Using Children’s Books to Learn a Second Language

Guest post by Miranda González

I still remember a time in high school when our Spanish teacher popped in a video of a Spanish version of Blue’s Clues (an American children’s television show) during class. We all rolled our eyes, half of us feeling like our intelligence had been insulted and the other half annoyed, thinking that our teacher had been too lazy to plan a lesson for that day. But as the little blue dog moved across the screen and the show’s host asked us questions, I realized that I wasn’t straining to understand what was going on; in fact, you could say that I was a master of preschool-level Spanish!

Later, and perhaps to prove a point, our teacher asked us to watch an episode of a novela (a soap opera in Spanish) and write a summary, an exponentially harder assignment. That’s when I realized what should have been obvious – we had to gradually increase our comprehension in a second language, much like we needed to as babies and children in our native language. Blue’s Clues wasn’t meant to insult us, rather it was meant to make us realize that we had the basic building blocks of language in place; we just needed to keep working up from that level.

Easing into a language

Many people fail at learning a second language because they get frustrated when they can’t complete tasks at the same level that they can in their native language. We all forget just how far we have come in learning our first language. I always encourage my students to read as much as possible in English, but often, learners don’t realize that it’s only necessary to read slightly above their current level. For example, reading lengthy news articles aimed at adult native speakers is probably not the best starting point for a lower-level English student. Of course we always want to challenge ourselves, but if we select reading material that causes us to reach for the dictionary every other word, we are more likely to get discouraged and give up.

Let’s start at the very beginning

That’s where children’s books come in. When we reach adulthood, we feel that we have outgrown children’s books, and that’s a real shame. These books aren’t all just cute pictures of fuzzy ducks and teddy bears – they are a real tool for learning a language in a fun and engaging way. We think that in order to learn a language properly, we need to be filling out grammar worksheets or drilling ourselves with flashcards. But was that the way we learned our native language? Certainly not. You probably didn’t realize that while your parents were reading you a bedtime story, you were learning new vocabulary and strengthening your understanding of your language’s internal structure.

To get you started on the path to learning through children’s books, I thought I would share with you a few of my favorite books and grammar concepts that you can learn through each of them. While this list is aimed at people learning English, don’t forget that you can pick up a children’s book in any target language – the concept is the same.

Old Mother Hubbard by Aurelius Battaglia
While most books you choose will be written in a mixture of the past tenses, this book provides clear examples of when to use the simple past tense and when to use the past progressive tense.

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
If you want to work on auxiliary verbs, this book will help you learn their position within a sentence and how they function with negative words.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff
This book is great for learning about if-clauses and how they relate to the future tense.

Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
This hilarious book is the first in a series of stories about a maid who doesn’t understand that idioms aren’t meant to be taken literally. If you like learning idioms, Amelia Bedelia is your gal.

Danny and the Dinosaur by Bill Maynard
If you want to practice the structure for using quoted speech, this book is full of dialogue.

Quiet, Wyatt! by Frank Remkiewicz
This book teaches you about imperatives (commands).

Rosie’s Walk by Pat Hutchins
A book about chicken going for a walk provides very clear illustrations to help you learn prepositions of movement.

Just a Daydream by Mercer Mayer
Mayer’s book gives a funny scenario that uses the unreal conditional tense.

About Miranda

Miranda is an English and Spanish teacher. Find her free English classes on Facebook every weekday at LiveEnglish with Livemocha.  She currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, where she and her husband are raising two bilingual children. 

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