Today, kids can learn English in many ways like going to English centers or home tutoring. And one of the easiest ways is using English Learning Apps which are commonly installed on mobile or tablet. This is a new, exciting and effective way for kids to learn English. Let’s take a look at some popular English Learning Apps for kids and learn how to take the best advantage of them.
1. Benefits of Using English Learning Apps for Kids
- The variety of content
English Learning Apps provide learners with a lot of colorful pictures, videos and songs. Learning English is no longer limited to boring textbooks or simple printed sentences. Vivid pictures and entertaining melody in the videos and songs will keep the “young learners” motivated when listening and remembering how new words are pronounced. Moreover, their speaking skills can be improved naturally thanks to often listening to the pronunciation that is totally recorded by native speakers.
- Learning and playing at the same time
These interesting apps will not only help kids to learn vocabulary and sentence patterns effectively but also let them apply their knowledge practically. The apps use games for the purpose of lessons review as well as a method to stimulate the kids to remember better. As a result, their reactions to a certain language can also be built up during the learning process. And their English skills become a natural act, like an instinct, which empower them to speak English more fluently. This way of learning brings more and more benefits for learners.
- Flexible learning time
Instead of going to the class according to a fixed time table, kids are free to choose their most suitable time to start the lessons. They are also able to keep up and review what they’ve learned even when they are away on a vacation with their family.
2. Effective English Learning Apps for Kids
2.1. Lingokids
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Overview:
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Description
Lingokids offers a 3-stage learning process:
- Immersion: helping kids to get to know English
- Association: helping kids to get more familiar with English
- Natural: helping kids to grow natural reactions with English
Kids will learn English when discovering 5 different topics Lingokids proposes, including Animals, Food, Nature, Places.
For example, the first lesson is related to bathroom objects. Kids will encounter new vocabularies when they are in related activities (for morning activities, they’ll learn the word Toothbrush which they’ll remember when brushing their teeth daily)
Lingokids also provides many enjoyable games which help kids to improve their English skills like listening, speaking, reading and writing. Besides, this app uses English songs and many interesting short stories with fun melody to make the lessons easier to “digest”.
Advantages
- Lessons: The app provides a great source of topics with various contents. The English lessons are all tailored to meet learners’needs and learning goals.
- Interface: The app offers many lovely pictures, amusing music. There are a lot of daily situations where kids can easily apply what they’ve learned.
- Skills: Kids will practice their listening, reading skills and learn new words, basic sentence patterns at the same time.
- Report: Parents can register their email to receive the updated information for the kids’ learning process.
Disadvantages
- Experience: The free trial period is short, within 1-2 lessons. After that, users will have to upgrade to continue using the app. The users who are not familiar with Lingokids might find it difficult to make their decision to pay.
- Payment: After registering, kids will have free English lessons for the first month. Then, the payment (if there is) must be made in one year. In case of any cancellation at the first month and users don’t have to pay any extra fee. There’s no option for monthly payment.
- Skills:
- Lingokids do not offer exercises for pronunciation, spelling and reading. Therefore, if parents want their kids to improve these skills, they have to find exercises in other English learning apps.
- There is no subtitle in the guiding contents. Although the Apps use simple sentence patterns, parents who are not very good at English may find it hard to assist their kids.
2.2. Monkey Junior
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Overview:
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Description
The App contains more than 3000 lessons focusing on English vocabulary and pronunciation.
With Monkey Junior, kids can learn English and even some other languages. Besides, parents can easily choose suitable levels for their kids. Each level offers a variety of interesting lessons.
- Easy: 360 lessons
- Medium: 310 lessons
- Advanced: 310 lessons
The app uses pictures and real photos to vividly demonstrate the content of lessons. It allows kids to learn English with the objects that they usually see in their daily life, newspapers or magazines.
Advantages
- Lessons: The app gives learners a great number of lessons with diversified content.
- Skills: The app introduces kids with phonetics of English words. Learners will gradually get more familiar with this kind of symbol.
- Interface: The app is also available in Vietnamese; thanks to that, parents who are not good at English can still support their kids when they are learning.
- Features: Lessons can be saved for later study. To continue learning, kids just simply click on “Continue” to complete the lesson. The app also features the option “Learn from the beginning” in order that parents can set up review lessons for the vocabulary their kids have learned.
- Skills: Kids will practice listening skills and word recognition.
- Report: Parents can easily follow kids’ learning progress.
Disadvantages
- Features: the app will randomly choose the lessons, which means kids can not pick their favorite ones.
- Payment: When registering the app, users are only allowed to choose to pay yearly (1 year, 2 years, or 3 years). The app does not provide a monthly payment option.
- Skills: Lessons for speaking and writing skills are not included.
2.3. Fun English
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Overview:
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Description
The app offers a great number of interesting topics that kids can choose as their most favorite, including colors, animals, numbers, food, transportations, the human body, fruits, clothes, houses, sea creatures, school items, and actions.
Each topic has its own designed games. This will help kids to freely choose whichever games they like but still be assured with the essential knowledge. The option for multiplayer will add even more motivation when learning.
Besides, “Today’s game” option will provide learners with random topics in different games. This is aimed to prevent learners from getting bored, raise their curiosity for what they are about to discover.
Advantages
- Lessons: Fun English contains a huge number of free lessons and games. Parents can purchase more lessons for their kids whenever they wish. Choosing what topics to buy totally depends on learners’ demand.
- Skills: Listening and speaking skills will be practiced.
- Interface: Vietnamese options are available to support parents when assisting their kids.
Disadvantages
- Lessons: The game speed is quite fast and requires good reactions from learners. The app may only be suitable for kids from the age of 5 to 10.
- Skills: Fun English does not include exercises for word recognition. Although the app features a record option for kids to listen to their own voice, the mark giving system is not clear enough as it doesn’t show what learners have pronounced correctly or incorrectly.
2.4. English for Kids
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Overview
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Description
The app concentrates on helping kids practicing English through a variety of games. These games are divided into 4 groups: Flashcard, Sentence Games, Word Games, Sentences.
- Flashcard: Kids can learn new words on different topics such as alphabets, numbers, animals, flowers, birds, clothes…
- Sentence Games: Kids can practice English sentence patterns. This includes Yes/No, choosing correct pictures, filling the blank.
- Word games: Kids can learn new words randomly. Their mission is to find out the correct answer for each question.
- Sentence: Kids will learn English with simple sentence patterns such as personal introduction (I am), possessive expression (have something), activity description (Action/Verb 1)…
Advantages
- Lessons: Kids are free to select their favorite vocabulary topics and games. Sentences Games and Word Games are designed to give random lessons, which really makes the study process more appealing.
- Price: It’s totally free
- Skills: Kids can learn new vocabulary and sentence patterns as well as practice listening and writing skills.
Disadvantages
- Skills: The app only allows learners to practice listening and writing skills by recognizing new words and sentence patterns. Unfortunately, Learners must use other apps if they wish to improve their speaking and pronunciation.
- Interface: All the available pictures are not animated. This may make it hard for kids to figure out what words they are encountering. For example: When learning the phrase “catch the ball”, kids only see a picture of a boy holding a ball. It is difficult for them to imagine how the action “catch” could be.
2.5. Learn English Kids: Playtime
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Overview:
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Description
Learn English Kids offers learners many English videos consisting of songs and stories. The available pictures are lovely and the music is also fun. The videos of more than 20 different topics are recorded by native speakers. Therefore, kids will easily get familiar with the correct pronunciation and natural intonation.
The app also provides games to help kids to practice what they have learned. These games are divided into suitable topics.
Advantages
- Lessons: Kids will not only learn vocabulary and sentence patterns but also know about delightful stories of legends, history, and culture. This is really helpful for their general development.
- Interface: The app is attractively displayed with lovely and colorful drawings.
- Skills: Kids will practice listening with the pronunciation recorded by native speakers. Thanks to that, they are more likely to speak English in a proper way.
Disadvantages
- Features: Despite having subtitles in every video, Learn English Kids doesn’t offer the option to search for word meaning and word saving. As you can see, this makes it harder for kids to understand and remember new vocabulary.
- Skills: Pronunciation and speaking skills will not be practiced. Parents must find other apps for their kids.
- Study Report: There is no option for checking study progress.
2.6. eJOY English App 2
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Overview:
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Description
eJOY English App 2 is a multi-platform English learning app (it can run on mobile, Ipad, and computer). To be exact, the app is most suitable for parents who wish to learn with their kids instead of letting them learn on their own.
The app offers a variety of English courses for practical purposes and a library with more than 60,000 videos with different topics conveniently categorized into suitable levels (from 1-beginner to 7-high advanced). Moreover, the topics for kids are abundant, appealing and diversified (music, movies, spelling practice and basic vocabulary).
You must have turned on Youtube for your children to watch the cartoon and listen to songs, right? This is what eJOY is doing. But one thing that makes eJOY a free and effective English Learning Apps for parents is its word meaning searching function – while watching videos.
All the videos on eJOY are available in subtitles arranged on different levels. While watching the videos, parents can look up the spelling and meaning of the words and then explain to their kids when necessary. Besides, eJOY also adds options for saving new words and playing games to help kids with remembering.
This kind of learning brings parents and their kids closer. They can share better moments together while kids can still learn English effectively and joyfully.
Advantages
- Lessons: The app contains more than 60,000 videos arranged in different topics, levels, and lengths in order that learners can choose the most suitable lessons for themselves.
- Interface: Vietnamese option is always available.
- The skills that are trained: Parents and kids can practice listening, speaking (game speak), and spelling (fill in the blank).
- Payment: 3 options for monthly payment which will surely meet learners’ demand.
- Study Report: eJOY will report the study progress every day.
Disadvantages
- Features: The app has no game designed particularly for kids. Therefore, kids cannot learn English on their own without parents’ support.
- Experience: Users can only save a maximum of 20/phrases with the free version. If they want to continue learning new words and watch offline videos, you need to upgrade to PRO.
3. Using English learning apps together with other methods
3.1. Is using English learning apps always the best method?
There is a huge number of English learning apps for kids. However, using these apps to learn English is not always the most effective and physically healthy for preschoolers. Parents may, at the same time, let their kids overuse the electronic devices for studying, which unfortunately results in the following serious consequences:
- Weakened eyesight due to keeping eyes on-screen without proper resting
- Imbalance in daily life activities like eating and sleeping
- Lack of physical exercise and addiction to using electronic devices.
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3.2. How to wisely use English learning apps?
- For kids under 18 months, never let them use electronic devices alone.
- For those between 18 and 24 months, limit their time of using electronic devices.
- Between the age of 2 and 5, only let children use electronic devices in no more than 1 hour. Create the habit of using electronic devices in short periods of time instead of 1 time per hour.
Parents should use 1 or 2 apps to help kids develop English skills. Listening and speaking skills should be considered a priority when choosing English learning apps.
For instance, parents can use the Monkey Junior to support kids in learning vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling. When kids have more free time, parents can encourage them to watch movies or listen to English songs with eJOY English.
3.3. Other helpful activities to consider
For kids, the best way to learn English is actually to have communication with their parents. Parents should spend more time talking with their kids at night, and even practice English in daily conversations, through which parents may let their kids call out the English names of common items in the house.
For example, when teaching kids the word “apple”, parents can mention its color – “red” in front of the word “apple”.
To maintain kids’ interest, it would be better to learn in combination with fun games. Parents can easily look for suitable ideas on the Internet, download and put them into games that kids love to play.
Kids would also be surprised if parents invite their friends to come and play. They could be whoever your kids know – neighbors and classmates. It will be even better if they are foreigners.
4. Conclusion
Using English learning apps is truly a convenient way to support parents in proactively teaching and following the English learning journey of their kids. However, just remember that the most important thing kids always dream of is the moments they share with their parents and friends when learning English. Finally, I hope that this post will help you in choosing the right English Learning Apps for your kids. And you will always be lovely partners who do magical favor for your kids on their way to mastering English. Don’t forget to share your experience with other parents in the comment section below.
