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TongueDojo

Teaching it is how you keep it.

🗓️ Plan the sessions →

Four moves, four short sessions

  • Wait. Say the word once, then three slow seconds of silence.
  • Smallest hint first. The first sound — not the whole word.
  • Praise the effort. Name what they did, never “you’re so smart”.
  • Notice the slip. Say exactly what was different before you model it again.

Sessions land on day 1, 2, 4 and 7 and always review the earlier words first. You become the tutor and you keep the language too. Nothing is recorded or sent; the words live on this device and you can delete them any time. These are the same four moves MentorDojo teaches.

The moves, by name

  • Threebeat — gives the quiet that lets a younger child find the word.
  • Firstsound — offers the smallest help that could unstick them.
  • Kindword — names the effort, not the talent.
  • Spotslip — catches the exact slip — and keeps it kind.

TongueDojo is text-forward (ages 15–18). It shares one family word list with TongueTots, TonguePals and TongueQuest.

A real case · you decide

Linh’s little brother

Linh — a 17-year-old whose little brother answers in English when Grandma speaks Vietnamese

The idea in play: keeping a family language by teaching it, in short spaced sessions.

At dinner, Bà asks Minh a question in Vietnamese. Minh, seven, answers in English. Bà goes quiet.

Linh speaks enough Vietnamese to get by — enough to be the bridge. Minh thinks Vietnamese is “Bà’s language”, not his.

Linh has ten minutes most evenings. The question is how to use them without turning it into homework.

How does Linh start?

Minh gets a tone wrong and laughs. What does Linh do?

Plan my sessions →