Last week we talked about the power of using bilingual play to help your child’s language development along. We all know that bilingual games can do wonders for helping children learn a new language or reinforce a minority language they’re already hearing at home, so I was very excited when Jessie from Gogolingo.com asked me to try out this new website, which uses a concept called “playful immersion” as a way of teaching language through on-line games. Gogolingo.com defines itself as providing “research-based, age-appropriate activities with individualized progress reports that customize to your child’s personal learning curve.” After playing around with my own little lingo (a lingo is a little bear-like creature which your child is supposed to help learn a new language), I got to know the site a bit better and thought I’d share some of my observations with our readers.

What first caught my attention was the huge level of parental involvement. In the Grown Ups section of the site, gogolingo makes it clear that they “want to partner with YOU - your child’s first and most important teacher - to help your child develop a life-long love of languages.” Now that’s a statement we at Bilingual Readers can agree with wholeheartedly! Each time a child plays on the site, the parents receive an email notification of what the child learned that day with helpful hints on how to reinforce those concepts. There are forums for parents to discuss their concerns, language learning tips of the day, individualized progress charts, external resource links and even reminder emails when your child hasn’t visited the site in a while.

As for the games, they are simple, fun and tailored to each child’s age and language level.* We were also pleased to find some great literary focused games, geared toward helping children learn the abc’s and read storybooks in Spanish. At this point in time the only language combination available is for for English speakers who want to learn Spanish, but Jessie assured me that they will be adding new language combinations (Spanish speakers who want to learn English are the next on the list!) as soon as they’ve perfected the product. In that sense, you can help out by contacting gogolingo.com directly with any suggestions you may have.

Of course, when it comes to language development, on-line language games are no substitute for direct parental interaction, but they can be a great complementary tool. In order to maximize the effectiveness of these on-line games, make sure you sit in as much as possible on your child’s play sessions at gogolingo.com or any of the other bilingual on-line game sites we recommend in our Just for Kids! section. Have fun!

*The possibilities of tailoring the program to your child’s specific needs increase with the premium model. You can see a comparison of the free vs. premium package here: http://www.gogolingo.com/membership/)