How to do Spanish 1 at home...or continue on to Latin 2 at home

[JadeOrchidSong]

Ds13 is turning 14 in two months. He has been doing Latin for a few years with Lively Latin and Henle Latin 1. He has also done Getting Started with Spanish.

We covered 5 units of Henle Latin 1. He did not do well, getting maybe 70% of the exercises and quizzes while ds11 got over 90%. Though he did so well, ds11 asked to do Spanish and I finally gave in. He is taking Sr. Gamache Spanish 1. Ds13 does not want to take more online class on top of his clover creek physics and WHA FOEW. He wants to continue Latin because I can teach him at home. However, I feel that since he is not doing well with it, it is probably best for him to switch to an easier language, Spanish. That way, he will have several years to learn it before college.

Do you think I should continue Henle Latin with ds13? For Latin, i am only a few steps ahead of dc, but I can explain the grammar very well and detect their mistakes very quickly and explain clearly. Or should I switch to Spanish? I only learned Getting Started with Spanish and some DuoLingo Spanish. I will have to learn/teach.

If I teach Spanish 1 at home, I will then enroll ds13 at Landry Academy, or with Sr. Gamache for Spanish 2. So that will decide what Spanish 1 curriculum I should use. Is that right?

Sorry for the rambling. I am just thinking aloud.

If you can offer any suggestion, I will greatly appreciate it.

Humbly,

Jade

[chiguirre]

I'd stick with Latin or switch to your native language. I would not attempt to teach a language I did not speak and try to stay a couple of lessons ahead. That really doesn't work for a spoken language at all. It doesn't even work that well for Latin but it is doable at least for the grammar basics.

 

I did teach Trinqueta Spanish 1 over the summer at home, BUT my dh and I speak Spanish to each other a lot. We code switch all the time so T has heard Spanish her entire life and understood quite a bit before we cracked open the Spanish 1 book.

 

Spanish grammar is a lot easier than Latin grammar for an English speaker, but the vocabulary is not easier to master. You need to be able to understand someone speaking to you at a pretty fast pace in a variety of accents if you want to be able to ever use your Spanish. That takes years to master but the basic building blocks are laid in Spanish 1. Without a good base of listening comprehension skills, Spanish will quickly become an impossibly difficult subject.

 

I hope you find a good solution for your ds!

[crazyforlatin]

Could you go with something like languageconvo.com or italki.com? There's not much pressure of an online class, you get to meet people from around the world, and there's the flexibility. We were in a similar situation but with French. I don't speak it at all. But DD took a class at CLRC, has a tutor, and we've used italki.com for conversational practice with people all over the world. I think she is doing quite well for someone with only less than 2 years of exposure. We didn't take a French 2 class; we decided to just meet with a tutor once a week for grammar and oral practice. You don't need to start out with a class. With Arabic, DD didn't have a class until after 3-4 months of skype lessons with someone from Egypt. The tutor sent pdfs, and when we were ready for a lesson, we would schedule one through italki.com. 

 

 

 

 

[JadeOrchidSong]

chiguirre, you made a good point. That is why I think teaching Latin is easier for me.

I will teach one more year of Latin to him and then let him do online Latin or Spanish next year.

[JadeOrchidSong]

I wish he were willing to give Chinese another good try. He did several years of Chinese with me.

[JadeOrchidSong]

I talked to him. He is willing to do Mandarin again. He is very unsure about the characters, though, because that's the reason we quit two years ago after studying for 5 years.

[Haiku]

I would let him continue with Latin. It is actually ok for him to be average at it.

[JadeOrchidSong]

Thank you, Haiku. I needed this encouragement!

[JadeOrchidSong]

If we continue with Latin, he at least has pretty good foundation and very close to 1 high school credit. So we will go with Latin. I will make sure he masters the Vocab and the grammar. I can help him finish Latin 2. Then it will be outsourced.

Thanks for helping me by being my listeners and advisers.