curr recs for 5yo - NO foreign lang speakers in home?

[MeganW]

I keep reading posts saying things like "my DD who started French at 5 has a much better accent than my DD who started at 8". AACK! I only speak English. Our family only speaks English. We live in an area where English is only spoken. So whatever language we choose, my kids are going to have to learn it 100% from the curriculum.

 

It's really a tossup as to French or Spanish or Mandarin for us. I have agonized and agonized over which would be best, and honestly, I just can't decide.

 

At this point, I am ready to pick the language based on what I can get the best resources for in order to get early exposure in getting accents correct.

 

Can you recommend something FUN for young 5 year olds?

 

Also, would it confuse them to expose them to more than one language at this point to hopefully get the accent part down, knowing that we would really study later to get the grammar and vocabulary?

[Matryoshka]

I keep reading posts saying things like "my DD who started French at 5 has a much better accent than my DD who started at 8". AACK! I only speak English. Our family only speaks English. We live in an area where English is only spoken. So whatever language we choose, my kids are going to have to learn it 100% from the curriculum.

 

It's really a tossup as to French or Spanish or Mandarin for us. I have agonized and agonized over which would be best, and honestly, I just can't decide.

 

At this point, I am ready to pick the language based on what I can get the best resources for in order to get early exposure in getting accents correct.

 

If you really want to start them young and get those good accents, and no one in the house speaks anything but English, you really should think tutor. I'm fluent in Spanish and I still hired a native tutor for a couple of years to make sure they got correct grammar and accent young. To save money, a few of us hired her and we actually had a small class.

 

I have a friend whose dd has been taking Mandarin for years from a tutor (she's 8 now)- mom doesn't speak it at all. It's been working very well, from what I can see. A good tutor will be both a native speaker and have experience teaching young kids - it can be hard to find someone with both those skills.

 

Unfortunately, I don't think there's any magic self-teaching curriculum that creates bilingual kids. Some that may get you to some level of competency, maybe - but not bilingual.

 

Also, would it confuse them to expose them to more than one language at this point to hopefully get the accent part down, knowing that we would really study later to get the grammar and vocabulary?

 

If you keep it to exposure, no, I don't think so at all. I had my kids listening to lots of songs on CD in both Spanish and German from a very young age - years before we started more formal study - it helps them just to hear the sounds, even if they don't know what it means. The younger the better for that kind of thing.

[In The Great White North]

At this point, I am ready to pick the language based on what I can get the best resources for in order to get early exposure in getting accents correct.

 

Spanish, without a doubt, has the most and least expensive resources available. Start at your local library's DVD collection (or your own DVD collection.) Look on the DVDs for languages available. Tons of them have Spanish. If you want something fun for a five year old, play children's DVDs in Spanish. Start with the short, episode type of shows that kids like to watch over and over again, til they can recite it.

 

How much Barney can you stand?

 

PS. Kids can handle more than one language. Waldorf schools start two foreign languages at 6. If it's a concern, to help them keep the languages separate, you could play one series in one language and a different series in the other (ie. French could be the "Barney" language and Spanish could the Sesame Street language.)

[Ohdanigirl]

Spanish, without a doubt, has the most and least expensive resources available. Start at your local library's DVD collection (or your own DVD collection.) Look on the DVDs for languages available. Tons of them have Spanish. If you want something fun for a five year old, play children's DVDs in Spanish. Start with the short, episode type of shows that kids like to watch over and over again, til they can recite it.

 

How much Barney can you stand?

 

PS. Kids can handle more than one language. Waldorf schools start two foreign languages at 6. If it's a concern, to help them keep the languages separate, you could play one series in one language and a different series in the other (ie. French could be the "Barney" language and Spanish could the Sesame Street language.)

 

 

This really works. I did this with BIL, so he could learn English (Yes I do speak it). It was the thing that helped the most. I did the same when ds 5 didn't want to speak English last year. If there is a spanish TV station in your area you should check into the cartoons. Also there are always novelas geared towards children in elementary. Of coarse you should always watch them once or twice yourself since different cultures find different things appropriate for children; its something I have struggled with here in Mexico.

 

Danielle

[jld]

I pm'ed Megan about this, but maybe it would be an interesting idea to share with everyone.

 

When I was five, my parents hosted an exchange student from Colombia for 2 mos. That wasn't much, but it made me curious about foreign languages, and helped me develop an accent. I didn't start studying Spanish until years later, but I still had a good accent.

 

Just a thought . . .

[Ester Maria]

I keep reading posts saying things like "my DD who started French at 5 has a much better accent than my DD who started at 8". AACK! I only speak English.

[...]

Also, would it confuse them to expose them to more than one language at this point to hopefully get the accent part down, knowing that we would really study later to get the grammar and vocabulary?

A decent accent can be acquired in young adulthood without that much struggle, actually. The difference is that as an adult you will have to consciously pay more attention to certain things in a non-immersion environment while as a child you can mimic accents more easily given enough exposure, without really "trying". But that's pretty much the only difference.

 

If I were you, I would be more worried about grammatical structures and native literacy. If you learn the language really well, and your child starts reading literature in it already in middle/high school and graduates fluent, their accent can be fixed if needed in a matter of months or even weeks of an immersion experience, while the reverse isn't exactly true - it's a LOT harder to fix 'fossilized' bad grammar later and to reach the point of native-level literacy in the language you choose. At the end of the day, in an academic and a professional setting, it's that which you will need (knowing the language and being literate), as opposed to the perfect accent.

 

I suggest investing in a good tutor (preferably a native with a degree in the language; native speakers usually don't know how to teach and how their language works unless they have a degree in their language, while non-natives might transfer some of their minor mistakes onto your child - none of that will harm a lot on the long-run, I'm just saying what's a preferable situation, but insist that you get at least one component down, native fluency or a university degree in the language) insisting on covering the grammar properly, insisting on early reading (slowly getting to read in the foreign language, from short stories to full length novels to classics, in middle and high school period - the quantity doesn't matter as much as the fact that you have a child who reads regularly, to whom it becomes a second nature to read in the foreign language), and supplementing all that with TV and music and other forms of exposure you can get. In your situation, I think that would suit you the best and might lead to excellent results.

 

ETA: Forgot to answer the second part - no, multiple languages don't confuse children, but if they're young, make sure they speak them with different people as young children tend to associate languages with people who speak them. If you choose to study more languages, usually it's also recommended not to start them at the same time (e.g. start French at 6, but wait with starting Spanish until 7, and from then on continue with both).

[Nan in Mass]

How do you feel about Saterdays? I keep running across people whose children are fairly fluent in a language they don't speak because they go to a Saterday school. I would have done this long ago, but we are unwilling to give up our Sat.s. Our French one has a free story hour for children. We did that for awhile when my son was younger. I have seen teenagers go to it as well, ones who were trying to improve their French.

-Nan

[anabelneri]

I posted a bunch of ideas about learning French with a younger child a couple weeks ago; a lot of it is applicable across the languages.

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1619168&postcount=4

 

and

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1620300&postcount=7

 

Good luck!

:)

Anabel

[Laura Corin]

I wouldn't choose Mandarin unless you have a native speaker as a tutor. Getting the tones right is crucial, and English speakers just can't develop them (from hearing a CD, for example) without guidance.

 

Good luck with your choices.

 

Laura

[Ravin]

Well, I started Spanish in K, so even though my grammar is kind of weak and my vocabulary is even weaker, and I can't understand native speakers enough to hold more than the most basic of conversations, my pronounciation is actually very good.

 

Of course, DD just can't get the hang of rolling her "r", so maybe I just had an ear for it, as pronounciation was the only thing that stuck when I took Polish in college as well.