Too many languages

[lulalu]

Ok I am at the beginning of our homeschool journey and thinking through our course.

 

My son is bilingual. I am still struggling to learn language.

 

I have decided to work through Latin with school. I would like him to learn another language like French as a formal learned language. And work towards fluency in French as much as possible.

 

However, I also like the idea of lightly learning Hebrew and Greek for Bible study.

 

I know many places people learn many languages. I however dont have knowledge of all these other ones. Am I planning too big? Too many languages? Or have othersucessfully taught many? I know it is easier to learn more once you have one down. Is Latin as beneficial as all seem to say?

Edited December 9, 2017 by lolo

[8filltheheart]

For our family,you are aiming high. My dd studied 3 languages (French, Latin, and Russian) for several yrs. It consumed a huge part of her day. (She loves languages, so this was fine with her.) This yr, her jr yr in high school, she dropped Latin bc she was getting to a level where to focus on all 3 would take a minimum of 4 hrs every (more like 4 1/2 bc she really needs about 1 1/2 hrs to cover reading, writing, and listening in each language in order to progress at the pace she wants to.)

[maize]

I wouldn't worry about Hebrew and Greek at this point. Since he's already bilingual, I would focus on continuing to develop his native language skills with English and Turkish and certainly go for the French as a third language. Biblical languages can wait until later, he has an entire lifetime to study them should he desire to do so. Once French is established you can look at adding one in if you like--possibly at the middle school or high school level?

[maize]

Oh, I didn't answer the Latin question. No, I don't think there is anything exceptionally beneficial about learning Latin. I think Latin and Greek roots study is helpful for an English speaker, beyond that it is a language that in my opinion ought to be studied by those with a particular interest in it. Personally I prefer to put our limited time and energy into living languages.

[Arcadia]

Too many depends on the child. My youngest finds more than one too many until he was surrounded by multilingual, then he felt weird for being monolingual. My oldest wanted to learn three but he decides French can be done later when he has more down time.

 

Netherlands does many languages in their education system. Besides the WTMers in Netherlands, there are also some in the states whose kids are doing multiple languages from preschool and/or elementary school age because their kids love languages.

 

This is a informative thread about doing Latin and Greek and Hebrew.

http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/244370-how-latin-greek-and-hebrew/

[Have kids -- will travel]

What age is your child? How strong are the two fluent languages?

 

If Turkish and English are both full bilingual proficiency, it's reasonable to add another language. That said, working on Turkish yourself will help your child's language skills as well!

 

I have to agree with PPs about not seeing the usefulness in ancient languages (having spent years in high school and college learning Latin and Greek myself). Unless my child was specifically asking for that I'd skip it. Translations are really good, and nothing beats a living language for understanding an entire culture!

 

Are you fluent in French or will you be using a tutor? Is there any French in the community or other speakers to practice with? Having learned Dutch as an adult, I have come to appreciate how social a language is. Learning a language in isolation is a painful exercise in memorizing words. I'd leave French out unless there is some sort of community or you have an older child (8/10+).

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

We are dealing with similar questions... I was just going to post about it actually...  

 

If Turkish is a family language and not the local language, and you don't expect to move to a Turkish speaking location for any significant period of time, then I would focus only on oral fluency and perhaps reading, although Turkish uses a different alphabet, right?  So that will require a lot of time.  

 

I wouldn't start another language until the child is reading fluently in English at least, possibly English and Turkish if that is important to you.  So... 3-4th grade depending on the child.

 

At that point, you can add an additional living language or Latin, but not both at the same time.  I'd fold the next one in a couple of years later.  

 

I would not deal with the Biblical languages unless it seemed obvious at some point that your child was destined to be a linguist or Biblical scholar.  There are so many well-done translations and commented translations of the Bible that one would need to dedicate a life to the study of Biblical languages before being able to extract any more insight than what could come from studying commented translations by scholars.  So I wouldn't even worry about those until late high school and probably not even then unless the child was self-motivated.  

 

I always like to add a note about fluency and language learning:  Unless you yourself are a native speaker of, say, French, you will never achieve fluency with your child in that language through book learning.  That does NOT mean, however, that your child cannot become fluent.  And the myth that children must begin a language study from a very early age in order to become fluent is also false.   Many, many, many people begin language study as teens or adults.  If those people then go on to live in the target language country for a while and interact with the locals or attend local school, they will achieve fluency.  Book learning can give a solid foundation, but only immersion will produce fluency.  

 

So don't put a ton of pressure on yourself to be running 10 different language courses in first grade!  I would focus on the native languages through 2nd at least for a strong reader, 3-4th for a less strong reader.  Then add in one other.  In high school, maybe another.  But this is a lot of eggs to be juggling and you won't be able to dedicate the sort of time to them as you might if there were less.  You'll have to choose either quantity or quality.  If your child has talent in math or science, you're looking at another huge time commitment come junior high and high school.  At some point, you may find you can drop Turkish because the child has "enough" Turkish for family and cultural reasons.  

 

Also, consider carefully HOW you teach.  You don't necessarily need to be teaching separate grammar courses for each language.  One comparative grammar course may be enough.  But of course, you'd have to make it up yourself, as I doubt there is a "Turkish-English Comparative Grammar for Third Grade" text out there.  :-)  

 

 

[Loesje22000]

Classical Languages are set up in grade 7 in Belgium.

Exposing early doesn't make a huge difference in these era's.

 

I know from experience that teaching French, knowing the language just a little is hard.

We manage it mostly thanks to DH and a lovely neighbour.

To pass the 12th grade exam we will need a tutor unless the language camp will cause a miracle and dd gets motivated for French.

 

Because that is our biggest issue, dd is not motivated for all languages, but some are just required.

 

Starting a language is not that difficult: colors, counting, days of the week.

But maintening it, and keep growing in it, takes not only time and effort, but also money, if you have to buy every book, cd, dvd because your library does not support the language...

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

 

Starting a language is not that difficult: colors, counting, days of the week.

But maintening it, and keep growing in it, takes not only time and effort, but also money, if you have to buy every book, cd, dvd because your library does not support the language...

 Nodding my head in agreement as I have spent part of the day looking at prices of online classes, private tutors, texts... lol.

[8filltheheart]

Classical Languages are set up in grade 7 in Belgium.

Exposing early doesn't make a huge difference in these era's.

 

I know from experience that teaching French, knowing the language just a little is hard.

We manage it mostly thanks to DH and a lovely neighbour.

To pass the 12th grade exam we will need a tutor unless the language camp will cause a miracle and dd gets motivated for French.

 

Because that is our biggest issue, dd is not motivated for all languages, but some are just required.

 

Starting a language is not that difficult: colors, counting, days of the week.

But maintening it, and keep growing in it, takes not only time and effort, but also money, if you have to buy every book, cd, dvd because your library does not support the language...

The bolded is what we have also found to be the case. Progressing and maintaining takes constant effort. When you want a well-rounded education, there are only so many hrs in the day.

[Nan in Mass]

I would work on Turkish, English, and French, and leave Latin for later in life.  I found we could do two languages at once without killing ourselves IF I did one immersion style and one book/grammar/vocabulary style.  If your son is fluent in Turkish and English, and you speak some French, I would start getting children's books and videos (or use youtube) and read them and watch them with your son.  This is much easier to do when your child is little because you can read them the way you would read something to any small child, pointing to the kitty when you say the word kitty, recapping, reading the same book over and over.  The vocabulary is simple and repetitive in movies and books, making it easier for the child to learn it.  I would make a big effort also to read and watch movies in Turkish, if you live where English is spoken, so your child's Turkish ability grows appropriately.  Reading books aloud is a great way to increase vocabulary and more complex grammar even if you yourself aren't fluent.  Then, when your child is older and reading, you can add the subject "French" to your school day.  One of my sons did Latin, French, and English.  French was immersion style, so we didn't study it much, just used it.  I mixed it into English for school.  Some years language arts was taught using a language arts text book that was written in French, and some years, one in English.  Literature was read in both languages every year.  Latin was a subject during our school day, like math.  This worked ok when combined with some periods of immersion.  It would have worked much, much better if somebody in the family had been fluent in French and if I had been a better Latin teacher.  In the end, my son was able to understand French well enough to travel and have conversations, speak French fairly easily but ungrammatically, read French well enough to read something about the level of Harry Potter or a newspaper.  His writing is probably barely understandable due to the problems of all the silent letters in French which require a proper study of French grammar (or somebody much more intelligent than we are).  He'd be able to write better if the language were Spanish, say.  About half way through high school, he dropped Latin to focus on more techie stuff.  All this was fairly expensive, since it required tutors and time in a foreign country.  I let my children choose what they would study when they were in high school (provided it satisfied the requirements for college entry).  I am glad that we did Latin and French earlier rather than later because I think if I had waited, my sons would not have chosen to study languages in high school.  Also, because I am not the most efficient of teachers and because my children had many other interests, there wasn't a whole lot of time to study languages in high school.  We fit French in for youngest by doing history/geography with a French textbook, and read some books and wrote about them in the French language during his English literature class lol.  Anyway, since you don't know what your child's interests will be later, I vote you do your languages earlier rather than later.  And I vote that you make increasing Turkish in an age appropriate way a top priority, even if you don't make it part of your school day.  We have cousins who have one German parent and one American parent and raised their children in America.  They made an effort to speak some German at home (but not all the time) and then sent their children to Germany to relatives or to German language school for about half of each summer.  The end result was bilingual children whose German grew as they grew, who can read and write German (that was the summer school part), despite not taking any German in school.

 

Nan

[lulalu]

Thanks for the thoughts. We live in Turkey so my son has ample time to develop his Turkish. We will be working on reading once we get english reading down.

 

I think I may lay aside Latin. I just hear so much about the benefits that I get tempted.

 

And I think French will be our foreign language fof academics. And just work over the years building skills.

 

Thanks

[Nan in Mass]

Thanks for the thoughts. We live in Turkey so my son has ample time to develop his Turkish. We will be working on reading once we get english reading down.

 

I think I may lay aside Latin. I just hear so much about the benefits that I get tempted.

 

And I think French will be our foreign language fof academics. And just work over the years building skills.

 

Thanks

Nice! So Turkish won't be a problem,you can homeschool in English, and put time in your school day for French. That should work well! Then, if it turns out that your son is interested and you have lots of room in your schedule, you can add Latin later. We did Latin instead of grammar most years. We got enough grammar in Latin that I didn't feel we needed to do English grammar as well. I doubled up like that whenever I could. Another example was doing history/geography using a textbook from France.

 

Nan

[madteaparty]

Nodding my head in agreement as I have spent part of the day looking at prices of online classes, private tutors, texts... lol.

We "shortcut" French via a 4-month full and complete immersion (including attending school in French) after years of study, but maintaining and continuing progress is still harder than I would have expected. I can buy all the books and audiobooks, and he listens to them, but I cannot test comprehension as my own French is not great. So while to listen to him talk about everyday stuff and carry on a conversation, you'd think he was native, his writing is atrocious and his French tutor agrees. I've no idea how to keep the ball rolling forward, but we try. Looking at French-language camps in Canada and stuff like that, but again, playing tennis or being in ski school with French-speaking people won't improve his French writing...

[Loesje22000]

. Looking at French-language camps in Canada and stuff like that, but again, playing tennis or being in ski school with French-speaking people won't improve his French writing...

I feel your pain, I'm looking for a french writing course for more then a year now.

I just found this site:

http://www.averbode.be/Pub/7enpoche/Les-titres.html

It also offers some free writing assignments, no idea if it fits...

[Nan in Mass]

We "shortcut" French via a 4-month full and complete immersion (including attending school in French) after years of study, but maintaining and continuing progress is still harder than I would have expected. I can buy all the books and audiobooks, and he listens to them, but I cannot test comprehension as my own French is not great. So while to listen to him talk about everyday stuff and carry on a conversation, you'd think he was native, his writing is atrocious and his French tutor agrees. I've no idea how to keep the ball rolling forward, but we try. Looking at French-language camps in Canada and stuff like that, but again, playing tennis or being in ski school with French-speaking people won't improve his French writing...

I had the same problem. He improved his writing somewhat by going to a summer French language program in Lausanne. Lol they also improved his essay writing ability in English, to my relief. His English writing took off after that. (Lots of practice writing somewhat formulaic essays where the emphasis was not on new ideas but on clarity of communication. ) Living in Switzerland and the class improved his speaking and listening a lot. At that point, his education was under his control. He said he would fix the writing if and when he needed to, and that he knew how to do it when the time came, now. He's very logical and once I turned his education over to him, he decided that he was going to use it to do the hard beginning part in a number of useful areas rather than getting really good at one or two. Which makes sense, I guess, since it was my approach with his education all along - try to get him to the place where he could fairly easily continue as an adult in drawing, music, sports, foreign languages, boating, camping, travelling, natural history, building and repairing things - basically all the things that we enjoy or find useful as an adult. All that is to say that at some point, it became up to my son and he said understanding and speaking were more important. I CAN tell you than reading translated pretty quickly to speaking and listening in myself, so the books and audiobooks probably are improving those two in your son, even if you don,t see the evidence right now. I did English teacher type stuff with my son in high school with some of his literature by prereading five or ten pages ahead and making a list of ten words for him to look up (in a dictionary with the definitions in French), marking any sentences with complicated grammar so I could show him how the sentence said what it said, and having him write a very brief summary of each segment, which I checked and fixed if he was way off. He said doing this made reading much more useful, although he hated doing it. We worked through a grammar book about the same time but I don't think much of it stuck, longterm. If I could do it again, I would add copying a paragraph to the vocab/summary we were doing. I think that would actually have helped because he would have been forced to pay attention to those endings with copy work, whereas when he was writing his own stuff, he was able to ignore it. I did have him recopy a corrected version of what he wrote himself for history, but that didn't improve the sophistication of what he was writing. The copywork, like the reading, would be things you could do even if your own French is weak. I think both reading and copywork are what I think of as high volume learning - they work well but only if you do a whole lot of them, as opposed to going through a grammar book, which is low volume. In general, I tended to opt for the low volume approach to education because my children let me know loud and clear that they would rather have hard, boring, and SHORT, but there are some things where the high volume approach works better, I think, complex, organic things like languages. I think my son would have had to copy a few paragraphs daily, not a few sentences once a week, for this to work. In high school, that would have taken him 15 minutes or so. Perfectly reasonable. I wish I had thought of it. My family learns much better when the knowledge is presented in context and when they are forced to use and keep using it. We are sieve-brained. Just in case any of that helps...

 

In the end, I would gladly trade my ability to write somewhat grammatically for my son's speaking and listening ability, so I guess you could say we did ok.

 

Nan

[Nan in Mass]

Regentrude, what did you do with your children about learning to write in German?

 

Nan

[madteaparty]

Hi Nan, thanks for copy work encouragement, I've been meaning to do this. We do dictees, and he is going through the kiddie Count of Monte Cristo w/tutor (this has comprehension exercises and writing as well) so I will make him copy from there. I think copying a paragraph a day everyday might help us break through.

Also, his English writing is amazing. Truly. And I am not a "my kid is so special" sort of parent at all. Which makes the crime scene that is his French writing harder to take ;)

[Mabelen]

I would use copying and dictation for your particular problem. It's not an exciting method but Iam sure it should help. All the best.

ETA Also audiobooks with hard copy simultaneously.

Edited February 24, 2016 by Mabelen

[DavidIR]

The more languages you know the richer you are. I think one of the most affordable ways to study languages nowadays is taking Skype (or other video messenger) lessons.