learning english from tv

yesterday we -nina, kaka nina, and mama nina- went to kezia's birthday party. kezia is nina's classmate who is very sweet cute 'very girly' little girl. while the kids were enjoying the party, miss dora (nina's grey room teacher), mbak rika (agas mom) and I had the discussion why the kids don't want to speak english in the class. the teachers have to remind them to speak english or they just speak bahasa all the time. actually there are kids who speaks english at home with their parents including nina, nea, sean and a couple more. the rest of the kids don't speak english at home because their parents are working or busy outside the house. so they just stay in the house with their babysitters. unfortunately, these babysitters don't speak english, and the chance to speak english at school is only 3 hours a day.

in my case, because I realize my english is not perfect, I subscribe to a cable tv so my kids could expose to channels (such as playhouse disney, disney channel, discovery channel, etc) besides indonesian national tv. so every day, nina and kaka nina watch those channels. I think it works well. nina's english has improved significantly, and kaka nina's has stayed in his brain up until now. and I speak english with them almost all the time - except when I'm upset.

so tv is not always bad. it can be the source to learn something useful as long as we parents accompany and check what they watch...