Is 20 Minutes A Day Enough To Teach A Diaspora Child Tigriyna?

WINNIPEG, Manitoba - April 22, 2013 - PRLog -- It is often very common to hear that many Eritrean parents in the diaspora find it difficult to succeed in teaching their children the Tigriyna mother-tongue. Most such parents have done so much in this regard, including but not limited to, sending their children to community based Tigriyna schools, purchasing DVDs and other Tigriyna based software programs, subscribing to satellite TV and radio programs and more.

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Yet, most diaspora parents are watching helplessly, as their efforts fail to produce the intended results and their children completely avoid the innitiative of speaking in the mother-language.

The reality of diaspora life affords very little extra time to many parents, their busy schedules and multiple jobs leaves little time for such a demanding task. Moreover, we can also add to the problem the scarce market supply of Tigriyna learning materials as well as the competing expectations that are necessarily placed upon our children to excel in their diaspora activities. Well, it all makes for a difficult and too great a goal to attain mother-tongue proficiency by our diaspora youth and children.

At the same time, most parents are acutely aware of the importance for mother-tongue education to their children. Such is the case not only for its manifest benefits that it brings to the child's life, by transferring cultural and identity inter-generational values, but also in its critical role of boosting the healthy parent-child relationships within the family as well as giving a sense of purpose and accomplishment  for the parents.

It is out of such an understanding of the pertinent challenges  and combined with a long time experience in the field of child education, that Weledo Publications Enterprise (www.weledo.com) began to work towards developing essential set of Tigriyna learning books for our youth and children.

Weledo's system of Tigrinya education is based in making the learning experience easy, fun and effective. Weledo has designed Tigriyna books for Eritrean youth and children that uniquely employ the key principles in the area of language education, the protocol for writing for young readership and child educational psychology. These aforementioned principles are easily discovered in the clarity, simplicity and rapid skill building potential of Weledo's Tigriyna books.

Parents are only expected to participate for a mere 20 minutes per day in their child's Tigriyna work, at the early stages of alphabet recognition, until the child's full mastery of the Tigriyna Alphabets. The simple and sharply focused model of the learning contents provided in Weledo books mean that parental involvement is kept at minimum and most of the learning is done by the child independently. Beyond the child's mastery of the alphabets, the parent's participation is further reduced to time managment of the learning task and only, as an extra to the 20 minute a day plan, to read one of Weledo story books to their child as and when needed.

The most important thing is however, the parent is prepared to spend 20 minutes Tigriyna time at home, everyday, consistently. Weledo has also prepared the 'magic20' guide that is freely distributed document and is made available for download (to be made available shortly) from its website weledo.com. The guide outlines specific steps to be followed in each of the 20 minute home Tigriyna time slot. If what is provided in the guide is followed through consistently, the plan would see the parent witnessing their child rapidly master the Tigrinya alphabets and advancing all the way through to the learning of formal Tigriyna grammar in a short period of time (of course, depending on the age of the child).

Spending 20 minutes a day for home Tigryina activity with our kids takes much about the same time it would have us spend to enjoy a nice cup of coffee with a friend. Such a small time commitment, however, is likely to make a life time impact in our children's lifelong bond to their heritage. Now may be a high time for all Eritrean diaspora parents to resolve to commit to the "20 minutes of Tigriyna a day" approach through Weledo's unique home Tigriyna learning techniques to bolster the mastery of the Tigriyna mother-tongue proficiency of their children.

Please email Weledo: admin@weledo.com to get your free copy of Weledo's research based techniques in the effective implementation of home Tigriyna mastery for your family.