By Barbara Mills

One of the ways that I have successfully built a Music Lingua business is by being a presence at the local libraries. The children’s section of the library is always looking for content providers. It’s a win-win situation if you can offer to do a free French program for them from time-to-time. I like to do this between sessions, a couple of weeks before I have classes starting up, so that I can get some renewed exposure in the community.

The program that I do is primarily a public service outreach to parents of young children who may not know about the importance of early language training. While most parents think it would be cool for their kids to learn a foreign language at an early age, and they understand the benefits of being bilingual for education, travel and job purposes, not many people understand the important physiological changes that the young brain undergoes when exposed to another language. These benefits extend to other cognitive learning areas such as better math and analytical skills, and reading and writing ability in the mother tongue. I remind parents that the ‘Window of Opportunity’ to learn a language effortlessly is before they are 8 years old, and preferably as young as possible. While it is a mini Music Lingua class for the kids, I weave in information for the parents, highlighting the resources at the local library.

For example, parents can expose their children’s ears to the many sounds of languages by checking out the Little Pim DVDs and international music CDs. I don’t expect kids to start speaking languages by utilizing these resources alone, but training theirs ears and reproducing the sounds of other languages is one step towards getting the accent right when they are studying languages. I like to use the example of English-speaking Japanese who were not exposed to English as children. As we age, it’s very hard to get our brains and mouths to make new sounds – especially the English L’s and R’s for the Japanese.

The other side of language learning is to replicate a meaning in several languages. I ask the kids what I am saying when I wave my hand in the air – everyone knows that means hello! I then ask them to say hello in another language they may know and out comes, “hola”, “bonjour”, “konnichiwa”, “nihau”, etc. Then I ask what their favorite DVD is to watch at home and the excited voices tell me all about their favorites with the nodding parents rolling their eyes behind them. I then tell the parents that they are in a great position to help inspire language learning by allowing the children to watch that DVD yet another time, but this time in whatever foreign language is available. If the children have memorized the video, they will anticipate, by the music and context, the words the character is about to speak. By simply giving them the words in another language, they will pick up snippets of language – which is one of the main principles used in the Music Lingua curriculum. Is this free, at-home strategy as good as taking a class and having a face-to-face interaction? No, but it is something they can easily do and opens up the conversation of what actually happens in a Music Lingua class!

Now that you have a free Music Lingua class booked at the library, it’s time to get some exposure. Make sure that the library will help advertise the class through their normal venues (posters, flyers, newsletters, online calendars, etc.). In my community, there are several children’s publications and newspapers that have community calendars. If the library doesn’t plan to list the activity in those publications, ask permission to do so yourself. These publications make their money through advertising, but they pull in readers through their community calendars. Parents often skim over the advertisements but look at the calendar carefully for fun things to do with their children. Save your advertising money and focus on being highlighted in the calendar instead!

Please add your comments, ideas and questions about this concept in the comments section below!

Barbara Mills has been a French Music Lingua teacher in Colorado Springs for the past 5 years and has successfully grown her classes, starting with 5 families in 1 class to over 20 families participating in 5 classes currently. She credits her success with the love of children and the French language as well as a strong background in entrepreneurship, marketing and business development.