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What did you actually get done this year for language studies?


jld
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I was rereading the thread from last Nov. that Nan linked, and was kind of embarrassed to see how little we actually have gotten done compared to what we had planned to do. Have you accomplished everything you had planned last Sept.? Did things evolve? What are your plans for next year? Or have you decided not to make any, and just see what seems to make sense then?

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Did pretty well this year...

 

German is easy because most of it gets done at Sat. School, which just finished up last week. I also have started the older kids reading and outlining Gombrich's Little History of the World in the original German, and over the summer I have a German grammar text I'm hoping they'll work through. I also have some historical fiction in German to go with our history that I'm hoping I can get them to read for "fun". :tongue_smilie: I require about 45 min a week of reading in German.

 

For Spanish for the older two, we finished Spanish the Easy Way (about equivalent to Spanish I, I think?), finished up the 2nd volume in El español con juegos y actividades, and they read about halfway through Los viajes de Rosa y Ernesto. We're going to finish up the year just doing Rosa y Ernesto and continuing with the third volume of juegos y actividades. I'm also going to have them start listening to ShowTime Spanish - that looks like a really good find. In the fall, we're going to start with Breaking the Barrier Level 2, will finish up Rosa y Ernesto, and start reading Cajas de Cartón. I'll also continue to supplement with Practice Makes Perfect books where needed.

 

Spanish for the younger dd was a bit more diffuse. The curriculum I bought for this year was a bust. I recently switched to just reading a reader with them (dd and two friends), then having them answer the comprehension questions and do a chapter of Juegos y actividades - they just started the 2nd book. This is actually working better than I expected. I'm also having them do a chapter a week in Las puertas retorcidas, which so far is easy review. In the fall or maybe around Christmas I'll start them on Spanish the Easy Way.

 

Still haven't decided if we'll do another summer Mandarin intensive (we have the past 2 summers).

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well... I'm not too sure what to say...

just yesterday my DD had a nice and long phone conversation with her dance teacher, so I can now ssy she's fluent orally. I rarely get to hear her speak English. She also started to read English novels for pleadure.

Her Mandarin teacher is very pleased. On her last evaluation he told her her pronunciation was perfect!

Spanish-wise, she's doing ok but not great.

 

As for Ds, his English is fine. I got him a Spanish tutor because he wasn't working hard. His heart wasn't in it. I think our trip to NYC has helped. He realized that Spanish is indeed spoken not too far from ud!

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Wow, matroyshka, very impressive!

 

Well, I don't think I'd be doing half as much if I hadn't created some outside accountability for myself... for Spanish I had to create something to keep me on track. What I've been doing for the past 2 years is teaching other kids as well as my own (at no charge). This way there's a set time for it every week, and I can't blow it off. The kids get dropped off at my house, and it's time for Spanish. There are two kids besides my own in each class. I also feel language is learned best in a community, so this gives them other kids who are learning along with them as well as to commiserate with that I assign so much homework :D - and hopefully as they get more fluent, others to speak with. And every week, they know they have to get all the work done by the next class.

 

I definitely want to get them through 2nd or 3rd year Spanish by the time they're ready for high school.

 

ETA: As impressive as this may sound on paper, I'm still behind those who started with real immersion like OPOL, as most of this is of course g-t (going back to the previous thread). They really are about where most American high school kids are at the end of 1st year Spanish, that is they can do a lot of grammar exercises, but getting them to come up with a sentence or two in a row on their own of coherent, spoken Spanish is still very much a work in progress... This year a major focus will be to up the amount they're speaking/hearing, as well as reading.

Edited by matroyshka
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What do you want to do with them in high school, matroyshka? I'm asking because I had really only planned a 3 year program for dd, followed by just reading and writing, if she wants. Always looking for ideas here . . .

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What do you want to do with them in high school, matroyshka? I'm asking because I had really only planned a 3 year program for dd, followed by just reading and writing, if she wants. Always looking for ideas here . . .

 

German's easy, because Sat. School goes through high school.

 

For Spanish, I'm thinking just lots of reading, and maybe some discussion/lit analysis, writing, and hopefully I can find some kind of conversation component. If I end up sending them to high school (a very big question mark at this point), the local high school has Spanish through 5th year.

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Matroyshka - what a good idea- starting a class. No energy now, but maybe when I have only one student left...

 

For us, French, dd made lots of progress. The tutor really helped. I'm getting her ready for the Geneva French 7th grade exam next year and she seems to be on track.

 

Ds is making progress but I feel like we suffer a bit from lack of direction. After doing the AP, I want him to be preparing for the Swiss French oral and written exams, but we don't really have enough money to pay for more tutor hours. He's doing the EAD lit analysis and other books....I would need several weeks of completely focused study to really prepare an excellent path (which I never have). I feel like we have to keep doing the French in case he does study and possibly work here. It is also much harder to get immersion activities at his age.

 

For German, the OSU courses have been really great for getting ds3 to start speaking to people and even writing in German.

 

Dd has also made a lot of progress in German too. She is a very auditory learner so she listens to any programs I give her. Berlitz, Pimsleur, etc. Then we can get story tape type things from the library as well as as CDROMS where she does grammar and vocab.

 

So it is really the higher level French where we're drifting...

 

Joan

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Well, I don't think I'd be doing half as much if I hadn't created some outside accountability for myself... for Spanish I had to create something to keep me on track. What I've been doing for the past 2 years is teaching other kids as well as my own (at no charge).

 

 

That's a great idea! Maybe I will try it. I live in a rural place, but if I were offering free Spanish/German, I bet people would drive here and then I wouldn't have to go anywhere, and we would get languages done! Why is it so hard to motivate ourselves????? :tongue_smilie:

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We actually did it!!! We will probably finish (or come very close to finishing) the Histoire Géographie 6e textbook. It could have been done much, much better, but we did it. Except for when he was sick or exhausted, he answered orally all the textbook questions in French (as best he could - neither of us had all the vocab needed). We discussed them in English, which I wouldn't have thought of without Cleo's mentioning that she does this. That made it easy enough for me to actually be able to do it. My French isn't up to history discussions, unfortunately. We also have made it partway through the Français 6e book. That is going slower, but we are more than halfway through it. We watched a few movies in French as a rewards for finishing sections. I now have a better idea of how well (or unwell) my son speaks French. I have to find him more speaking practice. Skype? Craig's List? We did a bunch of extraneous things like get him writing in cursive, teaching him how to use a word processor and how to do accents on it, going over misc. grammar points, teaching him to look up verb endings in the grammar tables, and getting him using a French/French dictionary. He wrote something in French most days, although it was seldom more than a few sentences. For all that, I feel pretty discouraged at the moment. It is hard to see that he has made any progress. I suppose his vocabulary has grown and he no longer spells dans as danse, but in general, his writing looks as awful as always: he still spells c'est as sais or sest and says ils veut, among many other things. We'll keep banging away at it, but it is hard not having much to show for all our very hard work. I feel the same way about his English. It could be his age.

 

Latin is going the way I hoped it would. I wanted us to read a bit most days so we wouldn't lose it, and we did, thanks to Jane's book of Latin fairy tales. We read Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Pigs who huffit-et-puffit-ed, and others.

 

-Nan

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