Bilingual Kindergarten: Pedagogical Concept

Bilingual kindergarten: advantages of the early foreign language

A bilingual kindergarten is characterized by the fact that the children do not learn a foreign language by “cramming stoic vocabulary” like in school, but in a playful and communicative way. The optimal phase in which your child can best and most easily absorb the grammar and phonology of a language is between the ages of three and five. During this phase, children approach the new language in an uninhibited manner and deal with it in a light-hearted manner. Most of the time, your child will be able to master the routine of day-to-day kindergarten work completely in the second language after just a few weeks.

A bilingual kindergarten not only makes language learning at school easier for your child later on. In bilingual kindergartens there are usually many children from other cultures. In this way, your child gets early contact with different cultures and learns to overcome language barriers.

A bilingual kindergarten and its concept

• One person, one language: A bilingual kindergarten follows the principle of “one person – one language”. Then one teacher only speaks German with your child, while the second only communicates with him in the foreign language. For example, the morning circle is sometimes offered by a teacher in German or by the foreign-language teacher in the respective language. Whether at lunch, playing, singing and comforting: it is spoken in the language of the teacher. In this way, language acquisition is integrated into the entire daily schedule and thus into the children’s world.
• Children’s Skills: Children are not asked to do skills they do not have. The educators do not put any pressure on the little ones to understand the new foreign words. The children learn the language intuitively by deducing certain things from a context, as in their mother tongue. The educators support what is said with facial expressions, gestures and pointing. For example, if they are describing a ball, one is also there so that the children associate the spoken word with an object.
• Task of the parents: The parents should not demand any additional performance from the children, i.e. no work schedules or targets. This would unsettle the child and hinder it in learning the new language. However, parents can support their language acquisition with age-appropriate books, films or music. You should also make sure that the mother tongue is cultivated at home. In order to learn a new language, it is important for a child to have a good command of the mother tongue.

A bilingual kindergarten is not suitable for all children

• A bilingual kindergarten is not suitable for children who suffer from a language disorder, developmental delay or hearing impairment. Here it is more important that your child concentrates on mastering only one language. In these cases, it is rather confusing for your child to learn a second language.
• If you raise your offspring bilingually anyway, for example in German and French, a third foreign language in kindergarten could overwhelm your child.
• Some children already have difficulties with their mother tongue and are overwhelmed when they learn another language. In such cases, another language can even impede developmental progress in the mother tongue.