foreign language instruction

[JennyD]

I'm homeschooling my kindergartener this year and while it's generally going very well, I am not satisfied with my current approach to learning a foreign language. Of course, it's only K, etc. etc., but I think we need to get onto a better track somehow and I'm a bit stumped.

 

At the moment, my son is studying Mandarin with a tutor, who comes once a week. However, since I don't speak Mandarin and DH speaks only Cantonese, we are really not able to reinforce his learning the way it needs to be done. I thought DH would be able to be more helpful with this, but in the final analysis (we've been through this before with him teaching the kids Cantonese) he just doesn't want to do the heavy lifting with foreign languages. Other subjects, yes, but not this one. MIL speaks Mandarin and does practice with the children, but she only comes once a week at most as well, and this just doesn't seem like enough to me, at least not long-term.

 

So I'm wondering first, whether we should perhaps switch languages to something that with which I have more competency. Mandarin is really my first choice for a foreign language, for a variety of reasons, but maybe the perfect is the enemy of the good here? Or is there some other method that I'm not considering?

 

Second, if we do switch, what to switch to? I have a reading knowledge of French, German, and Latin; I speak Japanese well; and I know a little Hebrew. I also think I could probably handle Spanish. Presumably we'd still need a tutor, since I'm not anything close to a native speaker of anything other than English, but at least I could do daily practice without worrying that I'm just teaching it completely wrong (as is the case with Mandarin and its tones).

 

Thoughts?

[MaMa2005]

My DS is also 5 and has been taking private Mandarin lessons for 5 months. He goes once a week for an hour and then talks to his tutor a couple of times a week on the phone for a few minutes. I don't know Mandarin at all, but when we went to San Francisco in September, DS didn't have any problems communicating basic things in Mandarin. Our goal is for DS to be able to communicate without any problems when we go back to China for a Heritage Tour in 2012. His tutor has told us that is an attainable goal. Perhaps your DS is doing better than you realize :D. If your DS is learning even a little Mandarin, I would stick with it as it will only get more difficult as he gets older.

 

DS's second foreign language will be Spanish. No tones (YEAH) and easier to practice/speak at home. He will start Spanish in August 2011 and thus, be learning 2 languages at once.

[Ester Maria]

If Mandarin is important to you, why not just keep up with it? You don't have to switch, you can simply add one more language, but continue with Mandarin on a relatively slow pace as he is studying right now. On the long run, some of it will definitely pay off, but he can still get French or German or whatever else you'd like and you're comfortable with.

[JennyD]

Thanks for the replies. MaMa, it's nice to hear that your son is doing so well with his language studies.

 

Doing more than one language is an option that I hadn't seriously considered, but perhaps I should. My initial inclination is to pick one language and focus on that for now, but maybe I should just think of Mandarin as a fun extra and concentrate our efforts elsewhere. Hmm.

[rlugbill]

My experience is that children have relationships with people in a certain language. When you try to switch that it doesn't make sense to them and they don't like it. They want the old relationship where they understand you, not the new one in some weird foreign language.

 

So, children can easily learn multiple languages but they need a different person to speak each one exclusively to them. One person going back and forth between different languages is confusing to them. On the other hand, speaking English to mommy and Chinese to daddy and German to grandma is no problem for kids.

 

When they get a little older, they can understand the idea that now it's time for mommy to teach me this foreign language, just like mommy teaches me math, language arts, etc.

 

So, I'd suggest that you keep the tutor. Most cities also have Chinese lessons on Saturdays so your child could learn then also.

 

If you teach your child a foreign language, I'd suggest you do it in the context of a language program, like Rosetta Stone or something and you do it together, even though you could easily teach your child yourself.

 

Best wishes.