Foreign language questions

[jujsky]

My kids will be in 2nd grade this year and I eventually want them to learn Russian (DH & his family are from Russia & fluent in the language, DS was adopted from Russia). When is the best time to start a foreign language? Before anyone starts in with, "At birth," it's too late for that. Yes, I know I have a native speaker in the house & both kids would be fluent now if DH spoke nothing but Russian to the kids from the time they were infants, but he felt weird doing it & gave up on it altogether when DS was 2 1/2 and was diagnosed with speech problems because he thought he was "messing him up." Nothing I said convinced him otherwise. DH also feels that he doesn't know how to teach a language -- neither do the ILs. They try to teach the kids some Russian words here & there, but my DD is very resistant to learning it for some reason -- DS does fine with it. It's to the point with DD (almost 6) where she'll come back from visiting the ILs and say in this disgusted, hate-filled voice, "Babushka tried to make me speak Russian." Sometimes she'll be REALLY rude to DH's great-grandmother who only speaks Russian, and she'll look at her and say loudly & slowly, "I. Don't. Know. What. You. Are. Saying!" even though we think she does have a basic idea. She is generally a very compliant kid, but she has really dug her heels in on this one!!!!!

 

I am finding it extremely difficult to even find a Russian program. In fact the only one I've found is Rosetta Stone & I've read largely negative reviews about their products. If that IS the only Russian program out there, is it appropriate for 2nd graders or should I wait until they're older?

 

SO my questions are:

 

1. When do I start a foreign language?

2. Is Rosetta Stone as horrible as I've been hearing?

3. What are the differences between regular Rosetta Stone & the homeschool version of the program?

4. Can I use Rosetta Stone for multiple children?

5. Are there any other programs that teach Russian? (I'm sure I'll get tons of responses on this one since so many of you are teaching your kids Russian :lol:)

6. Since DD is SO resistant to learning Russian, should I even bother at this point or ever? Should I switch my focus to another language and hope that they want to learn it when they're older?

7. If I scrap Russian altogether I would lean towards Latin or Spanish since I've had exposure to both in school. Which language should they do? Which Spanish or Latin programs are good for 2nd graders?

 

Thanks in advance for answering my bazillion questions!

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

I don't speak Russian or teach it at the moment, but we really like the Teach me tapes and they offer Russian. http://www.teachmetapes.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=12&zenid=3edf3e9c94b5b0c83b0c4b9b47e2cbbb

 

If you just have these playing in the car or in the background during the day it might make learning it more fun.

[Matryoshka]

You should pop over to the bilingual board too - you'll find that many kids around your kids' ages become very reistant to speaking the second language, even if you've used OPOL (one person one language) all along.

 

What seems to help resistance a bit is making them realize that this is not some bizarre invented language you've come up with to torture them. And showing them movies in the language and maps of the countries where it's spoken doesn't help as much as you'd hope. Meeting other kids who are fluent, and visiting the country where it's spoken can really help. I think even meeting other kids who are bilingual (even if in another language) can help.

 

When my kids were still little, I found other German-speaking families and got together with them, so they'd have peers. Since they were 5 they've gone to German Sat. School - not sure if there's a Russian analog (you'd be surprised what's out there). The German school's in Boston, but at least one family drives down from southern NH, and I drive almost that far.

 

Oh my heavens - I just googled for a Russian school like our German one, and there isn't one in Boston, but there is one in Nashua! And the tuition is a tiny fraction of the cost of Rosetta Stone! It meets once a week on Fridays or Saturdays (depending on age). The teachers are all native speakers, there are classes for ages from 3-10yo, and they teach Russian culture as well as language. Here's the link.

 

My kids haven't always swooned about going to German Sat. School (far from it), but it has been a wonderful experience, and they have long since gotten past their reisistance, and have lots of German-speaking peers. Now if I could just get them past that hump in Spanish... :tongue_smilie: It's also a huge weight off my shoulders to have the "main" teaching done elsewhere, and to have someone else assign homework. All I have to do is lots of reinforcement.

Edited August 13, 2010 by matroyshka

[jujsky]

Matroyshka, THANK YOU!!!!! I had no idea there was a Russian language school in Nashua! I will definitely have to look into this. One of our co-op moms is from Russian heritage (one of her grandparents, I think) and she wants her DD to learn it too. Hopefully if Laura has a friend learning it with her she will be less resistant to the idea.

[Matryoshka]

Matroyshka, THANK YOU!!!!! I had no idea there was a Russian language school in Nashua! I will definitely have to look into this. One of our co-op moms is from Russian heritage (one of her grandparents, I think) and she wants her DD to learn it too. Hopefully if Laura has a friend learning it with her she will be less resistant to the idea.

 

Having friends learning it too is fantastic. My kids have a good friends (also hsers) who attend the Sat. School, and it's great that they can watch movies together, they see that the others are reading it... it makes it "normal".

 

There are lots of bilingual homeschoolers right across the border here. :) I don't know of any others learning Russian, but we've got families that speak German, French, Spanish and Mandarin. Seems like most of my kids' friends speak a second language of some kind.

[Ester Maria]

They try to teach the kids some Russian words here & there, but my DD is very resistant to learning it for some reason -- DS does fine with it. It's to the point with DD (almost 6) where she'll come back from visiting the ILs and say in this disgusted, hate-filled voice, "Babushka tried to make me speak Russian." Sometimes she'll be REALLY rude to DH's great-grandmother who only speaks Russian, and she'll look at her and say loudly & slowly, "I. Don't. Know. What. You. Are. Saying!" even though we think she does have a basic idea. She is generally a very compliant kid, but she has really dug her heels in on this one!!!!!

This situation is all too familiar to most families where parents try to push at home a language other than the one kids pick from the society they're growing up in. ;) Which is one of the reasons why people suggest starting young - before the kids rebel :D, since it's pretty much expected they will, and it usually occurs about early school age, when socialization with English-speaking peers becomes extremely important to the kids, who wish to fit in.

 

The reason why we more or less successfully avoided it with both girls with Italian was because of a real, significant bond with the people and the land - we have been sending them to spend entire summers in Italy for years, from the beginning we homeschooled them in Italian, made sure to always speak of Italy as heavenly place, of Italians as a wonderful nation and of Italian as the language which is a deep aesthetical pleasure to speak because of its beauty. :D All of that in Italian, of course - and that also established an emotional bond between us in Italian.

 

But with Hebrew and our younger kid, we had some of those issues you describe. She's still not in love with the language, but growing up, and the fact that we wouldn't give up, has helped a lot, as did exposure to Israeli expats' kids, Jewish culture in general and shorter stays in Israel - but just about 5-6 years ago (she's 12 now) she was one of those kids that cover their ears at the sound of the language, pretend they don't understand it, don't want to understand it, and force English onto anybody they come in a communication with - or prefer not to communicate at all.

 

What seemed to help the most was explicit grammatical instruction. This child was a lot less prone to immersion than her sister, who picks languages just by being around them a bit. She's actually pretty good with languages, but those she's not constantly in touch with she needs to be taught, rather than just occasionally put in possibly stressing situations in which she's supposed to work things out for herself - and we did a mistake by delaying more explicit grammar instruction at the beginning out of fear to overwhelm her (that was the time when she was still developing literacy in Italian and English). When we started to teach her Hebrew explicitly, as a foreign language, and allowed her to observe the logical structure of the language for a few years, things changed a lot. Maybe that's what your daughter needs, explicit teaching in addition to immersion experiences, even if she's been "around" the language for her whole life. It would also really help to work on an emotional connection between her and the language/land/people.

 

But, to your questions:

1. When do I start a foreign language?

As soon as possible.

2. Is Rosetta Stone as horrible as I've been hearing?

Not AS horrible since whatever you've been hearing, it's considerably worse than that indeed.

3. What are the differences between regular Rosetta Stone & the homeschool version of the program?

4. Can I use Rosetta Stone for multiple children?

Give up RS if you want a concrete knowledge and literacy. No serious second language acquisition expert that I know of recommends it, and some of us have written extensively against it. :D

5. Are there any other programs that teach Russian? (I'm sure I'll get tons of responses on this one since so many of you are teaching your kids Russian :lol:)

The problem with Russian concretely is that most of the materials are already in Russian and aimed to be used with somebody who knows the language to guide the process. Which is an ideal situation for your husband to connect with the kids actually. :p

 

If you have Russian keyboard (use it on yandex.ru if you don't), search the internet, Russians are rather notorious for the amount of things they put online. With no doubt, there should be something accessible to kids and your husband can work with them through it.

6. Since DD is SO resistant to learning Russian, should I even bother at this point or ever? Should I switch my focus to another language and hope that they want to learn it when they're older?

If I were you, I'd insist on Russian, now, since it's a big and useful language that she can learn for free and has lots of native speakers around her to practice with. Also, there are TONS of academic resources in Russian that she might wish to use one day. On the long run, I believe it's a good investment.

7. If I scrap Russian altogether I would lean towards Latin or Spanish since I've had exposure to both in school. Which language should they do? Which Spanish or Latin programs are good for 2nd graders?

Learning Russian doesn't mean you can't learn something else as well. :)

 

Basically, what I recommend is that your husband teaches them, not you. He can start by teaching them how to read and write from Russian colorbooks aimed at Russian kids - you have TONS of those in any country, Russia is no exception. He can also try to speak to them in both languages, saying something in Russian and then translating, and thus slowly shift towards speaking to them only in Russian, but during all that time, they should learn formal grammar, be explicitly taught how to formulate what they wish to say, and be given plenty of readings and videos in Russian. It's too bad you missed that train by now :(, so they won't learn Russian using the same mental processes kids use to learn their first language, but they can still attain high level proficiency if you're CONSISTENT over many years.

 

I'd also recommend supplementing your usual studies with Russian school materials. I do it with Hebrew, as kids grow up it really helps if they read about areas they're intersted in in their second language.

[Mom in High Heels]

We don't so Russian, but German (we live in Germany, so Indy hears it all the time) and prefer Instant Immersion to RS (not that there's anything wrong with RS, IMO). II has a Russian program, but it's only a basic program (it's also only around $25). For young children though who have a native speaker in the house it might be a good thing.

Indy LOVES II German. The first disk (which we are working on now-we have the full course) is vocab drills and games that reinforce the vocab. Indy gets so excited when he gets all the words correct in a game. The vocab is broken down into sections (food, colors, numbers, common phrases, etc) and each section has spoken vocab (spoken by 2 different speakers, a male and a female with slightly different accents) that you can go over as many times as you like, a printable dictionary of the words, a listening program (you speak into a microphone and it rates your pronunciation-we don't use this), an easy game where the speakers say several options (with graphics) then say one again that you are to pick, and a hard game, where the speakers do not say the options, just show the graphics and say one that you are to pick. Indy wants to get them all correct and will do the games over and over until he gets it, which is great because it reinforces his vocab.

This software will NOT teach them to speak fluently, but it will lay a basic vocabulary with common words and phrases and your dh can easily help reinforce what they are learning. HTH!