Foreign language - what are you using?

[SereneHome]

Didn't want to sidetrack another thread, but I would like to incorporate foreign language.  I haven't done much research on what's out there, hoping for some feedback.

thank you!

[SoCal_Bear]

This is a bit broad of a question. Do you have a specific foreign language in mind? For one kid? All kids? All together or separately? Teach it yourself or outsource? Are you fluent (or at some other level) in the language you have in mind?

Edited December 18, 2018 by calbear

[SereneHome]

Ummm, good questions!!  I am fluent in a foreign language, but I am not sure if that's the one I would be teaching the kids.... I don't know.  I was thinking of doing something common, like Spanish?  And I don't speak it at all, so I was thinking of something either on-line or with some kind of DVDs or something.  I would love for the kids to do it all together, but not sure if my 7yr old would have the same attention span as my 10 yr old....

[freesia]

I think the one you are fluent in would be the easiest.  I have found it tough to keep regular foreign language study happening before 7th or 8th grade. If I were really fluent, it would be easier to weave it in.

[SereneHome]

1 hour ago, freesia said:

I think the one you are fluent in would be the easiest.  I have found it tough to keep regular foreign language study happening before 7th or 8th grade. If I were really fluent, it would be easier to weave it in.

I have such mixed feelings about it!  First, I am beating myself up for not simply speaking it to them since birth.  Then I am thinking  -I don't want to get any "study" materials bc I speak it, read it, write it with 100% fluency.  Then I am thinking  - well....my language (Russian) probably not as useful as let's say Spanish or Chinese...  so I should do  those instead.  Arghhhh

[RootAnn]

Russian may not be "useful" in daily life, but it is useful in some circles (along with Arabic). While you might not want to teach it systematically at these ages (7 & 10), you can still start using it daily, lightly, now.

We've liked Getting Started With . . . for an introduction to different languages. From there, your level of comfort with the language and your  $$ ability help decide where you go.

For Spanish, dd#1 did GSWS, then CAP's Spanish for Children A (went too fast for us, not enough practice or review) and Duolingo. Then into Sr Gamache's La Clase Divertida high school Spanish 1-3.

For Latin, we did Memoria Press materials (Prima Latina, Latina Christiana, First Form), then either switch languages, go to 2nd/3rd Form/Henle, or switch to Wheelock.

For French, which I can teach, we started with GSWF, then went to C'est À Toi (or is it Moi?) which someone gave to us for free.

Dd#1 also studies German & Russian but picked those up late in high school and went straight into an online class. Once you have one foreign language, it is easier to pick up another. However, formal study of them takes time.

I don't encourage formal study of multiple languages at a young age unless you are running a multilingual house. But you can help them pick up casual Russian and they can pick up formal study later.

[freesia]

I think the main benefit to foreign language in elementary school is training the brain to learn the language.  That's why I would go with a language that's easy for you to do.  You also have the benefit of teaching them with the proper accent (and windows for accent can close at some point)  Learning Russian now would help them learn other languages later.  The third language is always easier.

[Miss Tick]

We started Spanish organically, reading stories, watching videos, and adding vocabulary. I'm not fluent but functional. Spanish introduced the basics of learning another language, gender of nouns and conjugation verbs. 

In 3rd we added GSWLatin. And in 4th and 5th we did the Big Book of Latin 1 and 2. Latin added cases/declensions to their list of language tools, along with a formalized study of verb tenses.

In 6th Latin study ended and German began. They already had Anki (flashcard app) study down from Latin, along with vocabulary and grammar concepts.

In your position I would start with a regular, informal study of Russian. Talk about the alphabet, read books, adding songs, etc. All the things kids do that are learning the language as their first language. If you eventually decide to continue with Russian our any other language you could look for curriculum.

[sweet2ndchance]

I also vote for teaching them Russian. You never know what language will be relevant for them when they are grown. But Russian is in some way a part of their family history. Either it was your mother tongue or you had enough interest in it to study it to fluency. Either way, it has meaning to you and to your children if you choose to include them in it. Plus, almost every kid who is college bound now studies Spanish at least once. It is much more difficult to find someone in the US (sorry I'm assuming you are in the US) who is even conversational much less fluent in Russian. Any language can open doors, just not always the same doors as another language.

You can research Charlotte Mason foreign language study methods for gentle introduction ideas. She believed in teaching young children to speak in the target language before reading and writing in the target language, the same way an infant learns their mother tongue. You practice small conversational phases everyday until you can speak the language and then learn to read and write in the language. I find it a very fascinating way of teaching foreign languages. Her students usually learned 3 or more foreign languages by the end of 8th grade. I don't know of any Russian Charlotte Mason books but you could look here and see if you could adapt the exercises to Russian. We have taught our youngest ASL since he was a toddler. He was non-verbal until just past 3 years old. He has taken an interest in French recently so we plan to use the French book from the link above and also teach the phrases in ASL to keep up with the ASL we have already learned and hopefully expand it as well.

[Trilliumlady]

17 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

I also vote for teaching them Russian. You never know what language will be relevant for them when they are grown. But Russian is in some way a part of their family history. Either it was your mother tongue or you had enough interest in it to study it to fluency. Either way, it has meaning to you and to your children if you choose to include them in it. Plus, almost every kid who is college bound now studies Spanish at least once. It is much more difficult to find someone in the US (sorry I'm assuming you are in the US) who is even conversational much less fluent in Russian. Any language can open doors, just not always the same doors as another language.

You can research Charlotte Mason foreign language study methods for gentle introduction ideas. She believed in teaching young children to speak in the target language before reading and writing in the target language, the same way an infant learns their mother tongue. You practice small conversational phases everyday until you can speak the language and then learn to read and write in the language. I find it a very fascinating way of teaching foreign languages. Her students usually learned 3 or more foreign languages by the end of 8th grade. I don't know of any Russian Charlotte Mason books but you could look here and see if you could adapt the exercises to Russian. We have taught our youngest ASL since he was a toddler. He was non-verbal until just past 3 years old. He has taken an interest in French recently so we plan to use the French book from the link above and also teach the phrases in ASL to keep up with the ASL we have already learned and hopefully expand it as well.

 

Have you actually used anything from the Charlotte Mason links above yet?  I’m curious about them for German.  I speak no German but am fluent in Spanish and shaky in French.  My son wants to learn German but I’m planning on him getting a head start in Latin next year with GSWL in 4th and then continuing with Latin and adding a second language more on the side.  Would this method still work for that age?  Does the teacher need to have any knowledge of the language?  Sorry if this is hijacking a bit, but maybe the answers could help the OP some way.  

[8filltheheart]

Another vote for Russian. My Dd loves foreign languages and is currently majoring in Russian and French. She definitely never studied Spanish (though she did Latin for 5 yrs.) Your teaching resources should be different as a Heritage speaker vs. a non-native teacher. I would suggest approaching it more immersive--picture books, children's songs and movies, and primers.

If you want an online native speaker who teaches both heritage and non-heritage students, I highly recommend Mrs. Denne.  https://bytheonionsea.com/ She is wonderful. My Dd absolutely loved her.

[HomeAgain]

22 hours ago, SereneHome said:

I have such mixed feelings about it!  First, I am beating myself up for not simply speaking it to them since birth.  Then I am thinking  -I don't want to get any "study" materials bc I speak it, read it, write it with 100% fluency.  Then I am thinking  - well....my language (Russian) probably not as useful as let's say Spanish or Chinese...  so I should do  those instead.  Arghhhh

I'd disagree.  A background in Russian helped me travel.  Greek was much easier to read and dh and I were able to go a bit off the tourist path, I could pick out words in Croatian, German cognates were made clear.  The structure of the language actually even helped with Latin, which I learned later.
I have materials for my kids for Russian and neither are interested in the least, beyond learning the alphabet.  If they were interested I'd be looking to find them a good teacher like I had.

[SereneHome]

52 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

I'd disagree.  A background in Russian helped me travel.  Greek was much easier to read and dh and I were able to go a bit off the tourist path, I could pick out words in Croatian, German cognates were made clear.  The structure of the language actually even helped with Latin, which I learned later.
I have materials for my kids for Russian and neither are interested in the least, beyond learning the alphabet.  If they were interested I'd be looking to find them a good teacher like I had.

What materials do you have?  See, Russian is my native language, so I can't evaluate materials bc I have no idea if they are actually good for learning or not.  Does it make sense?

[sweet2ndchance]

1 hour ago, Trilliumlady said:

 

Have you actually used anything from the Charlotte Mason links above yet?  I’m curious about them for German.  I speak no German but am fluent in Spanish and shaky in French.  My son wants to learn German but I’m planning on him getting a head start in Latin next year with GSWL in 4th and then continuing with Latin and adding a second language more on the side.  Would this method still work for that age?  Does the teacher need to have any knowledge of the language?  Sorry if this is hijacking a bit, but maybe the answers could help the OP some way.  

Unfortunately no, not yet. My son just graduated from 4 years of speech therapy last week, I was thinking about starting it after the new year. It came highly recommended from some Charlotte Mason homeschoolers I know IRL. They are using it to learn Spanish and doing quite well from what I can tell. I'm not a full on CM homeschooler but I like a lot of her ideas.

I was conversational, but not fluent, in French at one time, so it has been pretty easy for me to help him. I taught him "Qu'est -ce que c'est?" (What is this?) and we point things out around the room or where ever we are to build vocabulary. If he points to something I don't know offhand or don't remember, we look it up. He watches French cartoons on Youtube and language learning videos like Muzzy and Dino Lingo from the library. I hope to start reading him some stories in French soon too now that he having an easier time speaking English lol. The videos from the library are actually what got him started with French. He saw the Muzzy characters on the cover and thought they looked interesting and wanted to try it. I explained to him that it was a video for learning French and he said he still wanted to try it and ended up liking it. This was when he was still in speech so it colored me surprised when he actually enjoyed a second language when his mother tongue was so difficult for him but he actually has fantastic pronunciation in French, go figure. My guess is that he has been trained to listen and precisely execute sounds in speech for so long, longer than most kids stay in speech therapy due to his dx, that it just carries over.

Back to your question though, I think the method could work perfectly for the situation with your son, Trilliumlady.  It is based on the method described by Francois Gouin and he actually developed it learning to speak German himself. The story goes that he tried and tried to learn German the traditional way but never gained conversational skills from it, much less fluency. Then he noticed some German preschoolers playing with words and sounds and it was like a light bulb moment for him. Children don't learn their mother tongue by conjugating verbs and memorizing lists of vocabulary, they listen to phrases and sentences and play with inserting new vocabulary into known sentences, sometimes awkwardly but they eventually learn by practice how to say it correctly. So he asked the children to tell him how to say a simple series of phrases in German while doing the motions, such as "I open the door. I walk through the door. I close the door." He then learned other series of phrases the same way and learned more conversational German in a few months than he had in years of study by learning to insert different vocabulary into the known phrases. If you are interested in learning more about Gouin's method, which Charlotte Mason's method is based on, you can read his book, "The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages", on the Internet Archive.

I learned to speak Japanese when we lived in Japan in a similar manner. I wasn't looking to be able to read full texts in Japanese, I needed to be able to speak it with locals so I learned how to ask "What is this?" and other phrases and from there, along with the immersion experience, I was able to become quite conversational in a very short time. I had not heard of Gouin back then, but I can see I was using his method without even realizing it. So I can attest that it is a very useful way of learning to speak a language quickly. We only lived there for 4 years sadly so while I could speak enough to get around and do things and even hold a job teaching English (which the school I taught at coincidentally used a similar method to teach English) I could only read enough Kanji to reading environmental print, I couldn't read a book in Kanji. If I had lived there longer, I might have pursued learning to read more, but for the short amount of time we were there, conversational Japanese was enough.

Here are some more links for anyone who is interested in finding out more:

http://www.masonslivinglanguages.com/

http://charlottemasonsoiree.com/2017/05/18/foreign-language-1/

http://languagenest.blogspot.com/2009/02/designing-gouin-series.html

Edited December 19, 2018 by sweet2ndchance

[Matryoshka]

I would definitely, absolutely, do Russian now.  As someone else said upthread, the most important thing with younger kids is consistent exposure.  Their minds are still flexible enough to learn a lot from consistent exposure and immersion, the same way they have done with their first language, and you can offer that to them with Russian but not with any other language.  They can always learn a third language later in a more traditional way, and also as someone else said, the mental flexibility gained learning a second language makes learning a third even easier.

I would use a multi-pronged approach.  Get them some alphabet books - both ABC (or the Cyrillic equivalent ) books with A is for Apple kind of correspondence.  Then also get a K/1st grade level Russian handwriting curriculum - where the kids are learning to write in Cyrillic - like the equivalent of Getty-Dubay or Handwriting without Tears, where they have to trace shapes and write simple words.  If you can get any children's songs or videos/cartoons in Russian, those are excellent for hearing the language and having fun while learning it.  If you know any children's songs yourself from your childhood, teach them. When my kids were that young, I actually only allowed them to watch cartoons if they were in one of the foreign languages they were learning (I did both Spanish and German, as those are the languages I'm fluent in).  An illustrated book of Russian folktales (Baba Yaga!) would also be great.  You can teach them short phrases for instructions a la Charlotte Mason (let's get ready, put on your clothes, go to bed, etc.) and basic conversational things like 'my name is', weather, numbers, colors, body parts.

Once they learn the alphabet, you could teach them to read - if you can't find good materials for young learners, you could make your own short books for them to read.  This is where your being fluent is a HUGE advantage.  

Kids pick things up, especially accent and inflection, like sponges when they're young.  This is the language you can offer that to them.  And again, learning to hear, make and differentiate sounds in a second language will make it easier for them to do in a third when they're older if they're interested.  The ear has been trained.  

And of course, this is a heritage language for you, and them. It has meaning some other random language wouldn't.  Do they have any relatives that speak Russian?

If there is any kind of Russian-speaking community out there, try to connect with them.  If they could meet other children who speak or are learning Russian, it will help motivate them.  My kids ended up going to German Saturday School (with many kids who were being raised bilingual) and that really helped.  But even something much less formal would be useful.

When they are around middle-school aged, you can add a more 'formal' Russian curriculum for foreign language learners, with all the grammar and such - all the work you did will make it much easier and enjoyable.  

Consistency is key - if you can manage to drop things in consistently over the week, great, but you might want to set aside a short time a couple times a week to do alphabet learning and writing, and singing some songs or conversational phrases to start.  I have no idea if you can get your hands on any kids videos, but one of those a week would be great (even if it's the same one over and over...)

Good luck!!

Edited December 19, 2018 by Matryoshka

[HomeAgain]

3 hours ago, SereneHome said:

What materials do you have?  See, Russian is my native language, so I can't evaluate materials bc I have no idea if they are actually good for learning or not.  Does it make sense?

Mine are my old school books.  They're not commercially available because they were written for the school by Russian teachers.  But I also have collected an azbuka and teacher's guide, a few books of folk tales, a strictly Russian dictionary, and idiom/phrase book, and a couple of grammars written in the 1960s. I think the only textbook I have that could still be found (and is actually one of my favorites for its briskness) is Russian Stage One by G. Bitekhtina, I think it was published in the mid/late 80s.  But I do not have the sound recording that go with it.  There are 4 in the series total, I think, and each is pretty hefty. Stage 1 covers 1200 words in 600 pages, while encouraging plenty of conversation, writing, and reading, and cycling through all the grammar.  It is brisk, but it is very doable for a willing student.
I had a lovely plan that my children would start with the cheery azbuka and move on, and they did start.  And they did like it, because it had them reading even faster than 100 EZ Lessons did for English, but I have one with no ear for languages and the other who picks up anything he touches but moved in a different direction.  I'm hoping in a few years the youngest will come around.  I think our community college has a Russian class that I could outsource to after he has a firm base.

 

[SereneHome]

Thank you!!  I have azbuka and a few others one, so I might take another look

[wendyroo]

I also vote for starting them with conversational Russian (heavy on everyday phrases and light on direct grammar instruction).

I am a functional Spanish speaker, and I am teaching my kids Spanish via a comprehensible input approach.  The theory is that the mind absorbs language anytime it hears words that it can successfully link to corresponding objects or ideas.

So, for example, as a very first introduction to a language you might hold up a cookie and say "cookie"...in Russian of course.  Say it several times and then point at a pencil and ask "cookie?  Yes? (accompanied by head nodding) or No? (with head shaking)".  When one of the kids answers (in any language) that it is not a cookie, then dramatically respond "Correct!  Not a cookie!".  Continue to ask if various items (including the cookie) are, in fact, cookies.  Only speak in Russian and keep your vocabulary and syntax very simple and repetitive.  When everyone has had the opportunity to answer yes or no a few times (and hopefully attempted to do so in Russian a little), then wrap up the session on a happy note by asking, with lots of emphasis and pantomiming, "Do you want a cookie?".

I love that this method really focuses on building functional competency in the language.  Instead of starting with letters and numbers and colors, from the very beginning students are participating in (rudimentary) conversations.  I have found lots of resources online to help me teach via comprehensible input.  We play games, tell silly stories, read books, do "Movie Talks", etc.  Mostly we just talk and talk and talk in Spanish (with lots of props and hand gestures to keep everything comprehensible).

Wendy