Foreign language

[choirfarm]

No one who fluently speaks another language, has relatives who do, of has lived overseas may contribute to this thread.

 

Now... if you have this kind of background (as in none) have you been successful in incorporating a foreign language and to what extent. How old are you children and how are you defining success? Almost everyone in the other thread had extensive other language background so this is for "the rest of us."

[choirfarm]

AAh.. this is what I suspected. If you are not already bilingual, you won't be successful. Everyone that was either seemed to be bilingual themselves, lived in a foreign country, or have relatives that are.

 

I have been somewhat successful. Let us see with the boys we did Powerglide Jumpstart Spanish for awhile. Then Rosetta Stone.. Then I got SOS Spanish which was a very good fit for my oldest, self-motivated boy. However, he ignored the speech parts except when I made him. He finished I and got through 1/2 of SOS Spanish II. He is currently breezing through Spanish at the cc as an 11th grader. The grammar is all review and so he can concentrate on speaking. The teacher is a native speaker. They had 20 or so in their Spanish I class, but only 6 survived to Spanish II. My boys and their friend made A's. My 9th grader had done maybe 1/3 of SOS Spanish I in 8th grade. He found about the first 1/2 of Spanish easy, but now really needs to study. I know they will get individual attention and she has them do lots of oral activities in class, with 4 or 5 tutorials where they have to make an appointment and speak with her in her office as well as oral reports.

 

That is my experience.

[Amirah]

ask wehomeschool i know she teaches her kids multiple languages and she doesnt speak any of them or live in a foreign country(shes in canada) or have relatives that speak the languages shes teaching. if i am not mistaken she is doing chinese, arabic, and french

[Bloggermom]

I speak no languages besides English. Right now my 5th grader is progressing well with Latin and Greek. I add Latin in 3rd grade and Greek in 5th. I have high hopes to add Arabic and Hebrew at some point (I plan for those to be taught through The Potters School).

 

For Latin we are using Lively Latin and Latin Alive Book One. After that we plan to use Henle Latin First Year.

For Greek we are using Elementary Greek Year One.

Edited January 20, 2012 by Bloggermom

[acurtis75]

I have no language background other than a few years of Spanish in high school and one semester in college. I don't remember much of what I learned either time.

 

I only have one child and she is working on a 2nd or 3rd grade level. We have completed Song School Latin, Greek Code Cracker, & Prima Latina. We are currently using Latin for Children A and Song School Greek. We are early in the process but at this point success for us is learning the material we've covered so far and we are doing that just fine. I am learning with her. I plan to continue with Latin and Greek. In a few years we'll add Spanish for practical reasons because we live in Texas. Beyond that I will let her choose if she wants to add any additional modern languages. She has asked learn Hebrew so we will probably do some sort of curriculum to learn the alphabet and she if she's still interested after that.

 

ETA: After starting with Latin I am fairly certain that when we start Spanish I will be much better able to retain it than when I was in high school. I haven't decided on materials or methods but I think Latin is providing a great foundation.

[twoxcell]

I have been somewhat successful. Let us see with the boys we did Powerglide Jumpstart Spanish for awhile. Then Rosetta Stone.. Then I got SOS Spanish which was a very good fit for my oldest, self-motivated boy. However, he ignored the speech parts except when I made him. He finished I and got through 1/2 of SOS Spanish II. He is currently breezing through Spanish at the cc as an 11th grader. The grammar is all review and so he can concentrate on speaking. The teacher is a native speaker. They had 20 or so in their Spanish I class, but only 6 survived to Spanish II. My boys and their friend made A's. My 9th grader had done maybe 1/3 of SOS Spanish I in 8th grade. He found about the first 1/2 of Spanish easy, but now really needs to study. I know they will get individual attention and she has them do lots of oral activities in class, with 4 or 5 tutorials where they have to make an appointment and speak with her in her office as well as oral reports.

 

This is kinda what I'm hoping for. We do Spanish lessons daily as a group. I am not fluent at all in Spanish, and I'm learning along with them. My goal is to give them exposure to a language, that they will be able to understand and converse with some one in Spanish if needed, and that when they get to Highschool or College level a language class will be easier for them.

[jillian]

I took Spanish all throughout high school and my freshman year in college. I know enough to get dd through the basics. We are also going to have a "Spanish only" room. When we are in....say the kitchen we have to try our best to speak in Spanish only. I'm starting young with dd and we may move into another language after she has a basic conversational skills. I love seeing others like us with no bilingual folks in our family

[KarenNC]

I took French in high school and college (many decades ago ;)) and have some retention but far from fluent. Here's our path:

 

1) early elementary---tried Minimus Latin. While a good program, it didn't get done here, daughter like the comics.

2) summer after 3rd grade---summer online session in French using powerspeak through k12. Daughter had fun doing it, completed it, zero retention

3) last couple of years---Daughter wants to learn Spanish---tried several different book based Spanish resources, none worked as well as I would have liked as I couldn't speak it and had no confidence in being able to correct her work adequately.

4) this year---bought Discovery Streaming in part to use their educacion espanola program using video instruction. She found it incredibly boring, balked at repeating everything and I didn't feel there was enough in the way of reinforcement activities for her to retain (did very poorly on tests). She still enjoys watching the TOP! Spanish video games on there.

5) Last week---bought Tell Me More Spanish, a totally self-contained software course with voice recognition capability. It appears to combine aspects of Rosetta Stone with more grammar. All three of us (her, my husband and I) are all doing our own tracks on it. Daughter loves it and is talking away to the voice recognition.

 

I think this will work for us. I know that down the road we will need to go for a paid tutor or real life class, but I'm putting that off. There are people around who are native Spanish speakers, but they are all fluent in English, so there's no immersion from that now. So, for us it's a combination of interest on the part of the student and a totally self-contained and self-correcting program.

[Sahamamama]

My husband and I studied the typical American junior high and high school French courses. With our children, we are just starting out with French, so it's too soon to tell what the outcome will be. At this point in the game, I believe that any world language exposure and study is better than none at all. About two years ago, if I had put on a CD or DVD of German, Italian, Spanish, or French, the children would have resisted it, and they all would have asked, "What is THAT?" Now, if they are listening to German, French, Italian, or Spanish, they are able to recognize which language they are hearing, they can sing along with some of the CDs (mostly French, some Spanish, a little German), and they are comfortable listening -- no resistance. I see this as progress. Also, when I used to bring home library books in French, they would throw them back in the basket -- :tongue_smilie:yucky French books, LOL! Yesterday, they were all excited to find Babar in FRENCH, Hooray! It is amazing how much difference this exposure makes to their acceptance of the world being full of more than... English. :001_huh: Imagine that!

 

I plan to continue to expose them. What's the harm in that? Their English certainly isn't suffering! In fact, I've noticed that they make connections between the languages now, and are better able to understand the roots of some English words. My mother was telling them how she could not bring me home from the hospital when I was a newborn, because I had jaundice and had to stay under the lights. "What is jaundice?" My mother explained it and said that I was yellow-brown, like a paper bag (so now my children look at me strangely). :) But my oldest (nearly 7) said, "Yes! And that must come from the French word for yellow, which is jaune." Mom was impressed, LOL.

 

Even if we never live abroad, we are committed to continuing on with language studies. Why? Because they are there. :D They are not going away. Latin will always be there, French will always be there, German will always be there.... They are mountains to climb, worlds to explore, doors to open....

 

I think that if so-called "fluency" is the goal, most of us will be discouraged. That is like trying to be a bird, when we are only tortoises. I will probably never fly in French, probably never be able to get my children to fly in French, either. But we can plod and cover some worthwhile territory, I believe. Just that, continuing on, is what we value. Will we ever really be "done" with French? Ce n'est pas possible! I think that strong internal motivation is key, though.

 

Also, we plan to start Latin next year for 2nd grade, and perhaps Greek a year or two after that. HTH.

Edited January 20, 2012 by Sahamamama

[jillian]

We are just starting out with French, so it's too soon to tell what the outcome will be. At this point in the game, I believe that any world language exposure and study is better than none at all. About two years ago, if I had put on a CD or DVD of German, Italian, Spanish, or French, the children would have resisted it, and they all would have asked, "What is THAT?"

 

Now, if they are listening to German, French, Italian, or Spanish, they are able to recognize which language they are hearing, they can sing along with some of the CDs (mostly French, some Spanish, a little German), and they are comfortable listening -- no resistance. I see this as progress.

 

Also, when I used to bring home library books in French, they would throw them back in the basket -- :tongue_smilie:yucky French books, LOL! Yesterday, they were all excited to find Babar in FRENCH, Hooray! :party:It is amazing how much difference this exposure makes to their acceptance of the world being full of more than... English. :001_huh: Imagine that!

 

I plan to continue to expose them. What's the harm in that? Their English certainly isn't suffering! In fact, I've noticed that they make connections between the languages now, and are better able to understand the roots of some English words. My mother was telling them how she could not bring me home from the hospital when I was a newborn, because I had jaundice and had to stay under the lights. "What is jaundice?" My mother explained it and said that I was yellow-brown, like a paper bag (so now my children look at me strangely). :) But my oldest (not quite 7) lit up and said, "Yes! And that must come from the French word for yellow, which is jaune." Mom was impressed, LOL.

 

Even if we never live abroad -- though my husband's company is French-owned, based in Germany, with headquarters in Sweden, go figure THAT out -- we are committed to continuing on with language studies. Why? Because they are there. :D They are not going away. Latin will always be there, French will always be there, German will always be there....

 

They are mountains to climb, worlds to explore, doors to open....

 

I think that if so-called "fluency" is the goal, most of us will be discouraged. That is like trying to be a bird, when we are only tortoises. I will probably never fly in French, probably never be able to get my children to fly in French, either. But we can plod and cover some worthwhile territory, I believe. Just that, continuing on, is what we value.

 

Will we ever really be "done" with French? Ce n'est pas possible!

I like that. I know that I will never actually be fluent in Spanish but my goal is to be able to converse with the basics kwim? If/when dd passes me in knowledge then we will outsource but yeah I don't think I will ever actually make it to the point of conducting business in Spanish.

[Bloggermom]

I think that if so-called "fluency" is the goal, most of us will be discouraged. That is like trying to be a bird, when we are only tortoises. I will probably never fly in French, probably never be able to get my children to fly in French, either. But we can plod and cover some worthwhile territory, I believe.

 

 

This is what I love about Latin. They don't have to stress about conversations in it. Also, learning it to the point they can read the ancient classical works allows them to learn another romance language with ease.

[Miss Tick]

I think that it is important to keep your goals in mind. Without daily exposure to a foreign language, I don't think fluency is an acheivable goal.

 

However, by spending years slowly building up vocabulary and decoding confidence I think that if my children have the opportunity to move or travel to a (Spanish-speaking) country, they will be able to get along tolerably well. Also, fluency should be easier with a wide, but perhaps not deep base. Think of how far you can get if you just know nouns and infinitives.

 

This also means that if I have to skip Spanish today, this week or this month, no harm done.

[Embassy]

ask wehomeschool i know she teaches her kids multiple languages and she doesnt speak any of them or live in a foreign country(shes in canada) or have relatives that speak the languages shes teaching. if i am not mistaken she is doing chinese, arabic, and french

 

Yes, I'm not multi-lingual. My relatives all speak English. My MIL used to speak Ukrainian fluently, but has forgotten much over the years. Maybe I could count that:tongue_smilie: I've lived in 3 countries, but all have been English speaking countries. I will live in a non-English speaking country in a few years though. Right now I'm teaching Mandarin, Arabic, and Greek. I don't know any of them. I studied a little Spanish in high school and one semester of German in college. My oldest son is ahead of me. I'm trying to learn along with them. We will be adding French next school year and I have plans to add the language of the country where we will be living. I have relatives who lived in Quebec, but they are native English speakers and not native French speakers. Maybe I'm crazy to attempt this. Many have thought so. I'm also very determined and perhaps a bit stubborn. I know it will take discipline and lots of effort. Are we successful? I guess it depends on your definition of success. We are making progress. I started young and we have many more years ahead of us to make progress. I'm not using tutors or online classes right now, but I would if I could. As my kids progress in modern languages I will have to find some way for them to practice conversational skills.