How to motivate your child to learn English

We want them to learn, to progress, to make the most of the opportunities that knowing another language can offer them. And, with the best intentions, we can sometimes end up turning English into just another obligation: Have you done your exercises? What did you learn today? Why don't you say something in English?

But motivation doesn't always appear when we insist more. It often begins when learning makes sense, when we find something that sparks curiosity, or when we feel we can try without fear of getting it wrong.

That's why supporting English learning at home doesn't mean becoming a teacher. It means helping to create an environment where learning can feel possible, interesting and positive.

Video games, animals, football, music, drawing, cooking, dinosaurs, films, technology... Any interest can become a doorway into the language. If they like a character, you can discover together what something is called in English; if they have a favourite song, you can try to recognise a word or two.

When English appears connected to something we're already interested in, it stops being just a subject and starts becoming a tool for discovering more about the things we love.

There's no need to organise an extra hour of study at home. We can bring the language into very small moments: a song at breakfast, a story before bed, a few minutes of cartoons, a game, a new word or an everyday expression.

What matters isn't filling the day with English. It's creating small opportunities for frequent contact with the language without causing overload.

Easy tip: start with something simple and watch the response. If it works, you can repeat it; if it doesn't, you can try something else.

Speaking a new language means putting yourself out there: trying unfamiliar sounds, building sentences that might not be perfect, and using words you're still learning. That's why it's important that mistakes don't become something to avoid.

Instead of focusing only on correcting, we can acknowledge the effort: "You tried to say it in English!", "You remembered that word!", "Look how much you understand now." Feeling that we can try without fear helps build something fundamental to learning a language: confidence.

Every person learns in a different way and also progresses at a different pace. Comparing can make learning stop feeling like a personal process and start feeling like a competition.

It's far more useful to look back and observe individual progress: what can they do today that felt difficult just a few months ago? That's the progress worth recognising.

Sometimes a small chance to choose completely changes how we feel about an activity: "Would you rather listen to a song or watch a video?", "Do you want to read, or shall we read together?", "Shall we play for five minutes or make up a story?".

The goal is still to practise English, but the student takes part in deciding how to do it. This can encourage a more independent relationship with learning.

Images, gestures, objects, subtitles, colours, examples, repetition... Using supports doesn't mean they're learning any worse. It means providing tools that can make understanding easier and help them move forward. Over time, some of those supports can be reduced; others might stay useful for longer.

Correcting absolutely every mistake can make speaking end up feeling unsafe. There are moments for working on pronunciation, vocabulary or structures, and others where the important thing is simply to communicate.

If we understand what they're trying to say, we don't always need to stop the conversation to correct it immediately. Sometimes we can rephrase naturally or simply carry on.

You don't need a perfect level of English to be a supportive presence. You can ask questions, look up a word together, listen to how it's pronounced, get it wrong and try again. Showing that adults don't know everything either can send a very valuable message: learning is something we do throughout our whole lives.

If an activity keeps causing frustration, it might not be a matter of insisting more. It might be too hard, too long, not interesting enough, or it might need to be presented differently.

Instead of only asking "Why don't they want to do it?", we can start asking "What's making this difficult?". Changing the question can help us find a different solution.

There will be moments of great progress and others where very little seems to happen. That's normal: learning a language is a process. We need to listen, experiment, repeat, get things wrong, understand and try again, many times over.

That's why one of the most important things we can offer from home might be exactly this: time to learn.

Families play a very important role, but they don't need to become teachers. They can support, listen, celebrate, create opportunities, help discover interests and offer a safe space to try things out.

At English For Us we believe that when family, student and professionals work in the same direction, we can understand much better what each person needs to keep progressing. Because behind learning English there's something far more important than learning new words: there's a person discovering everything they're capable of doing with them.