To Lydia -- Jeff English Learnin

English Milestone of 4-year-old kids

On Wikipedia, the milestones by age is listed. Start at 4-year-old, English Language appear at one item of kid's overall development.

Below is items copies from the Wikipedia: English language [1]

Uses the prepositions "on," "in," and "under."

Uses possessives consistently: "hers," "theirs," "baby's."

Answers "Whose?", "Who?", "Why?", and "How many?"

Produces elaborate sentence structures: "The cat ran under the house before I could see what color it was."

Speech is almost entirely intelligible.

Begins to use the past tense of verbs correctly: "Mommy closed the door," "Daddy went to work."

Refers to activities, events, objects, and people that are not present.

Changes tone of voice and sentence structure to adapt to listener's level of understanding: To baby brother, "Milk gone?" To Mother, "Did the baby drink all of his milk?"

States first and last name, gender, siblings' names, and sometimes own telephone number.

Answers appropriately when asked what to do if tired, cold, or hungry. Recites and sings simple songs like mangoes and rhymes.

This could be used as a check list and curriculum for Jeff. If he could complete them, we could set the next goal for him. This is more than just remember vocabulary, but has more requirements for some simple space concepts and question types. Language tense, tone of voice, are also included as basic development requirements.

Something for Jeff's Mom

1. Your Milestones

For teaching Jeff, I hope you could work very hard towards improving your English. These items above could be milestones for you either, which you should acquire them as faster as possible to teach Jeff. 

2. The way you teach -- bring it to daily life

Now, as I can see, the way you are teaching Jeff seems rely on an App called “叽里呱啦”. The another method is sparking card. That App is quite good, but Jeff is too young to develop his own schedule and check the learning progress by himself. In this case, you should probably take notes and make you self fully understand the courses on the “叽里呱啦”. Then you bring the language into your and Jeff's daily life. Like the lesson named "What for breakfast?", you might ask Jeff in the morning, and you could also ask him during dinner like "What for dinner/supper". In that way, his language will be developed. Leaning without using is just a waste of time. Practicing is the essence for acquiring English for all of us.