CM-style foreign language if a parent is fluent - help!

[Megicce]

I'm passably fluent in French (could write research papers and read novels/literature in it in college, though a bit rusty at the moment) and would like to begin some Charlotte Mason-style oral teaching with my littles. However, I'm not quite sure what this ought to look like!

 

Unfortunately, all the resources I can find are extremely helpful for parents who want to do CM-style foreign language WITHOUT a fluent speaker - but I'm not finding any particulars on how to do it when you ARE one. :001_smile:

 

Any tips from others who have done this? Do I just need to read Charlotte's own writings on the subject? (I'm working through her books on the AO web site.)

 

Thank you!

[stripe]

I thought in her time, the kids spoke with French ladies? Anyhow What I've seen has been for natural conversations. Which seem curiously absent from many language programs for little kids.

 

I actually dislike her language teaching style because it seems insufficient, timewise, but I think the idea is a good one.

[Megicce]

Essentially what I like about her method, from what I know, is beginning with hearing and speaking the language, then progressing to reading and writing once the oral language is well established.

 

I've seen allusions to her practice of teaching a few new words each day, and keeping them in use as you introduce new ones - but I'm just a smidge confused about where to start. And do I need to make sure I enunciate super clearly? I've got me a bit of slang. LOL - I guess it's really not that different from teaching them English, but it sure feels like it!

[Amy Jo]

I just read a great how-to on the AmbleLore Yahoo group. It wasn't aimed at a fluent parent, but did assume the parent was learning first. Anyway, she has quotes from CM, Goiun, a contrast with the Berlitz method. I forget the folder name but it was in the files section.

 

This is what struck me (the italics section is a direct quote). She gives a list for 5 weeks of idioms, commands, songs, etc. -- She spends time talking about CM's methods, the teacher would read a book / tell a story in the target language, the children narrated in the target language. Being fluent, you could do that. I have a collection of fairy tales in Spanish, a few children's Spanish books, a few easy readers, and such to start with, but I'm going to do her 5 weeks first as soon as life settles down a bit (we have a house guest atm).

 

The teacher should keep a notebook of words and phrases learned (Vol 1, Pg 301);

Goiun emphasized verbs - a good start is commands (Michel Thomas?)

Learn positive/do and negative/don't; also singular and plural

 

One might study 1) one idiom one day, 2) several commands one day, 3) one line of a song one day, poem or Bible verse, 4) learn to count to, say, 10 one week, and the other 4 weeks a few nouns using principles employed by the Berlitz method--nouns which can be incorporated rather soon with the verbs learned via 'the command exercises' using principles employed by the Berlitz method, (in preparation of work with Gouin series) and 5) learn one or two phrases used in basic greetings. In this way, the lessons would be varied (though daily review of other day's new vocabulary would be easily and quickly accomplished), the following week's lesson would bereviewing material learned the first week, and building upon those lessons.

Within five weeks' time, 30 active verbs would have been learned, along with a couple of passive verbs, several phrases used in greetings could be exchanged graciously, one or more songs, poems *or* Bible verses could be well understood, and possibly memorized, several idioms studied, as well as the ability to use 25-30 nouns in active or passive sentence structures. This should have introduced the young student to roughly 150 vocabulary words within five weeks, using a variety of material. The results should be that your student(s) are using sentences which incorporate active verbs.

 

...

 

And as to putting before beginners sentences and extracts in the mother-tongue which are to be translated into the foreign idiom, to my mind that is the best and surest way of making them acquire hopelessly wrong and almost ineradicably bad habits and distorted ways of expressing themselves in the foreign language. Until the scholars have been studying French some three or four years and have attained facility in reading the language and in understanding it when spoken, and until they show a certain capacity for expressing their thoughts in it, no direct translation from the mother-tongue ought to be attempted. The road to translation should be paved by the teaching of free composition in French, and this can be begun at the very earliest stage. Indeed, the building of the little plays is the first attempt at oral free composition. Later, when a certain amount of reading and written work has been done, the children are ready with the stock of words and phrases at their command, to write little connected narratives in French, and as their vocabulary increases this becomes more and more easy for them.