maize Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 I found the Heisig book for simplified Hanzi on Amazon, I'll take a look at it. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slache Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 :laugh: I feel you on the bolded. Since I'm about 90% sure that we're going with Japanese, I have to glean all I can from everyone that I can. The boys've been saying that they want to learn it since they were little, and they have some words/phrases in Japanese, but want to learn the language. They have been in the "light dabbling" phase for a while now and I'll encourage that for the next few months. Maybe we'll start the "beginning to learn" phases this summer or next January. I think that 2-2.5 years is about how long we'll need to get through the "beginning to learn" phase. I don't have a nice table or anything, but here are the Japanese language resources that I am leaning towards using for the early stage: Core - Irasshai (GPB series) textbook, workbook, videos and worksheets Audio Lab - for accent Pimsleur and whatever podcast meets our criteria. Supplements - to build their communication skills Japanese Sentence Patterns for Effective Communication Literacy - Remembering the Kanji (Heisig) to learn Kanji. They've dabbled in/out of Kana, but I'm not planning to tackle Kana head on. I've chosen materials that will allow me to avoid having to really learn any of the scripts since I'll be over seeing their studying, monitoring their progress and kinda-almost coaching them through the lessons, but I won't be teaching Japanese because I don't know Japanese (and honestly, my motivation to learn it is a good bit low. Plus I have no interest in learning to read in Japanese 3x over) I've purposefully selected series that are audio based or that use Romaji all the way through, and by incorporating the Heisig Kanji book, they get to gradually build their Kanji knowledge base independently of oral/aural skills and the supplement is to build their conversational skills as fast as possible. When (if?) they finish the materials (I'm guessing it'll take between 2 and 2.5 years for most of what) I've listed then I'll come back around, but I'm thinking that we'll do about a year of heavy oral/aural work--at this point I may have to bring in an online teacher, then I'd have them switch and jump into the Genki texts? I don't know. "Beginning to learn stage" is about as far as I've gotten here. Is Irasshai like Salsa? We are doing the Kana slowly with mastery and reviewing with ANKI. I want him learning the scripts so he's unlimited in his reading ability. If you can read in your target language you will never lose it. Sounds like a plan Gil! Romaji is fine. The kanas are not hard to learn so a program that teaches those early on and uses them extensively would also work well. Kanji is definitely a long term project. I think I'm permanently stuck at a first grade level. Maybe some day I'll find time to study again. Get a book and an ANKI deck and do one or two a week. Do you HS bilingually? I'm in buying mode and in search of good (used) Spanish language books for content areas so if you want to make a recommendation or two, I'm :bigear:. Yes, but I'm not helpful. I read Ray's but ask the questions in Spanish. I do the same with EM Geography. Read more here, here, and here. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 Is Irasshai like Salsa? I have no experience with Salsa, but I strongly doubt it. Irasshai is not a "fun exposure" type of program. From the episodes that I've seen, it's an (interactive) tele-course, that is meant to feel like a course. Its part direct-instruction, part media immersion and part wacky 90s kids programming. From what I can tell, Irasshai is best suited for ages 12-adult. I think it'll make a good middle school program. It's a video course, where they teach Japanese via grammar/vocab and phrases thematically and systematically. Sort of like a textbook, but video-based instead of print based. But there are (optional?) textbooks and workbooks that were designed to follow the video course that you can use to study more indepthly Because it's meant to be facilitated it's fairly self-contained once you have the books and videos. Are you familiar with Destinos spanish program? It's kinda like that, but less formal, more interactive. The show is shot in 1st person view, the host talks to you, they do skits, video reviews, onscreen text/graphics for certain segments etc. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renai Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 One of the series I was talking about: Japanese the Manga Way https://www.amazon.com/dp/1880656906/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I2754261W2ZFVT&colid=64JBLN7BHWBM&psc=0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 (edited) So, since there are a least a few others who are trying to learn languages as a part of their HS education, I will share a piece of advice that I found really helpful to keep in mind Learning a language is a trek. Not a marathon. Not a sprint. A trek.trek (n) a long, arduous journey, especially one made by foot. When you are learning a language, then the trek is towards "fluency-land". Thinking about it like that, helps us to treat the language(s) that The Boys learn like a beloved pet. These pets have to be fed, groomed, and played with. They need to be nurtured for as long you want it be healthy. If you neglect it, then you know, you wind up killing the pet that was oh so beloved. Our end goal is to be "semi-fluent" in the language that we're studying. I know that "fluent" is a relative term, but we have a clear working-definition of what "semi-fluent" is for our purposes and that's what I, as the parent and teacher am looking for in the end result. Now that The Boys are nearing "semi-fluency" in Spanish, they have a much stronger and more definitive idea of what they want to be able to in any language that they learn. They're super-excited to finally be getting me on-board their "Lets learn Japanese" band-wagon. I still don't really have the logistics of learning and maintaining two second languages fully worked out, but having do-able resources and roughing out ideas of how to juggle them helps. Don't know how successful it'll be, but our basic goal is to spend the rest of 2018, getting them to begin earnestly studying content subjects in Spanish and while getting down the fundamentals of Japanese literacy (Kanji), doing all that work that goes into building up a cache of phrases and vocabulary. We won't be able to start learning Japanese fully until the BM school lets out for the summer. Edited February 19, 2018 by Gil 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted March 19, 2018 Author Share Posted March 19, 2018 After spending way too much money on them, I've decided against Irasshai as a primary resources for beginning Japanese for two main reasons, first: more than anything, they want to understand Japanese speech and be able to speak Japanese. Secondly, the format and page layout of the Irasshai text is just an unbearable eye-sore for us, the pace seemed slow and there was no way we wanted to slog through all of that for 2+ years only to still not be able to really speak. Thankfully, Amazon has an amazing return policy or I'd have been pissed at the situation. I did some reading online, looked around and I've decided that we're going instead with an FSI series called Beginning Japanese which is oral/aurally focused and doesn't teach Japanese scripts at all, but is reported to be very good for the speaking/listening part. We know the FSI course is older and they'll need to modernize their vocabulary, but we all feel 10x better about this approach, even though it has a few pitfalls. They're going to use Beginning Japanese and Pimsleur for their beginning Japanese course and see how that goes. On the Spanish side of things I've been having trouble finding suitable Spanish language materials for Science and History, so I don't know if I'll be able to switch a subject to Spanish, but it looks like I"ll be able to supplement both subjects with as much Spanish language materials as I can. Steck-Vaughn sells a lot of Spanish language GED prep materials, which could probably be used for middle or high school level bilingual enrichment in a home school for science, social studies, language arts and/or math. On Amazon, there are Spanish language and bilingual books to help prepare you for the citizenship exam, which could make an additional social studies resources. The nice thing about test prep books is that they are almost always workbooks so the kids can read and write in the same book. If you know of another publisher that sells affordable Spanish language content materials at a 6th-12th grade level, I'd like to hear from you. I've been giving The Boys grade level materials in science and social studies; I am actually impressed at how well they understand and can explain the material back at me, so this is good. Closer to summer, I'll have to test their reading comprehension more thoroughly to be sure, but I think that their Spanish may be further along than I'd given them credit for. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted December 17, 2018 Author Share Posted December 17, 2018 So nothings gone quite as I'd hoped, but not in a bad way. I've had trouble sourcing enough Spanish language materials to make a full-course in any particular subject, so instead Spanish is used academically in various subjects. In hindsight it's probably better but it's harder to plan for so what we're doing feels willy-nilly-er than I'd like, but its getting done so I won't complain. Geography We do a good mix of content-subjects in Spanish. The Boys were required to learn to draw the world map free hand, by heart, so we've been labeling the maps in Spanish and doing oral and written geography quizzes in Spanish every day. Our library has a book of bilingual lessons about US Geography and History that we borrow quite often and they read the lessons and improve their knowledge of US geography/history/social studies with. Social Studies/General Knowledge El Libro de Conocimientos is just a notebook that we labeled The Book of Knowledge and use to record general world knowledge in. We have a kids encyclopedia in Spanish and we read-one page a week. Reading it orally, copying the main article by hand 1 paragraph a time, looking up unknown vocabulary. Reading the article for oral fluency. Discussing the illustrations, etc. Making sure that they understand all of the keys words meaning in Spanish, and can spell the words properly. Each day we also read 1 or 2 of articles sidebars but don't go as in-depth with them as we do with the main article. Each day they read the main article aloud 2 times, and copy out a part of the passage and annotate it for any vocab or grammar that they don't know already. On the last day, they copy the main passage/article in its entirety and, in theory, understand everything that it says. Lately, they've been annoyed with El Libro de Conocimientos, because 1-it takes a long time to "finish" an article, 2-it's "scattered" because the book goes in ABC order. So I've tasked them each with going through and creating a list of topics by theme and pre-harvesting vocabulary words. IF they do their jobs, then in Janauary we'll begin doing El Libro de Conocimientos by topic/theme which would secretly make me feel better anyway. If they don't, then they get to keep all their complaints about the scattered-ness to themselves. So either way, I win. :D. Science I was able to purchase a 3-volume set of 5th grade science textbooks in Spanish. They're able to read them with fairly good comprehension because all of the words are thematic, plus their English-language knowledge base provides context and their understanding of cognates and the idea of false-cognates lets them read with a fairly good comprehension without doing much extra work. They are allowed/encouraged to use the internet dictionary to look up any words that they don't know, OR use a sticky note in the book its self to write any unfamiliar words (which gives us a list of what words they didn't know/couldn't figure out from context/cognates/etc.). They have to discuss their science reading between them, 2x a week. Other than that, no additional output is required."Language Arts" (Kinda) I categorize this as "Language Arts" (Kinda) because we don't really do Language Arts even in English, but I have to coach/tutor them individually in English writing due to differing abilities, and its the same for this part of their Spanish studies. Also, this is where we focus more on grammar structures, word study, pronunciation, oral reading, fluency, spelling, verb conjugations, etc, so I guess it counts as language arts. We borrow childrens books in Spanish from the library and we own a collection of story anthologies for children that we keep down for reading. They're familiar with these stories in English, so they're able to read these stories with anywhere from 40-90% understanding the first time. (depending the complexity of the grammar/vocabulary chosen, illustrations and familiarity with the story itself). They must pick a paragraph from a story they've read, copy it down skipping double lines and look up the vocabulary they don't know. Then I go over their paragraph with them for unfamiliar grammar constructions, word study, pronunciation, oral reading fluency, spelling, verb conjugations, etc. I do one boy, every other day. So on even-numbered dates I do this with one kid, and on odd-numbered dates I do it with the other. Once or twice a week, they each must write a paragraph that mimics one of the story passages that they studied. Because they choose their free-reading in Spanish, this serves to show me what level of material they feel comfortable picking for independent work and gives me a change to see if there is any grammar structure that they're just constantly stuck on. For example, we don't speak with the vosotros form, but we've had to go ahead and learn it explicitly because some of the books we buy/borrow are from Spain and the vosotros form was confusing us all. Neither boy is reading fully at their-age grade level in Spanish, but the stronger their speaking/hearing/understanding Spanish becomes, the more their reading-comprehension grows, and as their reading-comprehension grows, their reading confidence grows. They're both prolific readers in English, so poor reading comprehension in Spanish has been a struggle emotionally. They hated feeling dumb when reading in Spanish, but this year of slow, steady and constant reading has been good for them. Buddy says that he wants to read 50 chapter books in Spanish next year, but Pal has said he's sticking with picture books and short story collections, so we shall see. Vocabulary So far, across the board we take the short cut with regards to vocabulary because we just write the English equivalent. But some time soon, we're going to switch to studying vocabulary based on Spanish definitions. I'm on the hunt for a native series for kids that focuses on vocabulary and grammar. I would love it if I could find something at a 3rd-6th or 4th-8th grade level. Entertainment -- Video Games/Music/Movies If a video game is available in Spanish, they can't play the English version. I strongly encourage Spanish language music (this is where YouTube is worth it's weight in gold. Lyric Videos are amazingly helpful) and with a few exceptions, they have to watch and discuss all cartoons/movies/videos in Spanish. So far the only exception are videos/TV watched at someone else's house and movies viewed in the theater. But at home, about 90% of their media is in Spanish only. If they want to look something up on YouTube, they have to search in Spanish first and try 3 Spanish videos before they can search in English. Their receptive skills are truly good. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted December 17, 2018 Author Share Posted December 17, 2018 As far as Japanese is concerned: I only facilitate the course, I don't teach anything. I don't speak, understand, read or write any Japanese so I couldn't help them if I wanted to. This is one course that I'm really happier to sit out on anyway. For Japanese my involvement is I make sure that each day they have a slot of time reserved for Japanese study in their schedule and I remind/make them sit down and "Do Japanese". I stay in the general vicinity and ear-shot so that I can redirect them if I notice them slacking off, have occasionally held flashcards and I did help them set up their notebooks but that was for organization purposes, not because I knew what to do and needed to show them. Really the main thing that I do for their Japanese is keep it on their schedule, remind them to do it and keep them on task. They worked through the first 3 levels of Pimsleur Japanese lessons and have been slowly but steadily working through their Beginning Japanese course and have almost finished part one. I don't think they've missed 10 days of Japanese since starting it back in March. They feel that they have a good chunk of the course down, but would like to go back over some of the lessons--it has a lot of drill built in so that's worked well with Pimseur to help them be able to speak, even without knowing the grammatical terms for what they are doing. Honestly, I dislike that they really only speak Japanese to one another, but for lack of any other conversation partner it's the best that we can we do for now. I don't want to get involved to discourage them, but I don't want them reinforcing one anothers mistakes either. So far their greatest accomplishment in Japanese is that they are able to speak and have simple conversations. I have no idea how good they are. They realize and admit that their vocabulary isn't very good, but this week in the grocery store, The Boys met a Japanese woman and her 9 yo daughter in the store. They chatted in Japanese for about 15 minutes. I have no idea what all they talked about but the Japanese mom and her little girl were shocked that they could speak Japanese. She told me that their accent was really good and that their grammar was pretty good, and wanted to know who in their family was Japanese because they don't look Japanese at all. This was the 2nd time that they've spoken Japanese "in the real world" but the first time that they were able to actually converse. If The Boys stick with their program and master part 1 of Beginning Japanese, then I told them that I will find them a language teacher IRL for conversation and find the time/money/energy to get them around real-life language models/conversation partners more regularly while they are working through part 2 of Beginning Japanese. Currently their plan is to spend 1 more year (2019) focusing on their aural/oral Japanese. They'll be completing their Beginning Japanese course since it seems to be working for them, using Japanese Podcasts (not sure which one(s) just yet) and getting fluent at reading/writing things in kana. After they have a sturdy foundation with aural/oral Japanese, and are fluent with Kana then they'll begin learning Kanji in earnest. They say that they know some of the kanji already, but I have encouraged them to focus first on understanding and being understand orally/aurally in the language and to wait for the reading/writing Kanji stuff. I wouldn't dare try and do any academic subjects or recreational activities in Japanese the way that we do with Spanish. But I do allow them to listen to Japanese music and to watch some videos in Japanese. They told me last night that for they're considering watching 1 known movie a week, but in Japanese. Honestly, I don't want them to, since it'll take viewing time from Spanish media, but if that's what they decide, then that's what I'll put up with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted December 24, 2018 Author Share Posted December 24, 2018 So, I've been going through our Spanish book case and I'm realizing that we have several Spanish books that we aren't getting the benefit intended from owning them. Apparently, we have 10 story anthologies. I thought we had like 4 or 5 but I gathered them all up and counted all the way to 10. Yikes! It's definitely time to pause and re-evaluate whats happening here so I'm putting a freeze on borrowing Spanish language books from the library for the entire coming year, with the intention of keeping us focused on getting through the books that we have. At this point in our language journey, I feel that quantity over quality isn't serving us well. This is the 2nd time I've realized that I'm making our learning of Spanish (much) harder by approaching it like English. I'm going to be doing a bit of thought-surfing to try and sort out my mind. I'll have to re-evaluate our approach to books, because its not just about comprehension but with a retention mindset. I caught myself out before, basing our approach to 2nd language on our 1st language abilities. It wasn't the right fit then, and it's not the right fit now either. *sigh* Back to the drawing board. Dang it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted January 6, 2019 Author Share Posted January 6, 2019 There is still a lot of work to do before we reach our ultimate language goal with Spanish, but it's getting difficult for me to support and direct their Spanish language education properly. On the surface, they know a lot, but in truth we have so much farther to go: Their vocabulary, while larger than mine, is both imbalanced and still very small compared to a typical Spanish speaking/educated 6th grader. Even I can tell that their written grammar is only "fair", and their reading comprehension has improved a lot, but still lags behind their age/grade. They still make many common Spanish-language-learner mistakes, they misuse common/similar words, even now when speaking Spanish, they'll Spanglicize an English word because they don't know the correct Spanish word off hand. But at this point, their spoken grammar is more automatic than mine, they understand spoken Spanish conversation way more fluently than me and converse in Spanish with native speakers much more readily and more fluently than I can, and their real Spanish vocabulary is still larger than mine. Primary objectives for Spanish this year are: bring their vocabulary more into balance help them master several of those SLL mistakes regularly take time to work on retention get their reading comprehension closer to their age/grade level help them to learn, use and internalize more Spanish idioms improve their conversation skills by having them spend time regularly conversing with fluent language models. get to the point that they can internalize and use definitions of new words given in Spanish. I'm a little worried that Japanese is going to get in the way of Spanish, but that's probably my paranoia talking. (Hopefully) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted February 21, 2019 Author Share Posted February 21, 2019 Two month update: Refocusing our energy on what we own, and remaining steadily diligent is paying dividends. I'm happy to report that things are going well. (Knock on wood). Vocabulary is still one of our biggest--if not our biggest--hurdle, but it's not stopped their reading from expanding. By quitting the library, we're not using nearly as many books, which means we're focused on and getting a lot more out of each book that we do read. By slowly and deeply reading all the anthologies we own, we're seeing many of the same stories in various levels of complexity/difficulty and each time they're learning more vocabulary and mastering more complex grammar. I went through and ordered the anthologies by approximate difficulty and we're reading them in that order. My hope and my goal is that by the time that we read the last anthology, they'll know OR comprehend the vocabulary and grasp each sentence reflexively. I personally feel and believe that reading comprehension is dependent upon 2 things: The ability to fluenty decode words and the ability to make connections between things you know and weave in the information that you're reading in real-time, as you read. So we're continuing the systematic, heavy duty, group-reading of non fiction as well. Sometimes (most times, I'm not going to lie) it feels like we're moving soooooo slowly, but I noticed that Buddys free reading Spanish materials closer to his English reading level these last few weeks. He's comfortably comprehending texts as he reads and he's no longer well-served by the Student dictionaries we own. Even though Pal has not shown the same drastic leap in ability, his Spanish reading is getting very close to his age-grade level. Pal is picking more kids chapter books and textually dense books for his free reading, which is significant because he lacks his brothers ambition and stays in his comfort zone, which means that his comfort zone has been expanded to include kids chapter books. Pal had the idea to skim the material before reading it and learn any vocabulary that jumps out at us as "words we don't know", which has been helping a lot. By pre-learning a lot of the new words ahead of reading it in the various articles/chapters/passages, they're both able to read with higher levels of comprehension the first time. Slow-reading combined with the copying and writing practice is really beefing up their grammar too. They don't the terminology, but they're adapting their speech and their writing to include broader, more complex patterns too, which is nice. Buddy writes stories in Spanish of his own volition. I had set them up with an online Spanish Typing program, but they've not been diligent with it. Eventually I'll require that they do something for typing in Spanish but for now I'm content to let them slack off. I'm going to keep them focused on and moving through our home library for a few more months, but I have a basic list of topics that I'd like to read over the next few years. I want them to read a comprehensive book (or series) on the history of the Spanish speaking world, so if anyone knows a good Spanish language book on that topic I'm all ears. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JumpyTheFrog Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 Gil, I enjoy reading the detailed descriptions of how language learning has happened at your house. I think many homeschooling families think that one curriculum is enough to make progress. I am inclined to think that several approaches done at the same time will work better. Can you start a separate thread about your Homeschooling Commandments? I'd like to hear what they are. I think having my own list could serve as a useful framework for making planning decisions for next year. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Condessa Posted February 21, 2019 Share Posted February 21, 2019 (edited) On 2/7/2018 at 11:07 AM, nixpix5 said: That makes sense, I knew we were a bunch of weirdos over here I think what makes Japanese challenging is just navigating 3 different alphabets. It probably depends on how well someone can toggle between their phonetic alphabet, their foreign words alphabet and the mother of all beasts...kanji. Although, when we started doing Korean it was waaaayyyyyy easier to learn their alphabet but so much harder to get pronunciation. I struggled in French with all of the silent letters and vowel chunks that felt random to me. For whatever reason it just wouldn't stay in my head. The hardest thing for English learners in Japanese is the timing. Japanese is a mora-timed language. It is not uncommon for expats living in Japan for years to be able to converse and communicate fine, but be unable to achieve fluency because the timing is so different from ours. Edited February 21, 2019 by Michelle Conde Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted February 27, 2019 Author Share Posted February 27, 2019 (edited) On 2/4/2018 at 5:40 PM, SusanC said: Spanish titles - I hope your expectations are not wildly high, and please share any gems you come across as you go. Finding specific titles has been more successful than any general search I have ever tried. @SusanC (and anyone else who may be interested)it's a year+ later, but here are some of the specific Spanish Resources that we enjoyed: Un Cuenta Para Cada Dia an anthology with 366 stories/poems/songs/readings in it. Some of the selections are stories that span a full page, others are simply a few sentences, but there is one for each day. Makes it easy to read every day. Actually, we own a lot of anthologies/story collections in Spanish. Most of them have really generic titles and around 10-20 stories, but this one has an entry for every single day. There is a CD that goes with it, but our book was purchased 2nd hand and we don't have the CD. I think that the CD only had a few tracks for each month on it. Libro De La Gran Idea gr. 5 (Cengage Learning/National Geographic, 3 volumes) Ciencias de la vida (5ch) Ciencias fisicas (6 ch) Ciencias de la tierra (5 ch) I think that each grade has a 3-volume set based on the same themes but leveled for that particular grade. We own and used the 5th grade set and each of the books are 220-250 pages each. Each chapter opens with a question, defining and explaining vocabulary and each 2-page spread is formatted so that it's 40-60% illustrations/pictures and has paragraphs of text arranged in a 4-column format. There are 30-50 pages per chapter and there are comprehension questions written into each lesson as you go. The Boys read and reread these. United States of America Stories, Maps, Activities in Spanish and English ages 10-adult (Fisher Hill, 4 volumes) Volume 1: Alabama - Idaho Volume 2: Illinois - Missouri Volume 3: Montana - Pennsylvania Volume 4: Rhode Island - Wyoming The pages in these books need to be photo copied, but aside from that they're easy to use. They were written to help the readers learn about US History and Geography. Its written on a 4th grade level and contains a multi-page unit on each state. There is nothing childish or immature about the format, though they use a large 16 pt font throughout. (My kids like that it's easy to read) The English and Spanish are not on the same page . You can photocopy only the Spanish or only the English pages. The books are all black and white--no color, cartoons or anything, but each states unit follows the basic pattern of Introductory story, vocab + comprehension page, map work + questions, and some times additional activity with charts/graphs/ etc. There is a time line in the back of the book that you can copy and fill out. The answers are in the back of each volume. Enciclopedia Universal Para Ninos (DK and Readers Digest, 2 volumes) Volume 1 A-H Volume 2 G-Z This is an older kids encyclopedia, its from the 1990s. It was adapted and translated from an English language kids encyclopedia. It's comprehensive enough for our needs and self-indexes and cross-references to an extent but could be better formatted. The print is small, and some times the page layout suffers from having to flip the page to finish the article. If you can find a better Enciclopedia for your family, do, but it's not a bad set to have around. (this is the set that we're studying) ******************* We also (have) use(d) a random assortment of textbooks produced by Santillana (a Spanish publisher that prints school books used all over the Spanish speaking world) whenever we find them locally. Edited February 27, 2019 by Gil Left off the daily stories book 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted March 9, 2019 Author Share Posted March 9, 2019 One of the hardest things logistically, is keeping the resources in each language that it takes to really develop and maintain proficiency. There is always a balance between enabling them, and enabling them. Pal has gotten himself hooked on Busca Fieras a book series that I can not find many of in the states. Its one of those series that has 40 bajillion installments and a spin off series, and only a few of them are in the library. He was trying to convince me to buy them AT RETAIL from Spain and he would pay me back later. "Please Gil! I'll go to school for neuro-surgery and when I get out of school, I'll buy you a mansion with a servant and pay the land taxes on it forever!" I'll admit, it was a tempting offer, but I told him no and that he'll have to rely on the ILL system (and wait) just like every other little boy in the world. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Posted March 9, 2019 Share Posted March 9, 2019 I did not read every post. Sorry. I have been trying to juggle learning both Haitian Creole and Spanish at the same time and it is really hard for me. I get the two languages mixed up, and if I stop studying for even a few days, I totally lose both languages. During finals last semester, other students would start speaking to me in their language and I just froze and could say nothing in either language. I totally cussed out the Haitian that started talking to me in Spanish. All I could do was blink at him and ask, "Did you just speak to me in Spanish?" He started chastising me that my Spanish was rustier than my Creole and that I needed to push harder. There are two things that I learned about language learning this year: The availability of learning materials is NOT reflective of the number of native speakers. Haitian Creole is the third most spoken language in many USA cities, but in those same cities, there are often no colleges that teach the language. For apps and websites, Creole is usually only offered if over 100 languages are offered. Creole seldom makes it into the top 50 languages taught. When choosing a language to learn, a little research might be required, before settling on one of the most commonly TAUGHT languages. Widely spoken languages can be very useful as a go-between language. Sometimes people that want to communicate with a person that speaks a rare language, can find a person that knows the rare language and something like French or Spanish that can act a go-between. I don't know, Gil. I think Pal earned himself at least ONE new book with that creative story. LOL. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted March 10, 2019 Author Share Posted March 10, 2019 (edited) On 3/9/2019 at 5:05 PM, Hunter said: Edited April 13, 2019 by Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hunter Posted March 10, 2019 Share Posted March 10, 2019 The Japanese alphabets were just too much for me. I bought the boys books, but they were on their own for that one. Especially since their reason for wanting Japanese was to play video games. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted April 20, 2019 Author Share Posted April 20, 2019 Update: A few months ago, I listed the "Primary Objectives" for this year, so far so good. A few of these, we're doing really well with. On 1/5/2019 at 7:32 PM, Gil said: bring their vocabulary more into balance help them master several of those SLL mistakes regularly take time to work on retention get their reading comprehension closer to their age/grade level help them to learn, use and internalize more Spanish idioms improve their conversation skills by having them spend time regularly conversing with fluent language models. get to the point that they can internalize and use definitions of new words given in Spanish. 1) Making steady progress with this. I've taken all of the dictionaries and the "____ Words in Spanish" picture books from the shelves. Any bilingual dictionaries that could be split into two, were cut into two parts (The SPN-ENG section and the ENG-SPN section) and we have them all over the house for easier reference, though the long-term durability is not exactly a plus, but a resource worn-out from being fully-used is better than a pristine resource that is under-used and handicaps the development of the skill it's support to teach or develop. I keep a monolingual dictionary in their school table and I gave my eldest a Spanish thesaurus, because he writes a lot lately and I want him having words at his fingertips. 3) By focusing more on a smaller amount of Spanish resources much more intentionally, this is kind of working itself out. A part of their 1-1 studies with me include intentional word work, and while Buddy had an "aha!" moment a few months ago and is really able to make/invent correct Spanish words when he needs them, Pal has been trekking along still but he's getting better at making the connections between words on his own (ie, linking leñador(a) (wood-cutter)--a word he knows from fairy-tales--to leña (wood) or leñoso(woody or woodlike) in other reading to understand instantly these "new" words. Buddy made this connection a while back and used to it write something along the lines of "El hombre sintió algo rigido y leñoso en la oscuridad..." in his stories. (The man felt something stiff and woodlike in the dark) 4) We have a book of idioms and use it to do a "El dicho de la semana". It's fast and easy and we try to use that saying as much as possible throughout the week, whenever it would be appropriate. They get excited when they see/hear the sayings in real-life either through conversation, videos or in their reading because they understand them. 7) With the extra dictionary usage, some of it is inevitable that they still get the english equivalent, instead of the Spanish definition when they look words up, but in I encourage them to use the Spanish definitions as much as possible. As he feel more capable in Spanish, Buddy will try to get the word without English, which is good. When Pal looks up words and gets the answer in English he has began to illustrate the word instead of writing the English equivalent. As for their Japanese taking over Spanish, that has not come to pass and probably wont for a long while if ever. They are still very much in the learning stage for Japanese. They love having little conversations in Japanese, and sometimes when they want to speak "in private" they'll use Japanese so that we don't know what they're saying. I've been told that their accents are really good, but I have no idea how to judge. They're watching favorite anime (that they've seen in Spanish) in Japanese now and its very much a slow-but-steady process. They say that they can hear the Japanese a lot better, after having made it through so much of the Beginning Japanese program. But they still have to finish the program *mwa-ha-ha* and will eventually need a native teacher/language model that doesn't fight dragons or shoot lightining from their hands. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 15, 2019 Author Share Posted May 15, 2019 We're doing The Boys academic portfolios in Spanish this year. It'll be interesting to see how they do. I'm trying hard not to expect anything and just keep an open mind. We found a teacher who taught in Central America for a few years before coming to the states as a teacher and he's going to do their evaluations this year. I'm trying to decide if I should also get an evaluation done by our usual teacher too, "just in case" but I'm leaning towards just doing Spanish language evaluations. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 16, 2019 Author Share Posted May 16, 2019 We did it! Their evaluations actually went better than I (we) had hoped/expected. Very happy and excited with the results. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted May 18, 2019 Share Posted May 18, 2019 Fun thread to read through, glad your evaluations went well! We run four languages in our homeschool, and the time suck is just ENORMOUS. We have two native languages that I expect literary fluency in (i.e., be able to read the classics of these languages in the original)- English and French. The kids have spoken fluency like native speakers (because they are) and learn both languages using resources for native speakers. I teach comparative grammar rather than two separate grammars, I use resources from both languages 50/50 for science, history, literature, geography... I just got done compiling my literature plans for US 7th grade, and we'll be moving back and forth between English and French while staying within a genre, then doing some compare/contrast. For example, we'll do Hound of the Baskervilles, then follow with an Arsene Lupin mystery. Then an essay doing a Holmes vs. Lupin character comparison. The kids then do German and will need high proficiency, but are learning it as a first foreign language. This represents 45-60 minutes a day, and will soon involve some short exchange stays. We are using the local system's physics book this year, and it has about 1 in 10 exercises written in German, in an attempt to integrate the two subjects. I'm also adding in easy readers this year, which are not part of the curriculum. Then we do Latin 30 minutes a day, and I see this as a discipline more than as a language. I have no expectations for progression, we simply all sit down at the table, open our Latin books, study and do exercises, until the timer beeps. I hope you are continuing to enjoy your forays into Japanese! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 19, 2019 Author Share Posted May 19, 2019 Our home school year runs Jan-Dec, so we might do another evaluation in Dec. to check and see how their Spanish progressed between now and Dec. Our schedule is fixed, school has to be able to get done within the alloted hours, so as their Spanish grows, I'm just going to increase the percent of Spanish language course books that they use. Their English isn't going anywhere, they're fluent and it's firmly and permanently on "auto pilot" and will be maintained because living the US, there are always going to be more English language books than Spanish language. My plan is to simply switch their academics into Spanish at the 7th grade (Jan 2020), we are searching out books to use for computer science/technology, social studies and natural science. They'll read, take notes, and present on the subjects in Spanish and school won't take any longer than it already does (hopefully). Of course Japanese is still it's own beast to tame, but I wouldn't mind getting a precalculus and/or a liberal arts math book in Spanish, but there isn't a pressing need. They can do all their core math in Spanish as well as English, but I do I want them to be as comfortable unpacking and solving "wordy" word problems in Spanish as they are with them in English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renai Posted May 19, 2019 Share Posted May 19, 2019 Gil, that's what I did with my oldest. We did subjects in both languages (depending on what we could find) and she studied Japanese. One year in high school, I have a Bilingual Language Arts because she found some literature in Spanish (like Gilgamesh), and read and wrote those in Spanish. I got a biliteracy seal for her diploma. My one still at home is going into 3rd. We focused more on Chinese than Spanish this past year, but she can still read in both English and Spanish. "Read" is a relative term for me since I'm blessed with dyslexic children, lol. Next year she will be in a part-time ps program, so I'm planning how to balance Spanish and Chinese with her in the time I have with her. I may need to do two subjects in Spanish, which is easy at this age. I could use MEP Spanish version, but we love Singapore and at a certain point I'm no longer comfortable translating math to Spanish. (That's what happened with my oldest and I had to switch to English.) Bible, science, and social studies are easy to find in Spanish. I have a bit of SLA here already. We'll keep Mandarin Morning daily, with her weekly live lessons on a day she's not in school. I'm trying to keep at least 10 hours of Chinese exposure a week. I would like to reach fluency with her. I may try the Chinese school on Sundays in the fall. My oldest is jealous because we just didn't have Japanese resources back then, that my youngest has with Chinese now. She says she would have been fluent by now if I pushed Japanese like I do with the youngest, and she's right. I did give her a good foundation though, I think, and she's motivated to do it on her own now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 20, 2019 Author Share Posted May 20, 2019 On 5/19/2019 at 12:31 PM, Renai said: Gil, that's what I did with my oldest. We did subjects in both languages (depending on what we could find) and she studied Japanese. One year in high school, I have a Bilingual Language Arts because she found some literature in Spanish (like Gilgamesh), and read and wrote those in Spanish. I got a biliteracy seal for her diploma. My one still at home is going into 3rd. We focused more on Chinese than Spanish this past year, but she can still read in both English and Spanish. "Read" is a relative term for me since I'm blessed with dyslexic children, lol. Next year she will be in a part-time ps program, so I'm planning how to balance Spanish and Chinese with her in the time I have with her. I may need to do two subjects in Spanish, which is easy at this age. I could use MEP Spanish version, but we love Singapore and at a certain point I'm no longer comfortable translating math to Spanish. (That's what happened with my oldest and I had to switch to English.) Bible, science, and social studies are easy to find in Spanish. I have a bit of SLA here already. We'll keep Mandarin Morning daily, with her weekly live lessons on a day she's not in school. I'm trying to keep at least 10 hours of Chinese exposure a week. I would like to reach fluency with her. I may try the Chinese school on Sundays in the fall. My oldest is jealous because we just didn't have Japanese resources back then, that my youngest has with Chinese now. She says she would have been fluent by now if I pushed Japanese like I do with the youngest, and she's right. I did give her a good foundation though, I think, and she's motivated to do it on her own now. We're trying to take it one semester of one year at a time, but we do have ambitions for earning a multilingual diploma for highschool, though I'm still fuzzy on the "how" of it. Our focus is on 3 languages and Buddy would really like a diploma that acknowledges his fluency and proficiency in all 3 of those languages. According to him we could do a third of the HS credits in each language Or 1/2 in Spanish, 1/4 in Japanese, 1/4 in English. Or 5/12 Spanish, 5/12 Japanese and 2/12 English. Or 1/2 in Japanese and 1/2 in Spanish. Or something else all together. I keep reminding him that it's still a few years off before it matters and the most important thing is for him to be proficient in each language by the time that it does matter. re: Resources, I simply can't imagine doing 1 non-native language well without the support of modern technology and certainly not 2 languages. Trying to make this work without even only the resources available to me locally, without online stores such as eBay and Amazon would just be a beast. re: Math, math in Spanish is useful, but if you have limited time, It's more beneficial to do a wordier subject in Spanish. K-2 math gives you a lot of good vocabulary and exercises ordinals, prepositions, numbers, colors, but by 3rd-5th grade not so much. However, Math Mammoth has a Spanish version (I never used it, because we'd done the series in English already). For 6th grade and beyond, look at Dr. Baldors 3 books. He has one on Arithmetic, Algebra and a combo of Geometry and Trigonometry and they're native Spanish texts, not translations. We do pretty much everything but Math in Spanish, though we did a few units in Math en espanol so that they learned to discuss math correctly in Spanish. We don't like splitting our time between multiple "schools" but when we've had to, we find it easier to get Spanish in, where it fits in. Media. Recreation. Evenings once everyone's winding down and recreational reading. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 22, 2019 Author Share Posted May 22, 2019 Biliteracy is proving a tough nut to crack. I'll be interested to see how this changes over the years. Buddy's ambition was to read 50 chapter books in Spanish this year but he's finding that it takes him about 2-3 weeks to get through a chapter book, so he's likely to only get through 17-25 this year, but I"ve been encouraging him that it's going to pay off huge dividends in the future and not to view needing to work through the vocab (some times explicitly) as a bad thing. I've told him that he should shift his attitude to realize that he needs take advantage of this time to really do his best to absorb vocabulary as he reads this year instead of rushing through stacks of books. I keep trying to focus him on the fact that the more vocabulary he masters now, the easier it'll be to read more books next year and the year after that. He knows it's good for him, to take his time and try and get those words down, but has been consoled by re-reading some of the books he's already worked through and realizing how much easier it is for him to enjoy the books, the second and third time through them. Once you've worked through the book the long way around, going back through it a month or two later is easier and funner so he's been encouraged by going back to re-read books he's "unlocked" already. Pal, otoh, could do with a bit of his brothers ambition. I know that I just finished insisting to one kid that re-reading is good and beneficial, but I'm gritting my teeth to not say anything as Pal is continuously reading the Busca Fieras book! He's reading that same book almost every day as "free reading", and as a rule I try not to care about what they read in their own free time, but...he's going to make me nuts. To his credit, Pal will readily read Spanish nonfiction and picture books but he dabbles in and out of most chapter books. It's not that he can't read them, it's that he doesn't want to.I get that it's harder for a book to "hook" a kid when the reader doesn't understand a decent portion of the vocabulary at first glance. Also, because we've sourced books locally at the 2nd-hand store, I realize that we have a weird mix of chapter books. Pal used to read any and everything, but these days is very into fantasy, action, adventure and exciting books. So I"m on the hunt for more Spanish-language books in those genres, I need to stock the shelves with books that'll tempt him to read something besides Busca Fieras again. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 23, 2019 Author Share Posted May 23, 2019 @SusanC @Renai @Slache can you recommend any childrens elementary chapter books that were originally written in Spanish that are Fantasy, Sci Fi, or Action/Adventure? @SusanC and @Renai I think you both have kids older than/around the same age as mine. Care to share any insight, tips or tricks for encouraging kids to read widely in their weaker language? @Monica_in_Switzerland It sounds like you're achieving biliteracy at an even pace. Any guidance or words of wisdom for me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted May 23, 2019 Share Posted May 23, 2019 9 hours ago, Gil said: @Monica_in_Switzerland It sounds like you're achieving biliteracy at an even pace. Any guidance or words of wisdom for me? Honestly, for us it's just read, read, read, write, write, write. The kids are naturally verbally bilingual, so I just insist on the bilingual reading both for school and pleasure. I have not done any actual vocab work in either native language, they seem to have no issues absorbing from reading. But there are some nice thematic dictionaries out there with words grouped by topic, and we have one of them that we use for specific writing assigments form time to time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted May 23, 2019 Share Posted May 23, 2019 10 hours ago, Gil said: can you recommend any childrens elementary chapter books that were originally written in Spanish that are Fantasy, Sci Fi, or Action/Adventure? I can tell you what we have, but they probably don't meet all your requirements at once - elementary, chapter, originally Spanish, fantasy/sf/action. Take a look at El Nino Volador, by Amy Potter. It is a slim book, lightly illustrated, with multiple sequels that i haven't read. At the higher end (longer, no pictures, magical realism) there is Isabel Allende's Ciudad de las Bestias. I was hoping to make that our summer/fall read along, but it looks like it will be set aside again. We have book 3 from the WITCH graphic novel series, not exactly literature, but for a while it was getting a lot of play along with Astérix y Obelisk and Mortadello y Philemon and a dark, graphic adaptation of Frankenstein. Understand that I am in the heart of the Midwest and get the majority of our Spanish pleasure reading from library book sales. It can be quite a mixed bag! 😁 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 25, 2019 Author Share Posted May 25, 2019 On 5/23/2019 at 7:39 AM, Monica_in_Switzerland said: Honestly, for us it's just read, read, read, write, write, write. The kids are naturally verbally bilingual, so I just insist on the bilingual reading both for school and pleasure. I have not done any actual vocab work in either native language, they seem to have no issues absorbing from reading. But there are some nice thematic dictionaries out there with words grouped by topic, and we have one of them that we use for specific writing assigments form time to time. I guess it makes sense that natively bilingual kids wouldn't struggle with vocabulary. I'm trying to decide the best way to move them (us?) through "Intermediate Hell" before it becomes too big a task that they don't even want to try anymore. They are really quite good, but nowhere near to being native level. On 5/23/2019 at 8:51 AM, SusanC said: I can tell you what we have, but they probably don't meet all your requirements at once - elementary, chapter, originally Spanish, fantasy/sf/action. Take a look at El Nino Volador, by Amy Potter. It is a slim book, lightly illustrated, with multiple sequels that i haven't read. At the higher end (longer, no pictures, magical realism) there is Isabel Allende's Ciudad de las Bestias. I was hoping to make that our summer/fall read along, but it looks like it will be set aside again. We have book 3 from the WITCH graphic novel series, not exactly literature, but for a while it was getting a lot of play along with Astérix y Obelisk and Mortadello y Philemon and a dark, graphic adaptation of Frankenstein. Understand that I am in the heart of the Midwest and get the majority of our Spanish pleasure reading from library book sales. It can be quite a mixed bag! 😁 We're not in the Midwest, but we use the library book sale and the used bookstore to get books in Spanish, so we also have a very mixed bag of books. Next year, I may begin buying books online so that we have more choice/control over what books we acquire. That El Nino Volador series looks like it will be a good fit, length and format wise. He's read El Principito and felt comfortable with the length/format. The problem with novellas/books written for Spanish learners to practice reading is that they artificially restrict the grammar structures used, but many intermediate level materials are written to an adult audience and have microscopic print or story lines that my 11yo doesn't care about...Books written to a Native audience can be all over the place complexity wise. I had wanted to require them to do their writing in Spanish in 7th grade, but I might just delay because I think that they need a good solid year or two of recreational reading in Spanish, before they're ready to produce quality written output in Spanish. We're doing a lot of nonfiction reading and discussion this year. They'll be able to start taking history courses Spanish either in July 2018 or January 2019 and that'll require a good bit of writing anyway so maybe it doesn't matter. What do you think? I guess that so long as they're writing on level in Spanish by highschool graduation it'll be fine... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted May 25, 2019 Share Posted May 25, 2019 3 hours ago, Gil said: I had wanted to require them to do their writing in Spanish in 7th grade, but I might just delay because I think that they need a good solid year or two of recreational reading in Spanish, before they're ready to produce quality written output in Spanish. We're doing a lot of nonfiction reading and discussion this year. They'll be able to start taking history courses Spanish either in July 2018 or January 2019 and that'll require a good bit of writing anyway so maybe it doesn't matter. What about a year of building up to writing in Spanish. I don't know what that would look like exactly. Sentences and then paragraphs? Directed writing this year so they can do their own, written comprehension questions, summaries of their reading. History in Spanish sounds cool! Are you teaching it? Outsourcing locally? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 26, 2019 Author Share Posted May 26, 2019 8 hours ago, SusanC said: What about a year of building up to writing in Spanish.Well, in theory, that's what this year was supposed to be.I don't know what that would look like exactly. Sentences and then paragraphs? Directed writing this year so they can do their own, written comprehension questions, summaries of their reading. They take notes and write answers to questions in Spanish now, always in a complete sentence, sometimes the answer is a short paragraph, but they still aren't quite ready to do heftier assignments in Spanish; they couldn't write a (decent) full-length report in Spanish. History in Spanish sounds cool! Are you teaching it? Outsourcing locally?We're doing it at home. We have a worktext for World History, and when they're done with that, we'll do History of the Aztecs, and after that Puerto Rican history as those are the books/texts that we have. None of these history texts are very long, so I hope to be able to do each one as a 4-6 month course. History is a course that will require a lot of writing anyway because they have to outline, take notes, and write the answers to questions and of course discuss the section or chapter as they go I'm probably over thinking this whole thing, but since I don't really read and write Spanish myself, I have to be attentive to make sure that their Spanish literacy is not stagnating. In the ideal world, I'd like for them to be able to read and write equally well in English and Spanish by the time that they get to highschool, so we still have time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 18 hours ago, Gil said: I guess it makes sense that natively bilingual kids wouldn't struggle with vocabulary. I'm trying to decide the best way to move them (us?) through "Intermediate Hell" before it becomes too big a task that they don't even want to try anymore. They are really quite good, but nowhere near to being native level. Unfortauntely, with a second language, there may be no end to intermediate hell. LOL. I feel like I'm still in it, and I've been fluent in French and living in French speaking Switzerland for... 15 years. I learned this tip from the book Fluent Forever (interesting raed, but I think you're beyond it)- Read books, especially engaging series, as authors tend to have their own limited vocabulary, and by constant exposure, the vocab is acquired easily through context. This has definitely been my case. I love reading in French on my kindle because of the word-touch-dictionary thing. It takes a lot of pain and frustration out of reading in my second language, and so therefore reading volume increases. Can't dig around for a source right now, but bear in mind the following: In your native language, a well-read person will establish a vocabulary of 20-25k words. In a second language, even with LIFELONG study, it is hard to pass 10k words. Luckily, most people only need about 5-8k words for what we call fluency. With good study, you can work your way to technical fluency in about 5 years of study, faster with immersion. But after that, every year of study provides diminishing returns unless you are trying really, really hard. I don't say that to discourage you, but rather to show that getting to that 8-10k words is really great and "enough" in almost all senses of the word. Add in things like kindle dictionary (or a dead tree dictionary) and pretty much all doors are opened to you. A thesaurus in the target language is also a really great tool. Often times we have passive acquisition of many near-synonyms, but struggle to put them into use in our speaking/writing. A thesaurus can help eliminate weak/imprecise language in writing by reminding us of similar words we already know passively. Ex. Moving from choosing "big" to choosing "huge", "gigantic", "enormous", "collosal" is often times not about not knowing those words on sight, but about not having them be the fastest word that pops up in our mental dicitonary. A thesaurus can help build the reflex to keep hunting until we have exactly the right word. I prefer digital thesauruses to eliminate frustration, and we do "paper dicitonary work" as an entirely different skill that they need to have in order to succeed in an artifical testing environment. A fun exercise is "How crazy can you make it?", changing mundane senences into monstrous ones through thesaurus work. i.e. The small rat whispered "Now!" ----> The miniscule rodent breathed, "Forthwith!" It's not about making every single word better- sometimes simpler IS better- but about thinking about nuance in meaning. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted May 26, 2019 Share Posted May 26, 2019 12 hours ago, Gil said: since I don't really read and write Spanish myself, How does this work, then? Do you run their writing past a separate live person to check for correctness and all the subtle details like word choice, idioms, subjunctive? Sorry if you've explained elsewhere. I feel like my dc's language learning trends to stall out when they reach my level, except one who had a better memory than i do, so she stalks it just far enough above me to constantly correct me and fool me with self-doubt. Ha! I agree with @Monica_in_Switzerland that reading, reading, reading seems like the best way to increase vocabulary once you are in the quagmire of intermediacy. If we read a book together i occasionally try to add some of the vocabulary to our anki decks along with a context sentence. I should get more consistent about this. I have seen for myself with early chapter books that if I make up a gloss for us, the word count for each chapter is shorter by the end of the book. Small, anecdotal confirmation that authors also use limited vocabularies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted May 28, 2019 Author Share Posted May 28, 2019 (edited) On 5/26/2019 at 10:34 AM, SusanC said: How does this work, then? Do you run their writing past a separate live person to check for correctness and all the subtle details like word choice, idioms, subjunctive? Sorry if you've explained elsewhere. I feel like my dc's language learning trends to stall out when they reach my level, except one who had a better memory than i do, so she stalks it just far enough above me to constantly correct me and fool me with self-doubt. Ha! No, we don't have an outside person, though we had one for a few months one year. Reading: I taught them "Spanish phonics" (way to early) and from that they were able to decode, and we practiced reading off and on for years but it wasn't until their oral/aural language took off, that their reading has blossomed behind it. As for writing: I have them do copy work and write short passages that mimic native--or professionally translated--materials as much as possible. We have dictionaries and a couple of thesaurus to help with word choice, we have books that teach idioms and we note any that we find "in the wild". We don't learn languages primarily by grammar rules, as I don't think it's very useful to speaking organically and fluently. Edited May 28, 2019 by Gil 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
8filltheheart Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 I know you asked for books that were originally written in Spanish, but I wanted to share an opposite POV. My Dd increased her vocabulary by reading books that she was already familiar with in English. (Same for watching movies. She watched started off watching children's movies that she was familiar with in English.) This approach led to less frustration bc she could figure out new vocabulary in context of what she already knew. For example, she read the complete Chronicles of Narnia in French. She read The Hobbit (and I think Mockingjay) in Russian. She gradually increased in works of difficulty, including older works and therefore older foreign language words as well. Eventually she moved to completely original works, but by then her vocabulary was quite broad. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 (edited) I agree with the advice to read in Spanish books that they are already familiar with in English. This was one of the most effective approaches my family used, I'm pretty sure my parents still own the Harry Potter books in multiple languages (those came out after I left home but I have much younger siblings). My dad believed that reading aloud in the target language was particularly helpful as it activates the speaking parts of the brain as well. He attained working fluency in half a dozen languages over the years (he needed them for his career). Edited May 29, 2019 by maize 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 Audio books are also helpful. Audible has a good selection in Spanish; there are also youtube videos of people reading books aloud (free!). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 Example: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maize Posted May 29, 2019 Share Posted May 29, 2019 For whatever reason, there is a richer and more prolific tradition of children's and young adult literature in English than in any other language; native speakers of Spanish, French, Japanese and Russian are all growing up reading lots of translations from English. Translations are typically done by native speakers of the target language and are very good overall. I wouldn't worry about the language use not being authentic. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted July 18, 2019 Author Share Posted July 18, 2019 Japanese update: The Boys have almost completed the Beginning Japanese program and I'm very proud of them for sticking with it. It's highly effective, but it's a lot of work, and not particularly exciting, but they've persevered and have learned a ton, though they've still got a ways to go. They're watching and beginning to enjoy Anime that they've never seen before in Japanese and keeping phrase logs in their personal study books. We've found a Japanese conversation group that meets and The Boys hope to join and attend regularly in the Fall the group reconvenes after the summer. They have a couple of kana picture books that they're able to read pretty well now and we hope to acquire a few more. They're looking into a few podcasts to keep up/improve their aural comprehension for when they've completed the BJ program and we're going to move them into online lessons with a native teacher to help them continue progressing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted July 21, 2019 Author Share Posted July 21, 2019 (edited) Spanish update: The Boys academics are mostly in Spanish now and they seem to be handling it really well. We just made the switch with our materials. All input for Reading, History, Social Science, their daily General Review/recitation and their Presentations is 100% in Spanish now and 90+% of their output for those subjects is in Spanish. Science and Tech Ed. are bilingual due to lack of sufficient Spanish language resources and the fact that I teach those subjects directly. Buddy has had another Spanish growth-spurt. He's reading childrens novels much more easily now and thinks that he might be able to make his goal of reading 50 chapter books this year after all, but we shall see. When he's finished the chapter books/childrens novels that we own, then we'll have to resume using the public library for him. For Pal, I decided to put out more money and invest in some Spanish language novels that Pal wants to read and it's a complete 180* difference. It turns out he doesn't have nearly as much trouble with reading in Spanish as I thought. He is reading quite readily now and has said that he was just so bored by the other books that it was really hard to read them. I'm not about to spend hundreds building him his own private Spanish language library, and so I'll have to figure out what do with about this. Hoping that this absurd pickiness about books is a phase because I've never had to struggle with getting either of The Boys to read anything and really don't want to have to deal with this going forward. I'll probably release Buddy from "Spanish Language Arts" sometime in 7th grade. He's got a really good "feel" for the rhythm of Spanish already and usually catches his own mistakes if he leaves his writing for a bit before he proofreads/revises it. Otoh, Pal and I are going to continue to work on language arts type skills in Spanish probably until he starts 9th grade. Or graduates from 12th. I can never tell with this one... 🤔 Aside from school stuff, they play in Spanish fluently for their ages because their recreational activities (video games, media, card games, etc) have been in Spanish for years. One Spanish speaking boy that they've played with for months now was surprised when they spoke to their grandma in English. The Spanish boy asked them when they'd learned English, and the boys were so happy that he had taken them for native speakers all this time. It really put a pep in their step and made them feel that they are winning at Spanish. Edited July 21, 2019 by Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted November 16, 2019 Author Share Posted November 16, 2019 Japanese Update: Biggest news is that The Boys completed Beginning Japanese. It wasn't fun or edutaining, but boy does it seem to work. They can hear Japanese and they can speak Japanese. They can put sentences together and understand enough Japanese to get the "gist" of it. Lots and lots of work still needs to be done, but it seems like a truly fantastic start. They are easily some of the more able speakers at the Japanese Conversation group we've been attending this semester and so we likely won't be going back after this semester. Many of the people who attend this group are Japanese majors in their 2nd and 3rd year of Japanese at the university and the boys are able to speak as well as or better than most of them, but the big caveat is that they do speak in an "old fashioned" way so they've got some clean up to do but we're not worried. I keep explaining to them that the ability to hear a sentence in a secondary language can not be understated. When they listen to Japanese dialogue, they can hear it and they can take it and break it down and build it back up how they need, which is key for us in second language. Being able to "capture" a sentence or phrase easily and manipulate it is one of the markers that I look for in speaking a language. They have mastered Kana and own some native Japanese childrens books (written in kana) that they can read. They've read and re-read these books, and have used them for copywork and played with the sentences and were able to take a couple of the books and read/discuss them with one of the native Japanese speakers at the conversation group to get better understanding of some of the words/sentences. We are working from some of the audio-based courses that we can get through the Library and it's not a perfect fit, but it's not a waste of time either. Their next step is undecided, but they're looking at Living Language Japanese, Complete Edition The Ultimate Japanese Phrase Book Use Japanese at Home as a source of dialogue and sentences to work through as they continue to learn their Kanji. They have also been doing some lite media immersion for the last few months but they're back to the careful, slow watching of familiar movies and taking their time. They may watch the same movie 4 or 5 times before they watch the next one, but they are memorizing huge chunks of dialogue as they're going. They are excited to feel like they're closing up "step 1" in learning Japanese. They will need to step up their media immersion by a lot though. They probably have 2 more years of Intensive Japanese learning and practice ahead of them before they can really claim to "speak Japanese". I'm going to continue to encourage them to be diligent and work hard on this endeavor. If they keep it up, I'm going to let them take a proficiency exam in Japanese to try and rate their language abilities holistically so that they'll know where they need to improve more and if they have any strengths in the language. I want to be supportive and helpful but I really can't help them with Japanese as a language aside from serving as grantor of screen time, purchaser of resources and of course, task master holding them to their daily commitments. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monica_in_Switzerland Posted November 18, 2019 Share Posted November 18, 2019 @Gil Is this (as per your comment in the 7th or 8th grade thread), is this your boys' autodidact class that they chose for themselves? Just curious. Congrats on the great Japanese progress! If you enjoy fiction, you might like the book The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt. It has nothing to do with samurai (except tangentially), but it reminds me a bit of your learning journey with your boys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted November 19, 2019 Author Share Posted November 19, 2019 16 hours ago, Monica_in_Switzerland said: @Gil Is this (as per your comment in the 7th or 8th grade thread), is this your boys' autodidact class that they chose for themselves? Just curious. Congrats on the great Japanese progress! No. They're 2 distinct courses. Intensive Japanese is one course, Autodidactic Studies another. They've worked very diligently for Japanese, so it's just so gratifying for us to see that it's paying off. I'm not familiar with the book The Last Samurai. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted December 13, 2019 Author Share Posted December 13, 2019 (edited) Spanish Update: On 5/15/2019 at 8:46 PM, Gil said: We did it! Their evaluations actually went better than I (we) had hoped/expected. Very happy and excited with the results. On 5/19/2019 at 11:48 AM, Gil said: Our home school year runs Jan-Dec, so we might do another evaluation in Dec. to check and see how their Spanish progressed between now and Dec. We have completed our end of year evaluations and both of The Boys did really great! Pal was especially pleased with his "measured growth" in reading comprehension and writing so I couldn't be happier for the little guy. He's over the moon, he's been walking around all evening with his chest puffed out. Of course Buddy is pleased as as well, but based on his track record, that Buddy would show marked growth was just kind of expected. He's quite the Word-Nerd these days. On 5/21/2019 at 8:35 PM, Gil said: Biliteracy is proving a tough nut to crack. I'll be interested to see how this changes over the years. Buddy's ambition was to read 50 chapter books in Spanish this year... Buddy has read 37 books so far and has 2 more in progress. He's bummed that he won't hit his goal, but I'm so proud of his endeavor and encouraging him to take it as a win. But he's still a little bummed because he's worked so hard this year on his reading, but I still think he's done fantastic work. He has his eye on another book, so he might get in 40 books this year. Additionally, our encyclopedia-reading project is coming along nicely. We started out doing 1 article a week, but these days we easily get through 2-3 articles a week. If the articles are short, we might get through 4 or 5 of them in a week. Of course we still have a long ways to go before HS Graduation, and so much work if we want to keep our skills strong and flexible but we're in a good place heading into the new year. :D. Edited December 13, 2019 by Gil 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homebody2 Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 I've been so inspired by this thread! We've decided to drop Latin and grammar for the next 6 months at least and set some goals for learning our preferred languages. 11yr old is learning French and 13yr old is learning German. I'm refreshing my Spanish. Both boys are excited to read in their languages, so I've started looking for resources to support this. It's harder than you think! Any suggestions for places to find easy articles about basic science concepts in French or German? I'd love to find a simple encyclopedia written in each language. I've found many free older German and French children's books online. We love history, so it might be fun to read one and discuss it within the context of the time periods. I've found some kid's websites in both languages, each about specific topics my boys are interested in. Also, both boys really enjoyed the layout of Getting Started With Latin. Any suggestions for a similar intro program for French or German? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Tick Posted December 17, 2019 Share Posted December 17, 2019 Well, there's Getting Started with French by the same author. 😊 I don't know of anything comparable for German, sadly. We had some fun early on watching YouTube videos of people reading books from the Lesemaus series. YouTube is so weird. Anyway, perhaps your ds could read along? I'm assuming he is starting from scratch and that you don't know German either? German, like Latin, relies much more heavily on grammatical cases than Spanish (or French?) does. So I would highly recommend some focused discussion in English if that hasn't been talked about in depth already in your Latin studies. GSWL only really scratches the surface. @Gil, I'm really impressed with the progress your boys have made in their language studies. I know you've said Japanese isn't a language you possess, but do you speak Spanish? Being able to catch your own mistakes is such a powerful thing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted December 17, 2019 Author Share Posted December 17, 2019 8 hours ago, SusanC said: @Gil, I'm really impressed with the progress your boys have made in their language studies. I know you've said Japanese isn't a language you possess, but do you speak Spanish? Being able to catch your own mistakes is such a powerful thing. Yes, I speak Spanish. I was willing and able to learn and improve in Spanish with them, but I'm just not doing it again for Japanese. I don't have the mental energy or the time to get into Japanese with them. We are just really excited to see it all coming together slowly, slowly, slowly but very, very surely. People sometimes talk like The Boys are super-human kids, or machines but I can't convey how much work this takes. How much concentration, how much day-in-day-out grinding or how dedicated we have to be to realizing the vision. Acquiring these languages to this extent, under these conditions has taken discipline, dedication, and sometimes it has taken the will to endure head-banging, hair-tearing frustration. It's not always been fun or easy, but it's always been worth it. I can only hope that it always will be. 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gil Posted December 19, 2019 Author Share Posted December 19, 2019 On 12/17/2019 at 9:41 AM, Homebody2 said: 1-I've been so inspired by this thread! We've decided to drop Latin and grammar for the next 6 months at least and set some goals for learning our preferred languages. 11yr old is learning French and 13yr old is learning German. I'm refreshing my Spanish. 2-Both boys are excited to read in their languages, so I've started looking for resources to support this. It's harder than you think! 3-Any suggestions for places to find easy articles about basic science concepts in French or German? I'd love to find a simple encyclopedia written in each language. 4-I've found many free older German and French children's books online. We love history, so it might be fun to read one and discuss it within the context of the time periods. I've found some kid's websites in both languages, each about specific topics my boys are interested in. 5-Also, both boys really enjoyed the layout of Getting Started With Latin. Any suggestions for a similar intro program for French or German? re: 1- Welcome and enjoy the journey. re: 2- Huh, and after 6+ years of this, I thought that I'd at least be a little familiar with the struggle. 😉. re: 3- We found it helpful to copy+paste to Word, format and print the online articles for a long while. It helps to be able to mark on, write in the margins, draw illustrations, note vocabulary etc. For high-interest reading on things that they already enjoy, the Fandom Wikia has a healthy German and French version. We also used normal old Wikipedia for high interest topics, For kid-friendly articles on non fiction topics, Vikidia has a French version, but their German site is really lacking so I'd recommend Klexikon instead. You can find something in hard copy on eBay or Amazon.com with a few carefully selected phrases. You can also use the French and German versions of Amazon, but I've never ordered internationally before so I can't attest to how easy/hard it is. On the US Amazon.com site, you can filter for books by language, or you can simply search in the target language. re: 4- Good luck! It helps to learn a few key phrases in the target language so that you can find more of what you want. I guess you'll need to teach your boys the phrases for their respective languages. re: 5- Sorry, I'm not able to help with anything like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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