Home Language Learners Review : Raising Talkers Course

Review : Raising Talkers Course

by Adrienne
Review of Multicultural motherhood raising talkers course

A few months ago I was asked by Weronika Ozpolat of Multicultural Motherhood to review her course entitled “Raising Talkers”. Today, I am going to share what we enjoyed and learned about the course.

(The opinions expressed in this post are my own thoughts.)

Weronika is a mother to four children and is from the South West of England. She is a Speech and Language Therapist specialising in bilingualism and autism. Her husband is a Turkish Kurd and they are hoping to raise our children to be multilingual. They are a Muslim family and home educate our children. She blogs about her multilingual, multicultural journey as well as home educating. She also writes about her interests; crafting, cooking and all the wonderfully fun activities she does with her children.

Bio taken from her blog, Multicultural Motherhood

She also has a YouTube channel where she shares about homeschool, field trips, unit studies and language learning tips.

I met Weronika on Instagram. I think she may have commented on another Muslim sister’s post about her husband being a Turk but also with Kurdish and Zaza heritage just like my husband. I contacted her and it turns out that her husband is originally from about an hour from my husband’s birthplace. Therefore, we connected through our husband’s backgrounds and homeschool. Her kids follow the Explore Nature with Children curriculum and her introduction to these nature studies eventually led me to using the curriculum as well.

Photo credit : Multicultural Motherhood

I decided to take the course for two reasons to learn more about how to help my two older children speak more in our minority languages and to encourage Mr. M (the baby)’s language development.

This course has four modules. Each module includes an informational video, a workbook and a live Q&A. These modules cover topics like normal and atypical speech development and strategies and games to help boost a child’s speech. The course was designed to help and guide parents in encouraging their children’s language and speech development from the youngest age.

I have already shared a few gems that I enjoyed from this course, here, in my post about why we have decided to stop speaking French at home.

Here are few others gems :

Don’t worry about your child’s ability to acquire two languages.

Speaking the heritage language will lead to a stronger emotional connection between you and your child.

Before the age of two to three, a child will learning nothing from a screen because they aren’t interacting with it. They need an interaction and context in order to understand the language. A screen stops them from interacting with you.

I really enjoyed this course!

It was very easy to follow and I looked forward to the live Q&A each week even if I didn’t have any questions. This course provided me with more language learning tips and confidence in myself when “teaching” my kids. I preferred watching the videos and didn’t really use the workbook. THe workbook provides a lot more information than the videos. I will refer back to the workbook as a quick guide when needed. The first module provides a milestones checklist from baby to a 5-year old child, something I think most parents will find helpful. I appreciated the last module the most, because Weronika presented a variety of language games to encourage listening, talking etc. More games are presented in the workbook than in the videos, so checking out the workbooks are also important.

RELATED POSTS //  Family Literacy Month

“Simon Says”

I enjoyed playing “Simon Says” as a young child, so I tried it out with my kids. For example, if I tell my kids to pick up their toys, they just stand there. But if I tell them Simon says to pick up the toys, they hurry around and pick them up. We will be playing more of these in the next coming months.

Positive points

  • Weronika is available to answer any questions either through the group or private messages. She normally responds within a few hours of your sent message. She makes it a point to answer questions in the next live Q&A.
  • I wish that I had a class like this available before my older kids were born or still young.

Negative point

  • Lack of other parents participation on the Facebook page (myself included).

The class will be available again in July, in case you are interested in signing up you can sign up over here in early June.

She has another course coming up too, “Clear Speech : How to help your child through speech sound difficulties” registration will be opening up later this week and will run in June. More information can be found here.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.