Kids’ English

The short answer: not entirely right, and not entirely wrong. Memorising vocabulary is necessary. Its place in the sequence, as most parents imagine that sequence, is upside down. The common assumption is that a child accumulates a stock of words, and then one day those words assemble themselves into sentences. That day does not arrive […]

Your child knows apple, big, eat and yesterday. Ask him what any of them means and the answer comes instantly. Then he tries a full sentence and it comes out as “I eat apple yesterday”, or “He big”, or “This is a ball red big”. The vocabulary is there. The sentence is not. This is

Your child has been studying English for months. The school says fine. The platform sends a report with coloured bars and a level code. You still cannot answer the one question you actually have, which is what your child can and cannot do in English right now. You can answer it yourself in about an

You ask your child a simple question in English. There is a pause of three or four seconds. His eyes move up and to the side. Then the answer arrives, correct but oddly assembled: “I have five years”, or “I ate the breakfast in the morning of today”, or a sentence that begins confidently and

Six months ago your child read slowly and spoke in short bursts. Today the reading is noticeably better, harder books, fewer stops, real comprehension. And the speaking is worse. Shorter answers, more Arabic, more hesitation before starting a sentence, and a visible reluctance to talk in front of anyone new. This is not your child

You have heard the line in parent groups and in almost every platform advert: children have short attention spans, so short lessons are best. Families across Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha and Dubai sign up for a full year of classes on the strength of it, without ever asking the obvious follow up. Best for which child?

The school calendar sends the message before you do. Mid term assessments are posted, the weekly plan arrives in the class group, and suddenly every evening between Sunday and Thursday belongs to revision. Somewhere in that squeeze sits the English lesson your child has been taking twice or three times a week, and the question

You hear your child on a video call with a teacher, answering in full sentences, joking, barely pausing. Then the school notebook comes home and the same child has written four lines with no capital letters, no full stops, a missing article in every sentence, and a past tense that wandered into the present halfway

The short answer is yes at the start, then no. Sitting beside your child helps during the first few lessons and then becomes the single biggest obstacle to them speaking. The trouble is that most parents stay in that chair for months, because nobody ever told them when to get up. There is a second

Usually no, and the reason is that your measuring stick is wrong rather than your method. Most parents track progress with a single indicator: does my child speak English in front of me. That is the weakest indicator available, the slowest to appear, and the one most distorted by mood, self-consciousness, and time of day.