From 3 to 5 years old

Continuing their language learning journey

Children’s cognitive and language abilities continue to mature during this period. They know how to read between the lines and how to be polite. They also begin to prefer more elaborate stories and try storytelling by themselves. Parents can choose stories that intrigue children and make reading more fun by applying different strategies. To encourage storytelling, parents can prompt children to describe what happens in the book and ask them to retell the story to someone else.

At around 3 years old, children start to attend kindergarten—a completely new environment to them. Children will start to develop their social skills, critical thinking skills and problem-solving skills. They will get to know how to get along well with peers and teachers in the kindergarten, and, of course, continue to build and brush up their language skills especially in reading.

By the age of 5, children’s linguistic abilities are impressive already. There are, however, still lots of things for them to learn.

‧ They will know how to tell better stories.
‧ They will slowly get to the humour of jokes.
‧ They will start to appreciate the difference between American and British English.
‧ They will learn new styles of language, especially how to write and speak online.

To sustain the interest of young children in language learning, ‘learn through play’ is a good strategy. Parents can use language games such as 'I Spy' or 'Hangman'. Making up rhymes could be fun too. And parents will be surprised to see their children soon become fluent and creative users of the language.