Mother scoops baby language prize

Fiona Moffatt has recently opened a Children's Language Centre in Airth

A teacher from Falkirk has won an international prize for a course she designed to teach babies French.

Fiona Moffatt, 33, set up her company Lingobaby while on maternity leave looking after her son Ruairi.

Ms Moffatt said she wanted to introduce Ruairi to a foreign language and started her own classes when she found there was nothing available.

The prize was awarded by Piccolingo, a European campaign set up to promote foreign language learning in the young.

Ms Moffatt said the only language classes she could find for the very young in Scotland were for native speakers.

"I thought - if I want this to happen I'm going to have to make it happen myself," she said.

If children are exposed to the sounds of a language before the age of nine months, they're much more likely to pick the sounds out at a later age Fiona Moffatt

The modern languages teacher ran her first classes in 2008 and has recently opened a Children's Language Centre in Airth, which she said was the first of its kind in Scotland.

She runs sessions for children from birth to five years old.

"There are no expectations that they come out with French words, but often you can hear babies of about 15-16 months say bits of words like 'bonjour', 'merci' and 'au revoir'," she said.

Ms Moffatt said there were "huge" benefits to babies and toddlers learning foreign languages.

"If children are exposed to the sounds of a language before the age of nine months, they're much more likely to pick the sounds out at a later age," she said.

"We've also had a lot of comments from parents who are coming to classes that it just makes language learning normal."

Plans to expand

The competition was open to parents worldwide who had found a way to teach their child a new language.

Entrants posted details of their method on the Piccolingo Facebook page and other members of the group voted for the one they liked best.

Ms Moffatt, who won money to spend on language books, now combines part-time work as a modern languages teacher at Bannockburn High with running her business and looking after Ruairi.

But she said she plans to expand Lingobaby soon.

"At the moment I just do French, but I would love to take on new languages," she said.