I’ve been experimenting at home with ways to help my children practise language learning using AI/audio tools, and thought it might be useful to share the approach and ask what has worked for others.
I’m currently parenting on my own in the UK. My children are half Chinese / half English, aged 10 and 12, but they speak very little Chinese.
I know there are online tools like Rosetta Stone and Duolingo, but they have not helped the children much over the years, even when I’ve sat with them and tried to encourage them through it.
So I’m now writing my own AI-based language learning approach at home. It focuses mainly on audio and speech, with reading as a useful side product rather than the main goal.
The idea is not to get the children staring at screens or doing app-style exercises. I’m trying to make it more like repeated listening, speaking and recognition — closer to how children naturally pick up language.
At the moment I have two methods I’m working on:
1. Simple vocabulary and expression practice
Numbers, colours, places, everyday expressions and useful phrases.
2. Story listening and speaking
Taking simple stories we have read together before, then having AI read them aloud line by line: first in English, then in Mandarin Chinese.
I have also cloned my own voice, so the stories can be read in both English and Chinese in my voice. My thinking is that this may feel more familiar and emotionally natural for the children than a generic app voice, especially because these are stories we have already shared before.
It also means I can support their Chinese learning even though I’m not fluent enough to read Mandarin aloud properly myself.
I’m not trying to sell anything — I’m interested in the learning pattern, not promoting a product.
Has anyone else tried this kind of approach for Mandarin, English, French or other languages? I’d be interested in what actually works with children, rather than what looks clever technically.