Yes, you can help, and probably more than you think. What a child learning English vocabulary needs at home is someone who asks a few questions every day and listens to the answers. None of that requires English. Not speaking it can even work in your favour.

Most parents assume the opposite: "I don't speak it, I'll teach it wrong, better to stay out of it." So the child is left alone with English at home, the words only ever appear at school, and most of them are gone before the weekend. What wipes the words out is the lack of review, and review is something you can provide.

What is your job, then?

Coaching. A coach does not play the match. A coach makes sure training happens every day and keeps an eye on the player. Pronouncing the word, explaining grammar or knowing the right answer to the homework is not your job, and a dictionary app on your phone is more reliable than you at all of that anyway. Your job is making sure the short session actually happens each evening, and that yesterday's words get asked again today.

Let your child teach you

This is the strongest thing a parent without English can do. Ask your child to teach you five words they learned that day: what each one means, how it sounds, and a sentence that uses it.

There is good research behind this. In a 2014 experiment by Nestojko and colleagues with university students, people who studied a passage expecting to teach it remembered more of it, and recalled it in a better organised way, than people who expected a test. Getting ready to teach makes you sort out what you know.

This is where not speaking English becomes an advantage. Your child really is teaching you something, so they cannot fob you off with "you already know this". The moment they stumble while explaining a word is exactly where they do not quite know it yet, and you will both notice at the same time.

Have them say it out loud

For memory, reading a word silently and saying it aloud are not the same. In MacLeod and colleagues' 2010 experiments, words read aloud were remembered better than words read silently. Researchers call this the production effect.

Do not worry about pronunciation. Tap the speaker icon next to the word in a dictionary app and let your child listen and repeat. All you need to say is "again". The ear learns the right sound from the speaker, not from you. We wrote more about this in the ear learns the word first.

Ask again the next day

Asking a word five times in one evening does less than asking it once the next day. Recalling a word just as it starts to fade feels hard, and that effort is what fixes it in place. Here is how forgetting works.

In practice it is simple. Tonight, over dinner and without the book, ask for the words your child taught you yesterday. "You taught me a word yesterday. What was 'mutfak'?" Ask in Turkish and wait for the English. If you are not sure whether the answer is right, check the word list in their notebook. That list is your answer key.

Be curious, not a checker

Even parents who speak English often get this wrong: they check every answer like an examiner. After a while the child feels they are sitting a test and pulls back. You are in an easier position. You can ask "Why do you think that one didn't stick?" or "Which word does it remind you of?" Your child may tell you themselves that they keep mixing up "kitchen" and "chicken". Mix-ups like that almost never surface when a child studies alone.

A sample week

Here is a simplified version of the plan in twelve minutes a day, for parents who do not speak English:

Monday: your child teaches you the week's new words. Ten minutes.
Tuesday: you ask yesterday's words in Turkish and they give you the English.
Wednesday: a day off. The gap does its own work.
Thursday: ask Monday's words again. This is the hardest day and the most useful one.
Friday: only the words that tripped them up on Thursday.

That comes to about forty minutes a week, and none of it needs English. Keep the word list and your phone nearby and you have everything you need.

Talking to the school

Ask the teacher plainly: "I don't speak English. What can I do at home?" and ask for the week's word list. With the list in hand, every question you ask at home becomes a review.

In schools that use GetSpeakin, parents can see on their own screen which words their child is starting to forget and which ones they keep confusing. For a parent without English, a list that has already picked tonight's questions takes away the hardest part of the job.

A small experiment for tonight: ask your child to teach you three words from this week. Write the Turkish meanings on a piece of paper. Tomorrow evening, take the paper out, ask them, and note how many come back. Ask the ones that did not come back again the day after. That is all.

Try it with your class. GetSpeakin reads every answer and puts the words a child actually needs in front of them. Book a demo for your school.