024 : Jim Porter of Speekee on Finding The Right Language Teacher And Raising 2 Bilingual Kids In English And Spanish

Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast: Raising Multilingual Children, Multicultural Living, Growing Up With Multiple Languages.

Jim Porter is a British who lives in Spain with his wife and two bilingual children. He started teaching English in 1994 after he graduated from university in the UK.

It was in 1998 when he founded a tuition agency named Talk Languages, connecting hundreds of language teachers in the London area with thousands of happy clients for private lessons.

In 2006, he co-founded Speekee, where children to learn to speak Spanish together. In this interview, we’ll talk about his path to his career, raising his kids bilingual and the idea behind Speekee.

In this episode of Bilingual Kids Rock Podcast:

00:34 Introduction to Jim Porter of Speekee – Spanish for Kids Blog

1:50 Why did Jim choose a career on language?

7:40 What should parents look for in hiring a language teacher?

11:11 Language is learned the best when it’s life vs. when it’s on paper

13:01 What is the language situation in Jim Porter’s family? How do they balance the language spoken between their kids?

15:20 “My child doesn’t have linguistic abilities” – How can we make sure that the child gets to talk in another language?

18:00 What language should siblings speak among themselves?

19:17 Switching languages between siblings

22:27 How does Jim Porter’s kids speak English or Spanish at home?

25:18 Bilingual Schools – Full immersion or half immersion?

28:09 Did Jim teach his kids to learn how to read and write in English?

29:57 What is the idea behind Speekee?

33:56 Dicussing how kids learn so fast and their interaction with other kids

35:20 What can adults learn from kids on learning another language?

35:40 What you can learn from Speekee

36:70 Closing Remarks

Items mentioned in this episode:

Speekee

Talk Languages

Code-Switching vs. Borrowing in Bilingual Children

How To Raise a Bilingual Child

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