For most au pairs, improving their English language skills is still the most important motivator for choosing the au pair program.

Nothing quite hits the spot like the au pair programme.living with an English speaking family and getting opportunity to earn and learn.

Whatever your choice of language course, this is also a great way to meet new people and make friends. At the languages centers, people from all nationalities come together to learn, so you have something in common with everyone and it make it easy to connect.  You can practice your language skills in social situations, chat during your breaks and agree to meet up when you have time off.

Just because the au pair program is about cultural childcare, this does not mean that the au pair has a background or a future in childcare. Au pairs are often university graduates who have ambitious plans for the future and recognise the au pair program as an effective and efficient way to practise English for a year.

The time with the family can be considered as ‘work experience’ and language practice all rolled into one. Practicing your improving language skills with young children has huge advantages. Children are usually more patient and forgiving, they can correct your errors without making you feel embarrassed or awkward. And their own choice of words and sentences is often simpler than that of adults. Depending on the child’s age, you can learn from each other; read together, play word games, be each other’s thesaurus and have fun whilst learning.

And the parents have a role to play too. In the first couple of weeks, the parents need to ensure that the au pair is ‘trained’ into the routine of the household. This is often done with a handbook or training manual, which both parents and au pair can use for reference. It is in the parents interest to engage the au pair in conversation from an early stage. The au pair will spend a lot of time with their children and feedback on their activities will be a good opportunity for the au pair to speak with the adults of the family. 

To encourage the development of written English, an au pair can keep a diary or journal or possibly even a blog in English to share with friends back home.  This will make a nice souvenir too.

Most new host families comment on the astonishing improvements of the language skills of their au pair in the first two weeks. After the initial couple of weeks, it is more often the outsiders, like friends of the family, who notice the improvements. With a longer gap between communications the differences are more noticeable than to the family who interact with their au pair on a daily basis.

Some of our host families also ask us about an au pair who speaks French for example to help improve the French language skills of the family. Although asking the au pair to teach some of her/his own language to the family may be an additional benefit, the benefits of the interactions above are possibly less obvious, yet very real. It will help the children to improve their own English language skills through using different words to help the au pair understand but it also prepares them for a time in the future when the children may be learning a foreign language themselves. It may motivate them to want to learn an additional language and even give them the desire to become au pair themselves one day to improve their language skills in the same way.