participate in extracurricular activities after school to gain an edge. These activities are well known to lay the foundation for the development of intelligence, personality, social behaviour and learning capacity, and as vital elements to ensure your child does not fall behind in their development.

After school world language courses are no exception and there is much research that points to their ability to convey benefits in physiological brain development, cognitive abilities, higher academic achievement and test scores, increased empathy and cultural understanding, improved native language skills such as reading comprehension and grammar, better career opportunities and even higher earnings1.

However, in order to maximize these benefits it is critical to expose a child to a second language while they are as young as possible. Studies demonstrate the enormous potential for language development during early childhood and the huge difference in terms of difficulty to learn fluency in a language in later years. For example, a study of 892 children in China found that early English education which occurred before entering elementary school was instrumental in later English and Chinese achievement2. This explains why English courses are increasingly incorporated into earlier grade curricula in non-English speaking countries.

The improved cognitive development of a child that comes from learning a second language reaps rewards in other areas. Research shows that there is a relationship between bilingualism and several abilities, including the ability to think abstractly about language, synthesize information, develop mathematical skills, score higher in reading and writing, solve problems and think nonverbally. Too many to mention individually, this link contains a summary of 25 research studies reflecting these benefits3.

Evidence of the impact on brain physiology comes from brain imaging. Andrea Mechelli of London’s Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience and experts from the Fondazione Santa Lucia in Rome have found that bilingual speakers had denser gray matter compared to monolingual study participants4. This may explain why children that learn English as a second language by the time they are 5 years old demonstrate higher academic attainment and fewer social, emotional and behavioural difficulties than their non-English speaking counterparts5. These are the very skills that school entrance interviews intend to evaluate to determine school readiness.

And the benefits of learning a second language translate into higher academic achievement in later years as well. Studies have confirmed that ESL children who learn English outperform in reading and Maths, and on standardized college entrance exams including ACTs and SATs6. Learning a second language also better positions a student to qualify for internationally acclaimed foreign universities, perform better in job interviews and have greater career achievement given a second language is often an indispensable workplace tool for success in business7.

Data also reflects that foreign language skills result in higher earnings8. For example, this survey of 35,000 individuals found that a second language generated a wage premium of 11% on average but a much higher level for proficiency in Spanish (32%), French (22%) or Italian (15%)9. And there are several possible explanations. It may be associated with skill-based productivity increases or signal unobserved ability to employers10, due to the impact of improved cognitive and communicative abilities, analytic and interpretative capacities associated with learning a second language, due to better academic results11 and the beneficial impact of hiring a bilingual worker for an employing firm’s international trade12.

Our wide range of extracurricular world language classes for children from top tier education centres are designed to maximise the benefits associated with learning a second language. There is no longer the need to rely on a tutor whose credentials have not been properly diligenced. Give your child the best chance to become fluent in a second language today.

Bizibuz KnowYourChild™: Find out if your child has an aptitude for World Languages

Our unique KnowYourChild™ tools are a series of benchmarking tools for children of different ages designed to track a child’s development, highlight necessary intervention and hidden talents, guide on activities to optimize performance and monitor the efficacy of activities over time.

These tools are developed using advanced algorithms and input from top universities including the Education University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University and senior teachers from leading institutions including the Chinese International School and Canadian International School.

Our Pre-primary KnowYourChild™ tool for 3-6 year olds and our Primary KnowYourChild™ tool for 6-12 year olds are the first of their kind to gauge the language development of a child in order to uncover developmental issues or an aptitude for English. In the Pre-primary KnowYourChild™ tool a child is asked a series of questions orally through tablet format in order to determine how a child’s oral language and early literacy skills are developing relative to global norms. In the Primary KnowYourChild™ tool, the registration process first requires confirming the English language proficiency of a child as either native or ESL so questions can be tailored for the varied skillset. A child is then asked a series of question in order to measure performance in grammar, vocabulary, two levels of reading comprehension and phonics for the early year students. After the child has completed a KnowYourChild™ tool, parents receive a comprehensive report of their child including smart activity recommendations targeted to address either weaker areas (performance more than one standard deviation below the mean) and to foster talents (performance more than two standard deviations above the mean). If the child has previously used the KnowYourChild™ tool, the report also includes development trend analysis in order to reflect on the impact of activities previously undertaken.

Visit our KnowYourChild™ tools in order to further explore your child’s developmental progress and activity recommendations that optimize your child’s talent in English.