2nd Language Study

[monk17]

I'd like to hear from some homeschoolers that successfully taught there children a foreign language. By successful I mean they can speak fluently in another language at say a 12th grade level. My question is how doe you do it and do you also speak 2 languages.

Thanks so much!

[mittmaman]

I know, "speaking fluently" leaves MUCH room for interpretation (can't count the number of people who have told me they "speak" 6...7...even 8 languages "fluently", barely able to say the easiest things...).:001_huh:

We live in Switzerland, and here kids are expected (like in many parts of the world...) to be able to communicate efficently in at least two foreign languages. This includes fluent oral and written expression on a very high level...and mostly, a great confidence in using those languages almost interchangeably with their mother tongue.

Looking at kids evolve in these dual/multiple-language environments really is impressive and even though I have lived this throughout my whole life, I am still impressed by the ease and natural attitude with which my kids move in different language environments today...

This being said, I think it needs a LOT of investment from the parents to truly achieve fluency for your child, particularly if the target language is not naturally integrated into the child's life.

There certainly is no program out there that is going to achive this, and while I think VERY highly of Rosetta Stone, you would need to add lots of different learning experiences (reading...TV...lots of exposure to mother-tongue speakers...etc.) to truly raise a child fluent in another language.

I don't want to scare you at all, just underline how important it will be that you manage to integrate the new language in as many areas of your life, as possible.

And, again, I think Rosetta Stone is the best possible "backbone" for any language study...making the language "come alive" will have to come from different sources...

 

HTH!

Good Luck!

[Stacy in NJ]

I think very few American children are fluent in another language. The exception will be children from bi-lingual families who make a real effort to retain both languages or who have lived for a significant period of time in another country. I think the thing people forget about language it that it's basically a pragmatic skill. You learn it if you NEED to. If your environment is dual language you are naturally exposed. Learning a language in isolation is really difficult, near impossible, imo. After 2 years of high school Spanish and 2 years of college level Spanish, I realistically speak no Spanish.

 

I think as Americans we frequently bemoan our lack of interest/ability in learning languages, but realistically our neighborhood (North America) is home to really only 2 languages(English and Spanish), and culturally speaking English is dominant, at least for the time being in the USA/Canada. No moaning from French Quebec, please. There just aren't enough of you to make a significant difference. Europeans are surrounded by a multitude of languages in a relativly small geographic region. Katrin, the poster from Switzerland, lives in a multi-lingual society, most Americans just don't.

 

Going a bit further, English and Spanish are the language of "The Imperialists". They are no longer tribal languages. People from diverse religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds speak them, as well as French. Other than for a pragmatic reason or an academic reason, why would an individual who speaks an imperialist language need or want to learn a tribal language?

[Heather in the Kootenays]

In all cases, we started them at around 8 years old, used several different programs, and made sure they were in contact with native speakers as often as possible. Our family travels and incorporates language school into those trips. The parents all considered it a priority for their kids' education. They'll need to be immersed to become fluent but it won't take long once they've had that opportunity.

 

In all cases, at least one parent had reached a high level in another language but not necessarily in the same language that the kids were learning. The moms who didn't speak the target language learned along with the kids.

[monk17]

I know, "speaking fluently" leaves MUCH room for interpretation (can't count the number of people who have told me they "speak" 6...7...even 8 languages "fluently", barely able to say the easiest things...).:001_huh:

 

 

LOL we've had that experience traveling abroad, but hey they are trying and really just want to practice there English!

We're thinking of figuring out a way to live in another country for 6 months or so to see if the immersion thing will work for us. I hear people raving about language programs but I don't know how many reach fluency. I think a second language is important and does broaden your perspective.

Thanks for your input!

 

[monk17]

Going a bit further, English and Spanish are the language of "The Imperialists". They are no longer tribal languages. People from diverse religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds speak them, as well as French. Other than for a pragmatic reason or an academic reason, why would an individual who speaks an imperialist language need or want to learn a tribal language?

Business, culture, travel etc. Chinese might be the next language to learn. I think I would have a hard time calling anything outside of English and Spanish as Tribal.

 

Regards,

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

There is a demand in the job market for Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic, especially in the government. Many 4 year colleges have really stepped up their Arabic programs. If someone wants to work for the government many "tribal" languages would come in useful. My father learned Russian for this very reason.

 

English is becoming a universal language. Spanish mostly in the West, but would be very useful if you intend to stay in the West your whole life.

 

As for fluency, the best way that I have seen to gift your child with fluency is to have one parent speak English and the other speak another language, pretty much all the time. The second best is for them to have a friend or tutor that will speak to them only in a certiain language.

[Anne/Ankara]

Other than for a pragmatic reason or an academic reason, why would an individual who speaks an imperialist language need or want to learn a tribal language?

 

In addition to "pragmatic and academic reasons," for learning a second language, I do think it is critical for looking at the world in a new way. When you have a second language, you have the ability to view things in a much more global and diverse way. You can empathize more easily with cultures outside your own, and share more fully in the complex human experience that is certainly not limited to the "imperialist" languages.

[nmoira]

No moaning from French Quebec, please. There just aren't enough of you to make a significant difference.

:ohmy: :blink: :ack2: :scared:

 

Waiting uneasily for the other shoe to drop... that's tantamount to heresy where I come from...

 

:leaving:

[Colleen in NS]

:ohmy: :blink: :ack2: :scared:

 

Waiting uneasily for the other shoe to drop... that's tantamount to heresy where I come from...

 

:leaving:

 

I was thinking the same thing...there are two official languages in Canada, New Brunswick is officially bi-lingual, there are many French speakers in other parts of eastern Canada, and Ontario...not sure about the west, and my understanding is that if you want a gov't job here, you have to be bi-lingual. Much gov't correspondence/telephone messages when you are on hold is bi-lingual. There are way more than just people in Quebec in North America who speak French.

[Heather in the Kootenays]

That many Canadian kids who aren't from Quebec are competant in French if not bilingual. It's a very good thing - something I wish we were better at. It's a huge regret of mine that I'm not one of them.

[nmoira]

 

I was thinking the same thing...there are two official languages in Canada, New Brunswick is officially bi-lingual, there are many French speakers in other parts of eastern Canada, and Ontario...not sure about the west

Manitoba as well.

[Colleen in NS]

I'd like to hear from some homeschoolers that successfully taught there children a foreign language. By successful I mean they can speak fluently in another language at say a 12th grade level. My question is how doe you do it and do you also speak 2 languages.

 

Thanks so much!

 

I can't speak from personal experience, but I'll link to a post I made the other day. It's about a book called Language Logic, and the woman who wrote it mastered her 2nd language in early adulthood. I'm reading it because I have the same question as you have in your post (how do you teach a child to speak a 2nd language fluently). I'm finding some practical answers in the book (some of the book gets repetitive, but the overall outline and explanatory info. is so helpful to me). It pertains to adults, but I can see how much of it would pertain to a child, say, 10 and up.

 

BTW, the author is currently working her way through Arabic (and I'm not sure if this is her 3rd language, or if she has done other languages after English and French).

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32188

 

hth

[monk17]

Colleen thanks for the tip on "Language Logic: Practical and Effective Techniques to Learn Any Foreign Language" by Robyn Matthew. It looks like a good read, I'll check it out of our library.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I'd like to hear from some homeschoolers that successfully taught there children a foreign language. By successful I mean they can speak fluently in another language at say a 12th grade level. My question is how doe you do it and do you also speak 2 languages.

 

Thanks so much!

 

I think that the level of fluency that I hear you setting is well beyond what anything short of an immersion setting (be it at home, school or community) would bring.

 

Think about it this way. Most of the daily reading, writing and speaking that you do is well below the 12th grade level. National newspapers are typically tenth grade or below (I checked a NY Times article and it came in just above 10th grade. I would consider this on the upper edge except for perhaps Wall Street Journal or The Economist). So to my mind, 12th grade fluency implies the ability to read and discuss works of literature as well as write competent essay papers in the target language. (Think of the difference between reading your local paper and reading and discussing even Mark Twain, let along an author like Faulkner) This is a tall order.

 

Then there is the issue of how you define fluency anyway. I can read Harry Potter in German, watch a movie, hold a conversation (social and/or political and even sometimes theological) and go shopping (including getting the price I want at a flea market). But I never had the need to do banking in German, so there is a whole range of conversations that I would struggle with. Similarly, I never had to pay rent, or get the phone hooked up. I was able to get cable hooked up and deal with the district chimney sweep, but I told the carpenter to hang my pictures from a beak instead of a screw. I was able to make a complete police report for a stolen wallet despite not knowing the word for "police report." I explained homeschooling so often that I tend to translate it from German to English when I'm speaking to someone in the US, even two years after leaving Germany. But I know almost no children's songs in German.

 

So am I fluent or not? My kids will cheerfully watch movies in German, speak German to friends and relatives (despite making some mistakes) and read books in German. Are they as good as a native speaker their age. Not at all. But they are quite competent and I have every expectation that this competence will continue to develop. Our goal is for them to take the Zertifikat Deutsch exams offered by Goethe Institute (hopefully at least through the B1 level) as well as the AP exams. The road to this level of fluency is long and multi faceted. There is no one program that will get you all the way down this road, although there are some that are strong tools toward this end.

 

I just wanted to add that that I didn't mean to bust on you personally, just to elaborate on how I define fluency. I lived in Germany for three years and have been studying German off and on for more than 20 years. I feel very capable in the language but still hesitate to call myself fluent. People mean many different things when they discuss language fluency.

[monk17]

I think that the level of fluency that I hear you setting is well beyond what anything short of an immersion setting (be it at home, school or community) would bring.

 Absolutely!  I'm looking or some folks that have been extremely successful!

Think about it this way. Most of the daily reading, writing and speaking that you do is well below the 12th grade level. National newspapers are typically tenth grade or below (I checked a NY Times article and it came in just above 10th grade. I would consider this on the upper edge except for perhaps Wall Street Journal or The Economist). So to my mind, 12th grade fluency implies the ability to read and discuss works of literature as well as write competent essay papers in the target language. (Think of the difference between reading your local paper and reading and discussing even Mark Twain, let along an author like Faulkner) This is a tall order.

 Yes you are correct it's a high standard.

Then there is the issue of how you define fluency anyway. I can read Harry Potter in German, watch a movie, hold a conversation (social and/or political and even sometimes theological) and go shopping (including getting the price I want at a flea market). But I never had the need to do banking in German, so there is a whole range of conversations that I would struggle with. Similarly, I never had to pay rent, or get the phone hooked up. I was able to get cable hooked up and deal with the district chimney sweep, but I told the carpenter to hang my pictures from a beak instead of a screw. I was able to make a complete police report for a stolen wallet despite not knowing the word for "police report." I explained homeschooling so often that I tend to translate it from German to English when I'm speaking to someone in the US, even two years after leaving Germany. But I know almost no children's songs in German.

 A friend of mine lived there for 9 years. She just returned from a family vacation in Germany and was able to converse well but it took a lot of effort. 

So am I fluent or not? My kids will cheerfully watch movies in German, speak German to friends and relatives (despite making some mistakes) and read books in German. Are they as good as a native speaker their age. Not at all. But they are quite competent and I have every expectation that this competence will continue to develop. Our goal is for them to take the Zertifikat Deutsch exams offered by Goethe Institute (hopefully at least through the B1 level) as well as the AP exams. The road to this level of fluency is long and multi faceted. There is no one program that will get you all the way down this road, although there are some that are strong tools toward this end.

I just wanted to add that that I didn't mean to bust on you personally, just to elaborate on how I define fluency.

 Not at all I am looking for input and advice!

I lived in Germany for three years and have been studying German off and on for more than 20 years. I feel very capable in the language but still hesitate to call myself fluent. People mean many different things when they discuss language fluency.

Thanks for your reply, I will probably rethink our goals. I hear a lot of folks recommending different programs but I don't hear many success stories. We as a family need to decide if we want to learn enough to make high school and college requirements easy or achieve a real practical level of proficiency.

 

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

No moaning from French Quebec, please. There just aren't enough of you to make a significant difference.

 

That's very insulting, thank you kindly. :cursing:

What a way to tell me to shut up...

 

I was going to give pointers, since I do consider myself fluent in at least two languages. (I used to speak Spanish with as much ease as English) and my son is fluent in English as much as a 10yo English boy, but I've been told to keep quiet.

[Colleen in NS]

I was going to give pointers, since I do consider myself fluent in at least two languages. (I used to speak Spanish with as much ease as English) and my son is fluent in English as much as a 10yo English boy, but I've been told to keep quiet.

 

Cleo, go for it!! I've read your story before about achieving fluency in English and the OP wants to hear stories like that! :)

 

Wait, I just noticed, Spanish, too????? PLEASE tell all!

[Heather in the Kootenays]

No moaning from French Quebec, please. There just aren't enough of you to make a significant difference.

 

The existance of French Quebec (and other Francaphones sp??) has meant large numbers of Canadian children speak two languages (to lesser and greater degrees). It has meant that people like me who speak really poor French are very motivated to have our children learn a second language - not necessarily French but a second language.

[Heather in the Kootenays]

Oops, I said that yesterday too.

 

That means two things

1. I really mean it

2. It's time for a nap.

[nmoira]

Cleo, go for it!! I've read your story before about achieving fluency in English and the OP wants to hear stories like that! :)

 

Wait, I just noticed, Spanish, too????? PLEASE tell all!

Please do. I'd just like to point out that the OP was not the one who made the comment in question. :)

[Sebastian (a lady)]

 

 

Thanks for your reply, I will probably rethink our goals. I hear a lot of folks recommending different programs but I don't hear many success stories. We as a family need to decide if we want to learn enough to make high school and college requirements easy or achieve a real practical level of proficiency.

 

I don't know that I would say that my kids haven't been successful, just not yet to the level you cite. But they are also not reading and writing English on a 12th grade level yet either.

 

If you are interested in achieving balanced fluency at a level where they are ready to step into university classes in the target language the day after graduating high school, that is one goal. If you are wanting them to be ready for upper level college language classes at a US college, that is a different goal. If you want them to be able to survive working abroad, that is a slightly different goal. If you just want them to be able to continue building on the language learning, that is yet another thing.

 

Our goals are to lay down foundations and to create a culture of language learning. We are well past the stage where German or Latin sounds weird. And my kids have expressed that since we're moving to Japan, of course they will be learning Japanese.

 

For US 2nd language learners, who typically start learning in the upper grades, the teachers spend a great deal of time teaching the basics of grammar (what nouns, verbs, adjectives do in English) so they can teach how the target language is different. They also spend a lot of time getting the kids over the idea that the other language is weird or wrong. (Think of how much fun it is to explain to a bunch of 14 year olds that nouns are feminine, masculine or neuter.) So for me to have 10, 8 and 5 yo boys who think learning a 3rd or 4th language is just what we do is a great thing. Having a kid who asks to do Rosetta Stone Japanese so he can talk to Japanese people makes my heart sing.

 

It occurs to me to also mention that even graduates of the German-English bilingual school in Berlin were often not balanced at the high level you mentioned. Generally they were very good at receptive skills (listening and reading); good at speaking, with one language stronger than the other (especially if they lived in a German home which meant that they had the majority language at home as well as in the community); and far stronger at written work in their dominant language.

 

Did you have more specific questions or were you mostly musing over the possibilities?

[Christi/NC]

and I'll tell you upfront that I'm not fluent in a 2nd language. For three years, my three oldest kids and I worked VERY hard at learning Spanish with the goal of fluency. I can't count the number of text books I own as well as phonics readers, dictionaries, Spanish music, Spanish language newspapers, Spanish language TV---all of these things have a regular place in my home. We spent at least 1 hour per day of study and more if you count interaction with native speakers. My dear friend is a Colombian native and her children are in my house A LOT and are fluent in both English and Spanish. Her extended family loves my family like family. In those 3 years of intense study we got very far down the road towards our goal of fluency but did not reach it. We stopped because the next real step would have been to be immersed in the language. I don't think I could have advanced much from the point I was at without immersion (and I don't mean Rosetta Stone).

 

Being around native speakers for long periods of time greatly increased my vocabulary and understanding. I am convinced (from my own experience) that without regular work with a native speaker it is near impossible to learn a foreign language. If you have access to that and include some great instructional things (books, videos, music, etc) you'll make great strides in your quest for language acquisition.

 

HTH,

Christi

[Kate in Arabia]

I agree with Sebastian. We have a multi-lingual home (English-Arabic-Urdu), but our respective "fluencies" are in different areas and of different types.

 

Before we moved overseas we tried to create an "immersion atmosphere" as much as possible. We speak all languages at home, although we rely most heavily on English. When we moved, my oldest (5 yrs old then) was confident enough to try speaking Arabic, but was using formal speech. He's still working on picking up the colloquial.

 

I have a very good friend who was successful in raising her kids as bilingual -- even to the point where, when she put her youngest in KG, he was placed with those kids whose first lang wasn't English. She achieved this mainly by forbidding any English to be spoken in the home, they all only ever spoke Arabic. She also taught herself Arabic as an adult, so I think in general she is a very determined person, lol.

 

So in summary I think you need to decide what "kind" of fluency you're aiming for, and go from there. For us, my kids are native English speakers, but they will always be "exposed" to Arabic and Urdu because these languages are integral parts of their everyday lives, kwim?

 

I don't know if that was helpful...

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

I think I have to agree with Sebastian-the type of fluency you describe is typically only accomplished by either a "student" highly gifted in language or one personally motivated to study a language. Typically this level of fluency is not achieved through classroom education, be it in a homeschool, public school or university setting. At the very minimum it would require immersion in the language/culture in addition to study. Keep in mind the multiple components to language, reading, writing, speaking, listening and translating. Which or all of these do you expect fluency in? Over the course of my life I have studied at least 6 languages and been forced to dabble in more. I speak none of them fluently despite a few years of immersion in the native culture of one. However, I can hold conversations, make myself understood and function as a member of society in that language. I often realize how far from fluent I am when I meet someone who has learned English as a second language. No matter how beautiful and grammatically correct their execution the "fluency" level will often break when it comes to humor, regional idioms and expressions, or even the differences between native English speakers of different countires. When I see this happen in my native language I can realize how far I need to go in another language. And-no matter how much you learn, foreign language skills are often lost or diminished when not used.

 

None of the above are reasons for not learning a languge. It is simply a matter of realistic goal setting. Many dual language countries support their system by constantly using both languages in education, society and media. This is not as much of an option in the US and requires far more effort from the student to find these opportunities.

 

That being said-I am presently teaching the children two languages. One "dead" and one that they can experience regularly. At their ages I am currently expecting only speaking and listening ability in the modern language and we read just as a game. They may never be as fluent as a child their own age but every language you study opens the door to the next language. Learning to learn language is a skill in itself.

 

I have know people fluent in multiple languages (from hieroglyphics to Chinese), considered many fluent who would never label themselves that, and know people raising children in bi- and tri-lingual households. The one constant is those involved love language, find ways to use and imerse themselves in that language and strive to move forward always reaching for more knowledge. Perhaps they will never reach the end goal you have targeted but they have a high standard, study hard and IMHO are very successful in their chosen language.

[monk17]

I

Did you have more specific questions or were you mostly musing over the possibilities?

 

Still musing over the possibilities, your experience and comments are very helpful. Thanks for posting!

 

I'm leaning toward including some study and figuring our some immersion time in another country during the next 18 months. We need to prioritise what we are doing and what the time away would do to the rest of our schedule.

 

Once again thanks for your comments.

[monk17]

I would like to hear from the folks from Quebec!

 

I think stories about how people achieved functionality in another language is very instructive. I had a friend in high school who's mother was from Bolivia learn to speak English by watching , "I Love Lucy". Evidently Desi's accent made it easier for her to understand his English.

 

Also any particular program you used that helped you achieve your goal and how much time you devoted to a language daily. I realize some folks did language study as part of there day but surely there was some dedicated time to language.

 

Rossetta Stone has a feature that allows you to speak into a microphone and it shows your voice pattern on the screen and how close you came to pronouncing the word correctly. Did anyone use that and find it useful?

 

Thanks Again for the well thought out reply's!

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

Rossetta Stone has a feature that allows you to speak into a microphone and it shows your voice pattern on the screen and how close you came to pronouncing the word correctly. Did anyone use that and find it useful?

 

 

 

I often use it with the kids to give them a visual representation of how close they are getting to the correct pronounciation. I think it helps in combination with the audio review. They can listen to the correct version, then their own version, and then try to create a correct version of their own using both visual and auditory clues. But-with Rosetta Stone if you want to accomplish verbal skills you need to use the microphone with every lesson-the voice pattern is optional.