Learning other languages from a French site..

[Joan in GE]

Actually the site is just links to reputable websites with free language learning materials. Lots for German, English, Spanish, Italian, as well as a mixture of other languages under "autres langues". This can help strengthen your French at the same time. (I wonder what that does in the brain, learning a language using different languages -eg sometimes learning Spanish with English materials and sometimes learning it with French materials?)

 

http://www.lepointdufle.net/cours_de_langues.htm

 

Joan

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

(I wonder what that does in the brain, learning a language using different languages -eg sometimes learning Spanish with English materials and sometimes learning it with French materials?)Joan

 

I tried learning Latin through English. I was doing well for a while, until we hit grammar structures that are too different between English, Latin and French. In my specific case, it was the subjunctive tense. Miserable fail...

 

At that point, I pulled my two kids from all language learning they were doing with English. For us, it's French only from now on.

 

I have no idea what it does to the brain, but it wasn't pretty...

[Joan in GE]

Maybe it depends on the languages or the person or the way it is done.

 

I think the brain must be more plastic than that.

 

If a foreigner moves to the US and goes to school where he/she then takes another foreign language, they would be learning a third language through the second.

 

We have friends who have done that here in Switzerland with their children learning German in a French speaking school/environment, even though they are Dutch (speaking Dutch at home) and spoke English in school before. They've done very well with languages. In fact, my ds1 and ds2, maternal English, learned German through French (to different levels for different schools), to the point of being able to present literary analysis for the maturite (Swiss exam level of French bac).

 

But it would be interesting to do MRI's to see which sections of the brain are being used.

 

Joan

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

There's also a major difference in the method used to learn languages. I'm pretty sure you can do immersion through your 2nd language and work it out, especially if you're talking about a child.

But for an adult going through a formal language class, and not through immersion, it is quite difficult. As for my Latin experience, I was learning a 'theoretical' language (aka without the spoken component), without a teacher, strictly through a book. That is *not* the natural way of learning a language.

 

And since my kids don't have access to speakers of the language they are learning, I decided to play it safe. They are also learning through the 'theoretical' method. It would be quite different if I could provide immersion on a regular basis, in either the second or the third language, but that is not the case. An immigrant to the US would be learning a third language through a second language in which he is immersed. That would not be our case.

 

ETA: and I agree, it would be quite interesting to see how the brain handles it. I'm pretty sure it would use a different part of the brain. Or at the very least a different process.

[ElizabethB]

ETA: and I agree, it would be quite interesting to see how the brain handles it. I'm pretty sure it would use a different part of the brain. Or at the very least a different process.

 

That would be an interesting study!

 

When I was learning a bit of Italian before a several week long trip to Italy, I wished I had access to an Italian book for speakers of Spanish, I spoke Spanish fairly well at the time. (It has since degenerated a bit.) That way I could easily find the things that were different, it was a pain sorting through a beginning Italian text in English, 90% of it was the same as Spanish. But, it might have hurt my brain, my Spanish may not have been good enough to read a foreign language text.