How do preschoolers adapt to a bilingual learning environment during Academy classes? Alina Gafiyatullina reports

Classes in additional education groups for preschoolers at the Academy are taught simultaneously by two teachers. One teacher speaks to the girls in Russian, and the second in English.

Alina Gafiyatullina talked about the method of immersing children in a bilingual environment.

"We tried to create this artificial bilingual language environment according to the “one teacher - one language”. Thereby creating in the child a sense of correlation between the teacher and the language she speaks," Alina said.

The teacher also explained why little girls do not have problems learning a foreign language at such an early age.

"And they learn English in the same way as their native language, that is, the same mechanisms are activated. In young children, visual, figurative thinking predominates. And in order to understand a word in English, it is enough for them to correlate the word with its image, object, picture or some kind of gesture," she said.

Alina Gafiyatullina shared the first results the children have.

"The children who already had some prior knowledge of  English, they even tried to show it - name a color in English or count. That is the point of our goal, to get the child to talk, to communicate in English. This is what we strive for, and we really want all children to give us a response like that," Alina said.

The budget groups of additional education for preschoolers at the Alina Kabaeva Sky Grace Rhythmic Gymnastics Academy started in September.