Daily foreign language practice?

[anabelneri]

Does anyone have good suggestions for easy-to-maintain daily foreign language practice if you don't speak the language?  

 

My eldest needs extra French practice, but her tutor doesn't assign enough work to last the week (and besides we're on break from the tutor until after the holidays).  It's easy in Japanese, because she can practice her kana every day (and kanji eventually), and for English she is doing MCT's Practice Voyage work.  She's intermediate-ish in French (Alex et Zoe 3).  Any ideas?  

 

Even if it's not specifically applicable to my child, if you can share what you've found helpful (& easy) for language daily practice, that might spark some ideas for me.

 

Thank you!

[LLMom]

We use Quia for Latin practice. (see the link for French) They have games, flash cards, and quizzes.

[umsami]

She can listen to French radio or watch French TV online.  So much is out there for free.  Even if it's just 15 minutes, it will help with comprehension.  She can also find TV shows that she likes that are dubbed, which might make it easier for her to understand.  Can also watch movies she likes with the French language option turned on.

 

Another option would be to see if she can get a language pal to Skype with…somebody her own age who is perhaps learning English.  

[Ripley]

I had the same teacher for French II-V in my (brick and mortar) high school.  Every year, every morning, we'd recite the morning greeting: hello, and the day and date (to review numbers, days, months, greetings).  By the second year it was usually in an exaggerated sing-songy "are we still really doing this?" way.

 

In French II, she'd have a prompt on the board - something like, "What do you like to eat?" or whatever was relevant to our current studies. We had to know vocabulary and tenses and gender.  In French III-IV, she'd have an excerpt of something - a newspaper clip, song, Francophone poem.  Some days we had to do straight translation, sometimes we had to look up or know synonyms for {a word group; nouns, adjectives, etc.), sometimes we had to use it as inspiration to write our own {news clip, song, poem}, and sometimes we had to research the artist/writer - she exposed us to a lot of Francophone culture this way, particularly Caribbean artists and 17th-18th century writers.  For French V, she'd have a topic on the board - usually a current news event or topic like "Which of these two movies will win the Oscar?" or "Is the president's personal life relevant to his leadership?" There were only 12 in the class, and we'd spend the first 10-15 minutes of class debating the topic. She assigned us a side and a group.  It helped us with fluency, getting past that internal translation process to where we were actually *thinking* in French.

 

I don't remember having daily review for French I.

 

My French student is only 8. For review I make her watch her favorite movies and tv shows on mute w/the French subtitles turned on. When we lived overseas I also picked up a collection of French kids' movies and shows. We read (together) Francophone poems, sing (together) French songs - Christmas is great time for that, and I make her say the greeting, day, and date every morning. LOL If she were older I'd have her read a newspaper or follow a daily blog/Youtube or something.

[madteaparty]

Well, my kid is a beginner, and so Duolingo works well for us. Even if he does 5-10 minutes, he does this every single day, including weekends. I agree that for an intermediate level student, I would put a movie in. It worked well for me when I was learning English; it connects the concepts learned in books in a different way that is hard to explain (plus it helped with the idioms).

[Twigs]

I have a friend who is self-teaching Spanish. She would pick up Spanish workbooks at Walmart, dollar stores, etc and work through those. She also used Rosetta Stone and other audio/visual resources.

 

Maybe something like this would help you.

 

Best wishes.

[alef]

Get the Asterix books in French and have her read every day. Worked for me!

[Muttichen]

This is my absolute favorite: http://www.amazon.com/Phrase-day-French-Children-Edition/dp/1579701868.

 

It's organized by seasons and there are sentences you can easily use in day-to-day conversation -- "Where are my gloves?" and so on.