It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New – Oomph! Partners With Lingo Flamingo To Make Languages Accessible

Oomph! are excited to be partnering with Lingo Flamingo, an expert language organisation, to provide language activities on our new digital Oomph! On Demand service.

Older adults across the UK have been enjoying the language activities that are available on the platform, which include French and Spanish vocabulary, games and puzzles, with plenty more to come, including a Valentine’s Day themed French Activity Book and quiz.

So, let’s deep dive into Lingo Flamingo and what they’re up to…

“At Lingo Flamingo we believe that it is NEVER too late to learn something new and that Language Learning can be a great activity to tackle isolation, brain aging and to enhance wellbeing and health in seniors. Our mission is to work with carers, activities coordinators, and social care workers to put in place a capability model for their residents and service users through tutored accessible language courses and training for care workers.”

Lingo Flamingo Senior Learners

Lingo Flamingo exists to make language learning interactive and accessible. They do this because they want everyone to experience the joy of learning a second language and to gain from the health benefits of bilingualism.

The central way Lingo Flamingo does this – and the reason they were founded – is through offering unique foreign language classes to older adults and to those living with dementia in care homes, day centres, and community locations across Scotland.

By offering this fun, sensory linguistic experience, their classes have been shown to improve the wellbeing of participants, specifically through building confidence, creating connections between learners, stimulating the mind, and offering something new and exciting. Incredibly, in doing this, participant’s decision making and multi-tasking skills are improved, and their ability to concentrate and communicate is heightened, meaning language learning is an activity unlike anything else on offer.

Why language learning?

Firstly, language learning is unique in its ability to stimulate the mind and keep the brain young and healthy. In fact, research shows that those who can speak a second language tend to develop dementia 4 to 5 years later than those of us who can only speak one. Being bilingual also makes you far more likely to recover from a stroke. These astounding facts mean that speaking a second language has greater benefits than any treatments or pharmaceutical interventions currently developed for brain ageing. It’s for this reason that many are calling for language learning to be considered part of a healthy lifestyle, in much the same way as exercise or a balanced diet.

“The cognitive benefits of directed language learning are evident after just one week!”

Secondly, language learning is a fun way to bring people together to build confidence, experience something new, learn about a different culture, create new connections, and have a laugh. For all the health benefits of language learning, Lingo Flamingo fundamentally still want participants to feel relaxed and to be having a good time. That’s why Lingo Flamingo likes to say language learning is good for the brain and good for the banter. When the learning environment is right that’s when the benefits start to be seen: improved concentration, enhanced communication, heightened multi-tasking ability, and bolstered over-all wellbeing!

Ben Allen, Oomph!’s CEO, comments, “We are delighted to be collaborating with Lingo Flamingo to provide accessible bite-size language activities to care homes, retirement living and sheltered housing schemes up and down the UK! We want to offer the best of the best and, with all the benefits that language learning provides, this is a great opportunity to do so.”