Post your foreign language success stories here!

[Jumping In Puddles]

What language did you teach? Have your children been able to become bilingual because of their studies in that language or because of immersion situations or a family member speaks the FL?

 

Do you think your children were successful in their FL because of the language you or they chose (for example Spanish instead of Chinese) or the curriculum you chose?

 

This is the year my children will start foreign language, I should have done it years ago but not speaking a foreign language myself and living in an area with no cultural diversity hasn't helped.

 

But with the internet, a good curriculum, maybe some videos... I'm going to give it a shot. :)

[3andme]

bump

[raceNzanesmom]

Spanish, dual enrolled at the high school, successful because ds is half Mexican.

 

Sorry, I know that's not really helpful.

[Alte Veste Academy]

Spanish, dual enrolled at the high school, successful because ds is half Mexican.

 

Sorry, I know that's not really helpful.

 

:lol: You are confirming my fears that only a native speaking parent can produce a success story. You actually raised my fear by adding the dual enrollment at high school. :lol:

 

Um....

 

**crickets**

 

:leaving:

 

:lol:

[Jumping In Puddles]

:D Fill in the blanks:

 

We started from scratch and decided to study __________ because ________ so we used __________ and voilà! It worked brilliantly, my children are all bilingual and it only took _____ years and we spent $______. If we did it anyone can! :lol:

[Alte Veste Academy]

:D Fill in the blanks:

 

We started from scratch and decided to study __________ because ________ so we used __________ and voilà! It worked brilliantly, my children are all bilingual and it only took _____ years and we spent $______. If we did it anyone can! :lol:

 

Ah, yes. This would do the heart good, especially if followed by several pages of :iagree::iagree::iagree: :tongue_smilie:

[Sharon H in IL]

If I have a success story I will be crowing about it from the treetops.

 

My older son did really well with Prima Latina and Latina Christiana, before switching to public junior high (no languages offered) and now is taking French in high school, planning to take four years' worth. He is doing well, except apparently having some difficulty with irregular verbs. (Well, who doesn't? :D)

 

Younger son sat in on older brother's Latin, learned the chants, and then Just. Wasn't. Getting it when it was his job. We plugged along for three or four years, before I called a halt and switched to First Form French. He wasn't remembering much there, either.

 

He loves Rosetta Stone French, but it's only been a few days. I can't call it a success story yet. But oh my, how I do hope it will turn into one. ;)

[Jumping In Puddles]

:D:D:D:

 

I'm sitting here kinda wishing I married an Italian (German, Brazilian, Japanese... whatever!) so my children could learn another language. It doesn't work that way Wendy? :svengo:

 

:lol::lol::lol:

[regentrude]

I find foreign language the hardest subject to homeschool!

 

French

because: DD started this at school in 6th grade, so we just kept going

we used: a self-study course with CDs, numerous grammar books, French in Action, a private tutor, and now dual enrollment at the university

 

voila: in year 4, far from bilingual. reading comprehension good. conversation 1 one 1 OK if speaker speaks slowly. Group conversation/movies: very hard.

Spent: several thousand $ (private tutor and university tuition.

 

ETA: we found that for us the most beneficial tool for progress is a live class.

 

German

because: both parents are native speakers

we use: immersion, children's books, one semester public school in Germany, some grammar/spelling workbooks

kids are fluent in speaking and understanding, they read fluently, DS reads slowly. Because of a lack of discipline on my part they are not proficient writers.

cost: essentially free

 

My own experience:

English and Russian; fluency achieved in each after ten years of continuous instruction in school by a fluent/native teacher

I am writing this because I think most people in the US underestimate the effort required to become fluent/proficient in a foreign language. A few years are insufficient, unless accompanied by total immersion.

 

 

Edited March 20, 2012 by regentrude

[raceNzanesmom]

:lol: You are confirming my fears that only a native speaking parent can produce a success story. You actually raised my fear by adding the dual enrollment at high school. :lol:

 

 

 

:lol:

 

Well, he didn't come home until 7th. I put foreign lang off as long as possible because it seemed impossible for me to teach, $$$$, and dh had taught him very little. Most of what he did know his grandma had taught him. Junior year he dual enrolled for some advanced graphics, so we threw Spanish in his senior year. He took 1 & 2 his senior year (block scheduling), had great teachers. He isn't fluent by any means, but he can have a decent conversation with his grandma in Spanish (which she understands better than English). He reads it better than dh, lol. I really wish he'd taken four years.

[kroe1]

I want to play, but I will have to leave the word "fluent" out, OK?

 

 

SPANISH

 

Started at age 6 and I learned at the same time. Tried a gazillion things and nothing worked. Found The Complete Book of Spanish, Grades 1-3. It was perfect for both DD5 and I. After this we have used both Rosetta Stone and BJU's Pasaporte en Espanol. We have been at it about 5 years now. We can order our food at restaurants, leave instructions for the landscapers, and get about every 10th word on CNN Espanol. I have also learned medical Spanish, myself, and can now "wing it". We both can now read and understand most of what is in Spanish picture books for preschoolers and lower grades.

 

CHINESE

 

Again, I started learning right along with DD. Tried Rosetta Stone first, and it was too hard. Tried a gazillion other things which did not work. Then found a website called Better Chinese. We started with the 3 to 5 year old program. We learned about 50 words. We are now back on Rosetta Stone and can do it fine. Dd11 is on level 2 or 3 . She is much farther than I am. I do not think she could survive for 5 minutes if left alone in China at this stage. It is a ridiculously hard language to learn.

 

I am now convinced one has to move to the foreign country for a year to become fluent.

[Beth S]

Actually, I'm not surprised at the lack of results. That bar is just too high (assuming the child also needs to learn to be "fluent" in Math, all the Sciences, English, etc.)!

 

My then-18yo dd and I spent a week in France, which absolutely brought her from "0 to 60" in French fluency. We were officially "immersed", officially lost while driving our rental car 50% of the time, and having the time of our lives. (She did 2 years of high school Spanish.)

 

IMO, living in the country (i.e. actual immersion) is the path to fluency.

 

Thankfully, most colleges only require 2 years of foreign language study.

 

I truly don't mean to sound "cynical". Instead, I want to share our surprising path to "success".

 

YMMV. :001_smile:

[Mimm]

I don't see it as a realistic goal to achieve fluency in my particular situation. Basically, I just want to familiarize my kids with other languages and hopefully foster a view of languages as something fun and worthy of effort.

[elegantlion]

We started from scratch and decided to study German because Dad speaks German and the kids are dual citizens so we used 100 million different things and voilà! It worked brilliantly (hold on while I go choke), my children are all bilingual (they can speak English and nonsense) and it only took 100,000 years and we spent $100,000. If we did it anyone can!

 

 

 

:lol::lol:

 

Well fluency is years away, but ds's exposure to Japanese has confirmed to him that English is a nutty language and he is very motivated in to learn Japanese well.

[myfunnybunch]

My sister's older children (21 and 18) studied Rosetta Stone Spanish for 4-6 years. They had very little exposure to native speakers or in-person instruction or conversation practice. They learned enough Spanish that they could communicate needs and have some very simple conversations when they went on their mission trips to Mexico. They are not fluent, but they were able to get around and get their needs met.

 

We've dabbled in Spanish and Japanese, and we're starting a formal foreign language study next year, so I will be following this thread hoping that someone has discovered the magic secret.

 

I will add that most of our foreign exchange students have studied 10+ years, and are usually able to communicate their needs and participate in medium-complex conversations. Immersion makes a huge difference--we typically notice a leap in comprehension and language around 2 weeks, 6 weeks, three months. :) Our plan is to get our kids some basic language skills in their chosen language, then send them off to be immersed in the language and culture when they are older teens/young adults.

 

Cat

[myfunnybunch]

Well fluency is years away, but ds's exposure to Japanese has confirmed to him that English is a nutty language and he is very motivated in to learn Japanese well.

 

My favorite thing about Japanese is that everything is spelled exactly as it sounds. Our exchange students laugh at our wacky English spellings: through, rough, though, bough.

 

Cat

[VeganCupcake]

A few years are insufficient, unless accompanied by total immersion.

 

:iagree: The best, most expensive materials in the world will not do much if not accompanied by lots of linguistic input at the appropriate difficulty level and frequent opportunities to interact in the language.

 

This is the only time I wish I'd married that awful foreign boyfriend of mine. :lol:

[Vida Winter]

This is still a work in progress but for the younger kids, we have used La Clase Divertida and are still working through that - and for our high school kid, using the online high school course with Sr. Gamache of La Clase Divertida. I cannot claim total success yet, but it is working and I am favorably impressed with Sr. Gamache, especially at the higher levels -- he genuinely cares about his students -- I can tell due to the frequent communication with students and parents. They use a college textbook over two years. DD is planning on taking the next level of high school Spanish with him as well.

[HejKatt]

Some thoughts

1. There is a thread on the Bilingual board entitled "Is anyone dual schooling in Mandarin"? In there, cellocoffee and others post their thoughts and there are some amazing examples of the lengths they go to maintain an immersion environment.

 

2. Many of my Indian friends told me they learned a language from playing with friends in their neighborhood..

 

3. Is there some merit in examining the European environment where English is taught as a 2nd/3rd/nth language but there isn't an immersion environment at home? That seems to imply a long-term, consistent learning path (which regentrude alluded to).

[laughing lioness]

:D Fill in the blanks:

 

We started from scratch and decided to study __________ because ________ so we used __________ and voilà! It worked brilliantly, my children are all bilingual and it only took _____ years and we spent $______. If we did it anyone can! :lol:

 

We started to study ASL years ago. We realized, after meeting some deaf folks that many of the vocab words and phrases in the books and DVD's were no longer current (its' a living language with dialects and slang). The girls went to a deaf Bible Study and one of them became fluent. We all know some basic signs.

 

DD moved to Romania and was immersed in Hungarian and Romanian. It took a serious toll on our relationship and family but she is conversant in both languages (she didnt' move there to study the language per se). Cost- undetermined but expensive.

 

DH studied 3 yrs of Greek in Seminary and can translate. Cost- extreme- we moved cross country and paid beaucoups bucks for school but it's also where he got his professional degree so I guess that makes up for it some). He also studied 2 yrs of German and that, along with his h.s. and fluent cousin (who married a German and lives there), he was fluent and could easily be so again.

Dh is on level II of Rosetta Stone Hebrew. He is doing simple translating and is poorly conversant.

Our boys are taking Latin (again). We have spent a fortune on language programs. We all know hundreds of Latin vocab words and sayings. We get grammatical structure (more and more, every day, in every way we are getting more and more grammatically fluent.)

[cathmom]

I find foreign language the hardest subject to homeschool!

 

 

ETA: we found that for us the most beneficial tool for progress is a live class.

 

My own experience:

English and Russian; fluency achieved in each after ten years of continuous instruction in school by a fluent/native teacher

 

I am writing this because I think most people in the US underestimate the effort required to become fluent/proficient in a foreign language. A few years are insufficient, unless accompanied by total immersion.

 

 

 

I completely agree. Foreign language is hard to homeschool EVEN IF the parent already speaks the language, EVEN IF the parent is a native speaker.

 

Five years ago I decided to start working again and returned to German and Spanish and began studying again myself after about 10 years of doing nothing with the languages. At the time, one of my main motivations was to be able to help other homeschooling families with language learning. Unfortunately, the more I've researched and learned, the less I feel that this is doable or practical. I always advise people to take a class or hire a tutor now. I have experience as the homeschooling mom trying to teach languages I already know, and trying to study one together with my daughter. She wanted to learn Swedish, and since I had always wanted to as well, we studied it together. I thought, I know how to learn a language, we can do this. We made essentially NO progress until we took a class with a real teacher who really spoke Swedish!

 

I agree that Americans underestimate what it takes to become fluent. A child takes about 10 years to learn to speak/read/understand/write his or her own native language with 100% immersion at a decent level, with still more to learn, ie vocab and better writing skills. It cannot take less than that to become completely fluent in another language. This is why the US desperately needs articulated foreign language programs through K-12!

[Dancer_Mom]

I agree with many others - languages are really difficult to teach but I personally feel that they are very worthwhile even if fluency is not attained. I feel that it stretches our minds like anything else we learn.

 

I have young children so I will give an example of myself first. I studied Spanish for 5 years and feel that I am no where near conversationally proficient. I studied ASL for 3 years and I would say the same.

 

I studied Romanian for a few months and then moved there where I was immersed for a year and a half... naturally I am proficient in Romanian. (I can get along conversationally very well... I struggle to read Romanian literature and still feel I have a limited vocabulary).

 

Currently we are planning to homeschool (my oldest two are 3 1/2 years old) and I speak with them in Romanian and they watch Mickey Mouse clubhouse on youtube in Romanian. They understand English and Romanian but so far have only two words each in Romanian that they speak.

 

I will be mostly making up my curriculum and plan on making at least one trip if not two to Romania before they graduate. I plan on hiring native tutors and studying Romanian all throughout their years homeschooling. I also hope to add in one other language around middle school.

 

I really think that the hurdle of not being a native speaker of any other language shouldn't stop anyone. Tutors can be hired for supplementation, trips can be taken etc. I just think that you have to work harder to give them opportunities for real practice. This is all of course my very humble opinion as I have never studied about learning languages - simply have my personal experience with Romanian that I guess I go by.

Edited March 21, 2012 by Dancer_Mom

[Ester Maria]

I completely agree. Foreign language is hard to homeschool EVEN IF the parent already speaks the language, EVEN IF the parent is a native speaker.

 

Five years ago I decided to start working again and returned to German and Spanish and began studying again myself after about 10 years of doing nothing with the languages. At the time, one of my main motivations was to be able to help other homeschooling families with language learning. Unfortunately, the more I've researched and learned, the less I feel that this is doable or practical. I always advise people to take a class or hire a tutor now. I have experience as the homeschooling mom trying to teach languages I already know, and trying to study one together with my daughter. She wanted to learn Swedish, and since I had always wanted to as well, we studied it together. I thought, I know how to learn a language, we can do this. We made essentially NO progress until we took a class with a real teacher who really spoke Swedish!

 

I agree that Americans underestimate what it takes to become fluent. A child takes about 10 years to learn to speak/read/understand/write his or her own native language with 100% immersion at a decent level, with still more to learn, ie vocab and better writing skills. It cannot take less than that to become completely fluent in another language. This is why the US desperately needs articulated foreign language programs through K-12!

:iagree:

[J-rap]

Total, forced immersion is what did it for my kids. Two of them are completely fluent in a foreign language, and one of them -- though not fluent -- is nearly there and has a great accent!

 

We only tinkered with languages at the late elementary school/early middle school ages, and didn't get serious about them until high school. However, serious for us meant not doing them at home, because when we didn't have time for everything we'd skip languages. So, that was one of the classes my kids did at the local ps or online. Two of them had four years of a language and one had three years. They were okay, but of course not near to fluent.

 

The first year after high school, all of my out-of-high-school children spent a year abroad. Two of them lived and attended schools where their language of study was the spoken language. (It was also the language their courses were taught in.) It was very, very difficult for them, but they were very motivated and worked very hard. They were "casual" schools where grades didn't matter or were non-existent. They made a lot of progress with their languages!

 

My one daughter continued living in Central America after that, and after about two years altogether, she was fluent. She is now pursuing her major at a university there, and all of her classes are in Spanish.

 

My other daughter went to college in the U.S. after her year abroad, and was able to pass out of all of her French classes before school began. She was in a French comp class, and then did a semester abroad in Senegal (a French-speaking country in Africa) where she again took all of her classes in French. She is considered fluent in French.

 

My son didn't attend a language-immersion school, but he did work at a school in Germany, and when he lived in NYC he lived in a German boarding house. He studied Spanish in high school, but never German. He knows conversational German very well, as well as conversational Spanish. He travels a lot and has an opportunity to use both language often.

 

They were good students and worked hard at the language they were studying in high school, but the classes they took were not anything amazing, and they didn't have private tutors or anything. It took a full immersion in the country of that language to really become fluent. One year of full immersion really got them on their way.

 

Our next high school graduate is going to school in England next year, so I guess she'll become fluent in English. :)

[Embassy]

:bigear:

 

I'm only a couple of years into our foreign language learning right now. I started young and plan to continue through high school. Foreign language is done every day and it is one of the first things we do each day. It has been a lot of time and effort to get to where we are now and we have really only just begun when you look at how much we have left to learn. I spend more on foreign language curriculum than any other subject besides math because it is an area where we need a structured incremental approach. I supplement that with DVDs/videos in the target languages. My kids watch one during breakfast and one during lunch each school day. I will be adding on conversation practice with native speakers using Skype soon. I know classes or tutors would be best, but we simply don't have the funds for that now.

 

I think the kind of program that works is dependent on the child. For us we seem to learn more when I work one-on-one with each child at their level. I tried teaching my kids together, but one was being held back and other other one needed to slow down. Guiding them seperately makes it more time-consuming for me as the parent than it is for my children. Curriculum that is reading-focused or one that emphasizes learning to read the language early on has been a good fit for my kids. Rosetta Stone was a waste of money for us.

 

Sorry, no success story here. I hope to have one in 8-10 years though - at least I'm going to try.

[Nan in Mass]

I know this thread is old, but I suddenly remembered it this morning GRIN as I woke up in a childless house and faced a summer without my youngest son and had a "what on earth was I thinking" moment. (Temporarily "childless". In a few days, some adult children will be home again. Youngest is the only one still in high school though. And the what-was-I-thinking part is only temporary, too, because my son (sons) have chosen to travel for years now and probably will continue to do so for years and I know how important it is for their growing.)

I just thought maybe there would be more people with some new stories to add to this, and I thought perhaps I would post not our own experience (because I don't know yet what and whether anything we did worked) but the anecdotal evidence I have gathered over the years.

I can say that I think immersion is a good idea, for motivation if for nothing else. Learning French has been a long process for us and one tends to lag. A teenager who can get by (travel and have the occasional converstation and read with a dictionary) in bad French is not necessarily very motivated to learn to speak properly and increase his vocabulary until he lands in a situation where it becomes more necessary. Or unless realistic look at himself and what motivates him inspires him to decide to try something that will make it all easier, like going to take classes in a French-speaking country. (This is what happened with mine.) I myself now have a friend who happens to speak French and my French has improved rapidly just by spending time with her each week, which is motivating me to work on my grammar a bit.

 

If you are trying to do this without being fluent yourself while living in the US, it is probably going to be expensive, expensive time-wise, family-wise, and money-wise (think lots of imported picture books and movies, plane tickets, and classes and tutors). I know it is doable. I've talked to parents who have done it. Amongst the ones I spoken to, there were several very common paths. One path was Saturday school and multiple summer immersion situations. Another involved classes in school followed by a fairly long period of immersion (more than a month). Another involved a junior year abroad (including going to school) in a place where the language wasn't too different. Another path involved going to immersion school full-time. The results were good, but as you can see, they all involved immersion of some sort, and many involved good teachers. Don't ask me why the good teacher is important, but my own experience says that it is. I think you can do the beginning part yourself but then at some point, you need a good teacher or you need immersion, preferably both.

 

I can recommend something inexpensive that will help a lot'once you have some basics - reading. It may not help you learn to speak or to write, but it will build your passive vocabulary painlessly and it will speed up learning to listen in the foreign language. Quite a lot of being fluent in a foreign language relies on increasing one's vocabulary and increasing one's ability to think in the foreign language. Reading helps with both those things. The trick it finding something that you actually want to read. I have had no luck reading something that I didn't really want to read in English. It is extremely laborious at first, but it speeds up fairly quickly and it is a great way to turn your textbook foreign language knowledge into something much more real.

 

Nan

[rieshy]

I think the problem with the question is that "bilingual" is actually quite rare. And requires frequent immersion with native speakers.

 

If however we are discussing gaining conversational fluency in another language that enables one to think in another language, read most popular fiction, watch popular movies, read the newspaper and speak with a native speaker on almost any topic without too much difficulty then I can claim success with my oldest dd and myself and I hope to add the rest of my children over the next 18 years.

 

Would I be mistaken for a native, um :lol:

 

It has required lots of work- everyday for 3 years, lots of different materials, and immersion. Right now my daughter and I are working with a tutor to learn to write well. Writing well seems to be the last big hurdle.

 

We used Pimsleur German, Themen aktuell, Em neu, Ed Swick books, tons of German language reference books, tons of German language young adult fiction, tons of German language audio books, history books in German, German literature in English and German, German language alternative rock, movies ordered from Amazon.de and played on a pal player, practice speaking together everyday. My daughter went to school in Vienna and Switzerland for 2 months....

 

In fact I try to only read fiction if it is in German, even if it is just a German version of Beastly or Patriot Games. (Oddly at my used bookstores these are the kind of German books I find.) It really builds my vocabulary, in the off chance I need to know how to talk about enchantments or discuss counter-terrorism in German.

 

But it has been worth it. It's also been a lot of fun. My younger ones are doing OSU German as their starting point. I think the problem with most curriculums out there is that they promise too much too soon and when the promised stellar results don't happen people give up. I also get my children reading real literature as soon as possible. I don't mean necessarily high literature- just real books- the first book my oldest daughter read in German was Twilight:tongue_smilie: Since then I've found and started collected German children's books.

 

It's little by little everyday. It is possible to become conversant and able to read real literature (in other words not Twilight) in a target language even if you don't have a native speaker in your home or environment.

[Sarah CB]

I think dd's foreign language studies have been pretty successful.

 

She started French in grade 1. We floundered around a bit until finding The Easy French (Marie Filion). We did level 1 together and then I think that was when they came out with the new versions (level 1A, 1B, 2A) that were geared towards more independent older kids and had explicit grammar instruction in them. Dd switched to those (maybe in grade 6?) and did them on her own. I did not really provide a lot of help at all. For her grade 10 year she worked through the Ultimate Guide to French grammar, but to be honest she didn't do very much of it. She also attended a basic conversational class at the community center where she was able to practice speaking out loud. Last semester she went to high school and jumped right into French 11. To put things in perspective, kids in our province start French in grad 5 - so kids in grade 11 are in their 7th year of French instruction. She ended up with a final mark in the 90's. Her teacher said her oral skills and her ability to write paragraphs were particularly strong.

 

Dd started Italian in grade 2. For 7 years she went to Italian language and culture classes (2 hours every Saturday from Oct to May). She is semi-fluent - if someone is speaking she can understand quite a lot of what they say and she is able to have basic conversations. She is leaving in September for a three month exchange trip to Italy where she'll live with a family and attend school I imagine she'll be fluent by the end of it :) The biggest success is that she absolutely loves Italian language and culture.

 

Dd started Latin using Memoria Press' Latina Christiana. She completed levels 1 and 2 and then moved into Henle and did the online high school course. It was challenging, but she ended up doing quite well with it. We dropped Latin at that point, but she said it was a huge benefit to her and she keeps bugging me to start teaching the boys Latin.

[Catherine]

We are not bilingual, but my ds became truly bilingual after spending a year abroad as an exchange student. Even though he went to Germany with only 2 year's middle experience in the language, he came home able to take an upper level college German class (for German majors!) and do very well.

 

My take home from this is that immersion, when it is possible, is the most effective way to become bilingual, if parents are not bilingual.

[Nan in Mass]

Yes, the definitions of "bilingual" and "fluent" are very variable. I know my definition has changed significantly from when I first began trying to give my children a foreign language. My basic goal hasn't really changed but its label has GRIN.

 

Nan

[mom2scouts]

I know that it is possible for students to become fluent without immersion, but I'm sure it's harder. My oldest son was public schooled and started German in 8th grade. His teacher was not a native speaker. By his senior year he was fluent and comfortable speaking to native speakers. We took in a German exchange student and my son traveled to Germany. He was able to test out of much of college German and get a minor with a few total immersion classes.

[Paul's Gal]

We are a bilingual homeschool family (Spanish/English), following the OPOL (one parent/one language) method. I speak Sp, DH Eng. The children (5 boys, 1 girl - ages 6 to 16) respond to us in our specific language. They also do book work in both in order to be biliterate as well as bilingual. We study Latin and Greek daily with exposure to other languages. It's crazy at our house quite often (and loud, loud, loud!). Although Spanish is not my native language, it is my "first" in that I speak it almost as well as I do Eng. I'm following a form of Dual Ed. that I observed while finishing up my M.Ed. in Bilingual Education.

I'm pleased with how the children have turned out, but it has required consistency on both parts to achieve the level of fluency we now enjoy.

We also live (south Georgia) in an area with thousands of migrants (Hispanic and Haitian), and we're in the camps during the week to interact with the workers and practice. www.meanolmama.blogspot.com