For Russian speaking parents

[Mandarinmom]

Hi, I just found few great curriculums for French, Spanish, and German languages, published for Russian speaking children, with audio CDs, and workbooks, and tests, etc. Actually the French can be used by anyone, instructions are given in French. It comes in sets for 2nd grade, 3rd, etc. Illustrations are beautiful, and looks like very thorough, with lots of exercises and stories, and not overly priced. Spanish materials come with readers also. You can look at some samples of pages at http://www.labirint.ru/authors/41934/, just do the search of languages. And I found they sell most materials in US based Russian store http://www.biblio-globus.com. The best way to find - do search on 1st website and then 2nd. But 2nd actually has more things listed for sale. I buy from them often, no problems ever. Lots of English teaching materials, but you probably don't need those. I am thinking of buying French 2nd grade to start with. It looks better than Nalenart. And probably Spanish 2nd grade too to have more materials to choose from, though I am already very happy with Spanish from allbilingual.com. Anybody has opinions on those if you already know? Lena

[OlgaLA]

Thanks! For some reason I never thought about looking into Russian textbooks for foreign languages. I never checked those, but if you do buy them, let me know if you like them. They look nice on previews. BTW, vasha-kniga.com has them a bit cheaper, but it looks like both sites will order them from Russia for you (they will ship in a couple of weeks), and if they are out of stock there, they may cancel that part of the order.

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

I would suggest that regardless of the language, kids and adults should learn a language with a book aimed at speakers of their *native* language.

 

I tried to learn Latin with Wheelock. I was doing fine till 2/3 of the book. Then I just couldn't get it. Not because I couldn't follow, but because it dealt with subjunctive, a mode that doesn't exist a whole lot in English, but does in Latin and in French. So I just couldn't get a good idea of what the Latin really meant because of this barrier. When I did Latin with a French program, it all went well, without a glitch.

[OlgaLA]

I am not sure I agree that it is a *native* language thing. I actually thought about it all day. It may be that I haven't met a certain level of complexity yet, but so far I find English explanations more understandable. Could it be in your case that it happened because Latin is much closer related to French than to English? When I do Spanish with my daughter I sometimes have her translate to Russian instead of English simply because English translation will lose some finer points without some awkward conditions added (like when we have gender differences), or I may use a Russian example when we discuss conjugation. And later I will use English because articles do not exist in Russian. Again, we are just starting, but I don't see why I would have any preference for one language, especially if all three languages belong to different groups and some things may exist in two languages, but not in the third.

[OlgaLA]

Just in case we have more Russian speaking parents looking for Russian language resources, here is a link to a site with a free Russian textbook. It is in Russian, but aimed at children of immigrants for whom Russian is a second language. I didn't use it myself, but the Saturday school my daughter used to go to now completely switched to this textbook.