Parent Guide.pdf

foreign language and fun

Watching Little Pim together is a great way to make foreign language

learning fun. To reinforce language and boost learning, use these tips.

How to use Little Pim

Each Little Pim DVD is broken up into seven ﬁve-minute episodes. Because we

know babies and toddlers have short attention spans, Little Pim was designed

to allow you to start and stop after any of the episodes. As your child gets older,

he or she may enjoy watching the entire 35-minute DVD in one sitting. You can

pause the DVD at any time and interact with your child to help reinforce the

new vocabulary.

“Thank you for choosing Little Pim and welcome to the exciting journey of foreign

language learning with your child.”

As you and your child watch the DVD, repeat the words and phrases aloud.

When you know the vocabulary, you can comment on what is happening or

predict what comes next. Interacting with the DVD is an eective way to engage

your child.

Little Pim ’s method is total immersion. The entire DVD is in the foreign language,

with optional subtitles for parents or caregivers. Phrases and sentences are

broken down into simple parts and reinforced through periodic repetition. The

pace is set for a young brain, with bright colors and easily recognizable objects

for optimal learning. Little Pim teaches vocabulary in context, illustrated by

colorful images of real children playing, eating, and interacting.

Learn with your child and make it fun. If you practice along with your child

it will keep them motivated and engaged.

Model, don’t correct. If your child makes a mistake be arming and then model

the correct word or pronunciation.

Please use this Parent Guide to support giving your child the amazing gift of a

second language. It includes information and tips for the best possible learning

experience. In addition, a resource section directs you to books, articles and

websites for supplemental information.

Enroll your child in a language playgroup. If you do not have access to one,

start one yourself! Find other parents with children who are learning the same

language as your child, and get together weekly for songs, stories, and play in

the foreign language.

Enjoy!

Julia Pimsleur Levine

Founder and President, Little Pim Co.

Engage your child in the foreign language whenever you can. Use his or her

favorite toys or everyday objects to talk about vocabulary you have learned. For

example, use the new words as you cook, or pretend that his or her stued

animals are having a tea party.

Why should my child learn a foreign language?

There are numerous beneﬁts of learning a second language early in life. Children

who are consistently exposed from a very young age to the sounds of a foreign

language are more likely to achieve native or near-native ﬂuency in adulthood.

Research shows that children who learn more than one language have a much

easier time learning other languages later in life. These children are shown to

have more advanced language skills — even in their mother tongue — than

monolingual children. Multilingualism has been linked to superior reading and

writing skills, as well as advanced analytical and social skills. Bilinguals also have

an advantage over monolinguals in education and employment.

Why is it easier for children to learn a foreign language than for adults?

During the ﬁrst years of life, children’s brains are uniquely equipped for learning

language. Children’s ways of assimilating language are distinctly dierent from

adults, especially in pronunciation. There is overwhelming evidence that adults

perceive the same sound dierently than infants. Infants are signiﬁcantly better

at detecting dierent sounds and hearing nuances in the sounds of foreign

languages with clarity and accuracy.

What if I don’t speak a foreign language?

The Little Pim series can be used by people with no prior experience in a foreign

language. Each DVD includes optional English subtitles for parents or caregivers.

If my child is past preschool, is it too late?

It’s never too late to introduce your child to a foreign language. It’s best to start

early, but children of all ages learn languages more easily than adults and re-

ceptivity to new languages remains very high until six or seven years old. While

Little Pim is specially designed for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, many older

children enjoy watching Little Pim and learning new words.

How often should my child watch Little Pim in order for it to be eective?

Any amount of daily exposure to a foreign language is helpful. Be consistent.

Try to expose your child to the sounds of the foreign language every day. The

Little Pim DVD is speciﬁcally designed to be viewed in 5-minute episodes. Even

if you have time for only one episode, your child is hearing and reinforcing her

new vocabulary.

Will my child be confused?

Your child is perfectly equipped to handle one or more foreign languages without

aecting his mother tongue. Countless people grow up in multilingual environ-

ments: many Africans, Swiss, Belgians, Canadians and Indonesians learn two or

even three languages from birth.

Your teacher in the Little Pim series is Little Pim , who is a young panda.

Known for their distinctive black and white fur, pandas come from China

and love to eat bamboo all day long. Little Pim is no ordinary panda though.

He has a special talent: speaking foreign languages! Here are some fun

facts you can learn with your child about pandas:

Little Pim is the creation of a mother, Julia Pimsleur Levine, who is also an award-

winning ﬁlmmaker, an experienced language teacher, and the daughter of Dr.

Paul Pimsleur, a renowned language professor whose revolutionary audio teaching

method made him a household name in foreign language learning. Julia grew up

in a multi-lingual home and achieved ﬂuency in French by the age of six through

immersion and play. In addition to French, she speaks conversant Italian, Spanish

and some German.

Pandas eat 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo each day! To obtain this much food

means that a panda must spend 10 to 16 hours a day foraging and eating.

“ My father studied how young children learn a second language and why they have

an innate ability to learn second and third languages e ortlessly, ” says Pimsleur

Levine, president and founder of Little Pim Co. “ Thanks to technology that was

not available when he did his research, I can now bring foreign language learning

to children everywhere .”

Newborn pandas can ﬁt in the palm of a human hand. At birth, the cub is

1/900th the size of its mother! Except for marsupials (such as a kangaroo), a

baby giant panda is the smallest mammal newborn relative to its mother’s size.

A baby panda is called a cub. They are very playful and like to climb, roll and

tumble with each other.

Pimsleur Levine explains her motivation for creating the Little Pim series: “ When

my son was born three years ago, I wanted him to be bilingual and to have the same

advantages I had in learning a second language from an early age. I searched for

videos to reinforce the French I was teaching him at home, but found very few age-

appropriate, high-quality products. I had high standards as a former ﬁlmmaker and

language teacher myself. I wanted him to watch something that was entertaining,

educational and with high production values. Something I would want to watch

with him. ”

Scientists do not know why pandas are black and white. Some think the

bold coloring provides camouﬂage in their snowy, rocky surroundings, as well

as up in shade-dappled trees.

Giant pandas have lived in bamboo forests for several million years. It is

estimated that as few as 1,600 pandas remain in the wild today. Pandas are found

in the temperate forests of China.

Pimsleur Levine worked for almost two years with an award-winning team of

animators and ﬁlmmakers bringing Little Pim to life.

Pandas are an endangered species. Thanks to recent eorts to protect pandas,

more than 180 pandas live in zoos and breeding centers around the world, mostly

in China.

Giant pandas do not hibernate, unlike other bears. Their bamboo diet does

not fatten them up enough to sleep through the winter. Since bamboo grows

year round they don’t need to hibernate.

Study after study shows that up until age six, the human brain is optimally

equipped for learning and producing language. Little Pim was speciﬁcally created

for this age range to take full advantage of language learning potential.

same time he or she is learning in their a native language. Little Pim helps build

the foundation for your child’s future foreign language learning.

Babies hear their mother’s voices before birth and know the rhythm of their

native language as newborns. Once born, babies can understand and discriminate

the sounds of every language in the world. Infants detect dierent sounds and

hear the nuances in foreign languages with perfect clarity and precision. The

sound elements of language are called phonemes , and repeated studies show

that adults perceive phonemes dierently than infants.

Children need to hear language in relation to what is happening around them.

It must capture the child’s attention, thus the motherese — speech with rising

and exaggerated contours — is very eective when speaking to one’s baby or

toddler. In addition, provision of language materials such as books, objects and

pictures for naming help to support language learning. Little Pim’s voice mirrors

motherese and the series uses sharp and colorful images of objects and actions,

allowing young viewers to connect the sounds they hear with actions and

objects in real life.

Why do babies have this language advantage? Because evolutionarily, humans

need language a soon as possible. The sooner an early human could learn to talk,

the greater his chance of survival. He could quickly respond to life-saving com-

mands such as Stop! or Run! After language acquisition is set in motion, the brain

devotes its energy to other things, and unused functions weaken.

As they become tuned to their native language (or languages), children gradu-

ally lose the ability to tell the subtle sounds in foreign languages apart. Their

innate ability gradually declines, and by six or seven years of age, the most advan-

tageous window of opportunity has begun to close. When people are introduced

to new foreign sounds later in life, they can no longer hear the dierence, thus

making it much harder to imitate these sounds.

Babies gain understanding long before they can speak and beneﬁt from having

a rich language environment. That is because babies learn to talk by listening.

Research tells us that the more words babies hear, the faster they learn to talk.

Frequent daily exposure to words and active social engagement helps the

brain pathways that foster language learning to develop more fully.

Little Pim oers your child exposure to new words in a foreign language at the

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