How do you encourage kids to want to learn a foreign language.

[OrganicAnn]

Any suggestions on making a kid want to learn a foreign language?

[jld]

Join a bilingual playgroup. When he hears the other kids all speaking Spanish to one another, he'll at least be curious, and probably want to try to join in himself at some point. You can explain that the other kids are speaking Spanish, and would he like to learn some Spanish to be able to talk to them? Likely he'll be willing to learn at least a few words, especially if they're useful, like commands (plus please, of course:)).

[Friederike in Persia]

Monolingual relatives are my kids' biggest incentive, but those aren't that easy to come by :001_smile:.

Going to a country where the language is spoken works well, too, esp. if they get to go to local school and realy mix with peers.

Playing games should increase the fun factor, too. We play all our German games in German only as long as dh doesn't join in, then some English comes in as well.

Reading great books to them in the "desired" language might help, too. I've been getting all the books I can remember liking as a kid.

CD-Roms and DVDs have helped some, too with our family.

 

I think the biggest turn off for my dc has been doing quite a lot of grammar, to get them totally correct in German. I'm not sure if that is paying off.

 

Hope that helps,

[jld]

Friederike, will you elaborate on that 'not being sure if the grammar emphasis is paying off' part? Curious minds, you know . . .

[Nan in Mass]

Me too...

[Nan in Mass]

That definately made our children want to speak another language LOL. Well, you can get stuck on the wrong side of the border when your plane leaves the next day. (The day before our flight home, they closed the border and we got stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in the wrong country. This was right after 9-11, when another airplane hit a building in Italy, so it was all rather scary. My French wasn't good enough to get anything from the radio except that the border was closed and something about terrorists and an airplane. The funny part of the story is that when the people around us got out of their cars and gathered around a map someone had spread out on a car hood, I thought we were all set. I might not be able to ask anyone anything, but I could at least read the map and figure out how to get off the highway. I was SO wrong; the map was in Russian LOL.)

 

Or if you don't want to do that, you could join a foreign language library. We have no monolingual-in-a-different-language relatives. We don't even have any that are bilingual, although my mother did her best with her high school French. It was amazing how much it helped to have her say a few sentences in French to my son whenever we saw her (once or twice a week). At the time, there were no DVD's and we had no internet. Books and videos were expensive. We joined the French library in Boston. They had a story hour. As people have said, finding other children who speak French is the best way to make your child want to speak it. We drove 10 hours to get to a playground in the hopes that there would be some other children for my son to play with. At the same time, we took him to a French bookstore and let him pick out comic books and anything else he wanted. We promised that when he had read them all, we would come back and buy more. We get DVDs from our public library that our son wouldn't normally be allowed to watch and tell him he can watch them if he does it in French. The biggest thing for my son, though, was finding out that other real live people spoke the language. And it wasn't like he was 3 or 4! He was old enough to know that and had even been to Europe on a short family vacation. It somehow wasn't something he really believed, though, until my mother spoke French. Or maybe it was because it was Grammy? I don't know.

 

My son enjoys being able to speak French. What I need now is some way to make him want to write French, some way to make him want to study grammar sigh.

 

-Nan

[OrganicAnn]

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately we have no relatives that speak another language and we do not live near a border/community that speaks a foreign language. We have no plans to travel to another country any time soon. I'm not sure how I would find a bilingual play group. How did you find one?

 

We are interested in my DD learning Spanish and Latin. Unfortunately I took mainly French in school, but know a little Spanish.

 

We had an occasional babysitter that was a native Spanish speaker, but that was only for a while two years ago.

 

I wonder if my DH and I spoke to each over in Spanish (like we were telling each other secrets), if that would be an incentive to learn. Hmmmm

[Nan in Mass]

Definately GRIN. I follow the posts on a bilingual families emial list and have seen several where the parents used another language to communicate when they didn't want the children to know what they were talking about and then were surprised one day when the children joined the conversation LOL. That is a great idea. Do you have a community college or college or university near you? Maybe you could invite a student to dinner once a week?

[Friederike in Persia]

Most of our schooling happens in English, cause I like the WTM a lot and there are just so many more resources in English than German, esp. when it comes to home schooling, which is illegal in Germany.

Ever since my dc were born I have been speaking German to them, dh English and the rest of our neighbours, friends,.... Tajik. That has given them "native" accents in all 3 languages, very good English vocab. (doing all the reading and other WTM stuff), good German vocab. (about a quarter of what they read is German) and somewhat limited Tajik vocab.

German grammar is somewhat complicated and they've been behind a bit, making mistakes that children a year or two younger would make. To counteract that I've been focusing on grammar when we do German for schooling, ususally 3 times a week. That means that whenever somebody asks about their favourite/least favourite subject, German comes out bottom.:glare:

 

Their grammar improves by far the most when we're in Germany, but that's not that often and doing the lessons has worked over the years. That makes me wonder if this is the best way to go since it brings a certain dislike of the language with it.....

 

I've got to go,

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

That makes me wonder if this is the best way to go since it brings a certain dislike of the language with it.....

 

Just so you know, any French kid will tell you that grammar is what they hate the most. But they end up liking the language anyway. Most of them at least!

 

It makes me think of my daughter's gymnastics. She doesn't like the exercises meant to build up their muscles (they call it 'conditionning' ) but she sure enjoys being able to do the most advanced tumbling once she has enough muscles. Plus, after a couple of years, she's now starting to enjoy the conditioning itself. But there was much groaning and complaining in the early years.

[lionfamily1999]

Thanks for the responses. Unfortunately we have no relatives that speak another language and we do not live near a border/community that speaks a foreign language. We have no plans to travel to another country any time soon. I'm not sure how I would find a bilingual play group. How did you find one?

 

We are interested in my DD learning Spanish and Latin. Unfortunately I took mainly French in school, but know a little Spanish.

 

We had an occasional babysitter that was a native Spanish speaker, but that was only for a while two years ago.

 

I wonder if my DH and I spoke to each over in Spanish (like we were telling each other secrets), if that would be an incentive to learn. Hmmmm

Check your movies! Lots of them have a Spanish Audio option (and French). My kids LOVE watching the movies with English subtitles turned on, in another language. Now that dd is learning French she can pick out a stray word here and there and it adds to the excitement.

 

Also, you could check around on your tv for channels that come in other languages. There's plenty of stations geared for the Mexican population around here (I make the distinction, because I believe it's a different dialect than Spanish - sort of like American English vs English). The game shows, Sesame Street, etc are all exciting to watch, even if you don't know what they're saying. Once the kids learn some Spanish it would become even MORE fun :)

 

hth

[jld]

Hi, Ann. I am trying to remember how I found about the Spanish playgroup . . . and I think it was through a Spanish speaker from an English playgroup. She told me a friend wanted support for her dd's Spanish, and was organizing a group. I only went a few times, because the time (Sat. afternoon) just didn't work out very well for us, and it was a little far away. But, you know, it only takes a few motivated moms to get things going . . .

 

The other thing we did was join a German playgroup through a German organization in a city not too far from where we were living in America. Boy, was that ever an organized experience. I was impressed. Those moms, mostly native speakers, were dedicated to supporting their children's German, and were kind enough to let us join. We ended up dropping it for ballet, but attended for over a year. I'm not sure how much the kids remember (I think dd can still sing part of one song, though!:)), but it was kind of fun. Mostly I was impressed with the work ethic of those women.

 

I hope that's helpful.

[Friederike in Persia]

Hi, Ann. I am trying to remember how I found about the Spanish playgroup . . . and I think it was through a Spanish speaker from an English playgroup. She told me a friend wanted support for her dd's Spanish, and was organizing a group. I only went a few times, because the time (Sat. afternoon) just didn't work out very well for us, and it was a little far away. But, you know, it only takes a few motivated moms to get things going . . .

 

The other thing we did was join a German playgroup through a German organization in a city not too far from where we were living in America. Boy, was that ever an organized experience. I was impressed. Those moms, mostly native speakers, were dedicated to supporting their children's German, and were kind enough to let us join. We ended up dropping it for ballet, but attended for over a year. I'm not sure how much the kids remember (I think dd can still sing part of one song, though!:)), but it was kind of fun. Mostly I was impressed with the work ethic of those women.

 

I hope that's helpful.

 

Hi,

I feel so bad about German history,..:001_huh:, can I feel good about German work ethics?!:D:auto:

[jld]

Hey, every culture has some history to atone for, you know? And I think Germany has tried really, really hard to face its history, and make its future something to be proud of.

 

Personally, and I bet I'm not the only person who feels this way, I have a lot of respect for German everything -- technical skill, work ethic, lifestyle. You have a lot to be proud of, Friederike.