The four profiles behind the quiz
Almost every child who understands Spanish but won't speak it fits one of these four profiles. The quiz tells them apart with eight questions about how Spanish works at home, and the 4-week plan is different for each one, because what helps one profile gets in the way of another.
Not enough exposure
He hears Spanish for under two hours a week, or nobody speaks it to him regularly. It isn't a motivation problem but an hours problem: a child can't produce a language he barely hears, and asking him to speak before the input goes up only teaches him that Spanish is the language he fails in.
Pushing the language away
He gets upset, goes quiet or says he doesn't know how when asked to speak. Spanish has become tied to tension and correction, and more exposure won't unlock him until that pressure drops. It's the profile that improves most with a full week of asking for nothing.
Mixing the two languages
He answers with sentences where both languages live together. It's a normal stage of bilingualism, not confusion: children separate their languages on their own as soon as they have contexts where only one works. Cutting in so he says it "properly" is what drags it out.
Understands but freezes
He understands almost everything and could speak, but he's never needed to: at home the other language works just as well. What he's missing isn't vocabulary, it's a person who doesn't understand his other language, and a couple of techniques to get the first sentence out without pressure.
If you want the mechanism before you take the quiz, why your child understands Spanish but won't speak it explains it in detail. And Spanish for heritage speakers shows what our classes for bilingual children look like, by age and by level.
Frequently asked questions
What is passive bilingualism?
It's when a child understands a language almost completely but doesn't produce it. It is very common in families living abroad: the child hears the language at home, processes it effortlessly and answers in the language of the country. Understanding and speaking are two different skills and they develop separately.
Is it too late if he's already ten or eleven?
No. The Spanish is already in there after years of hearing it, so what you're doing is activating it, not building it from scratch. That works the same at six and at twelve.
How many hours a week does it take before he starts speaking?
As a rule of thumb, under two hours a week you rarely see progress. From three or four hours of real use, speaking and not just listening, children usually start producing sentences of their own within a few weeks.
Does growing up with two languages confuse him or slow the other one down?
No. Decades of research on bilingual children point the other way: it tends to help with focus and switching between tasks. Your child isn't confused, he just picks the easy language when nobody gives him a reason not to.
And when you want to hear him speak
The plan works on its own, but what unlocks a child is talking to someone who doesn't understand their other language. The trial class costs €3 and lasts 30 minutes.
Book the €3 trial classGroups of 4 to 6 children, native teachers, no lock-in.
