A Free and Flexible Resource for Multilingual Reading With Children – Online or Offline
Non-native parents who want to teach their children a particular language often possess varying degrees of fluency in speaking, reading, and writing that language.
For instance, in my native language, Hong Kong style Chinese, some parents may be fluent speakers but unable to read or write. Others may be able to speak and read but cannot write. There are even some who can type the characters but are unable to write them manually.
Storybooks Canada provides a solution to this challenge faced by non-native speaker parents by allowing them to tailor the audio-text combination of a story to best suit their objectives and proficiency in the target language.
This free language education website currently offers 40 stories from the African Storybook, with both text and audio available in English, French, and the most common immigrant and refugee languages of Canada.
The website was developed with the noble goal of promoting language learning and literacy development in homes, schools, and communities. They are also working on Indigenous Storybooks and the Global Storybooks literacy portal which includes nearly 30 locations worldwide.
You can select a story you're interested in and then click on the "Change language" icon to read the story in a language of your preference. The "en" and "fr" icons allow quick switching between English, French, and the reading language.
However, these 2 small icons only change the language of the text. Click on Change language to also change the reading language (audio).
The language set-up options can meet the needs of most language levels and goals. For example, if you are native in Chinese and want to train your children in oral fluency as well as literacy, you can set up Chinese audio with Chinese text. If you can understand Chinese but are more comfortable reading the text in another language, such as English, you can choose Chinese audio and English caption:
This set-up is ideal for multilingual families who might be using the one-parent-one-language approach. For example, if the reading parent is fluent and literate in Chinese (like me) but the other parent isn’t (like my husband) and wants to know what is being read, the reading parent can pick the audio in Chinese but the text in the other parent’s first language. There are more than 16 languages available to mix and match.
Our selection of audio and text languages is similar to our watching of Kids TV shows like the Peppa Pig. If all three of us watch the same show together, I'd turn on Cantonese audio and English subtitles for my son (English-majority, Cantonese-minority) and husband (English-only). By doing so, we further promote bilingualism at home and spend quality time together at the same time!
The other great thing about this website is the availability of four story levels, depending on the age and language proficiency of your children. Furthermore, the website allows you to download both the audio file and a PDF of the text. This offline option is really practical both for using the site on the go, and for families that have strict screen time and internet usage policy for their children.
I’ve been enjoying this great resource with my little one a while back, who could already converse very well in English, Cantonese, and Mandarin, and has expressed his interest in learning German (my 4th language) as well. I hope your family will enjoy it too!
P.S. Thanks for your time to read this post! If you've enjoyed it and haven't joined our community yet, please fill out this simple form to regularly receive free language learning resources, communication insights & offer updates. Thank you!