Spanish 4 at home?

[Ann.without.an.e]

DD wants to take AP Spanish next year so I want to make sure she is ready for that.  She was in a private B&M school for three years so all of her Spanish has been there.  We pulled her out this year for health reasons and it is too late to enroll online anywhere.  She is super language strong and it comes easy easy to her. Would appreciate any ideas!  Thank you ❤️ 

[Miss Tick]

Do you particularly not want to outsource? If she is language strong it seems like she could probably join a class in progress without too much trouble. 

[BookwormTo2]

You could try Homeschool Spanish Academy. My DD took Spanish 3 with a tutor from HSA and we were pleased with the outcome.

[Ann.without.an.e]

16 minutes ago, SusanC said:

Do you particularly not want to outsource? If she is language strong it seems like she could probably join a class in progress without too much trouble. 

 

I would love to outsource, but most classes are full or too late to join. 

3 minutes ago, BookwormTo2 said:

You could try Homeschool Spanish Academy. My DD took Spanish 3 with a tutor from HSA and we were pleased with the outcome.

 

Did your dd do this recently?  I have heard that it can feel impossible to schedule classes.

Edited September 25, 2019 by Attolia

[BookwormTo2]

We used HSA last school year. Yes, if you try to schedule sessions right now with HSA, it can be tricky. However, what I did was schedule DD with 3 different tutors and then figured out from there which one was the best fit and tried to use the same tutor. I read the bios of lots of tutors and picked three after doing that. The further out you schedule, the easier it is. Also, if you call HSA they can help you schedule a lot of classes and it's easier and faster than using the website scheduler. They have a one free session offer on their site.

[Mom0012]

My dd has worked on Spanish independently since her AP class ended a couple of years ago and has made a lot of progress this way.  She basically uses Spanish 121 for conversation practice and for correcting papers that she’s written in Spanish. She reads a book in Spanish and then writes a paper for it. Since her goal was to have very strong everyday conversational skills, we decided to have her read pop psychology books like Outliers, for example. At one point, she was listening to News in Slow Spanish (which we had a subscription for — but I think you can download the podcast for free). There are also some programming on Netflix or Amazon prime in Spanish so that she can work on her listening skills.

I really think regularly reading books in Spanish has furthered my dd’s language skills more than anything else she’s done. She did get a really solid foundation with Sr. Leven, though.

If your dd’s grammar skills are not rock-solid, you could use an app to solidify those.

[RootAnn]

Ditto what @Mom0012 said. I'd look for a conversation partner or partners. (No experience with Spanish121. We used italki.com since we didn't have anyone local. I would look first & identify 3-5 tutors depending on price, area if the world, and their listed areas of what the tutors do best. Then, my DD would watch the posted video intros by each one to pick 1 or 2 she wanted to try out. She had a couple Spanish conversation partners and one for German in this way. If you want to try italki, let me know because I think they still have a referral link where if you purchase $20 or more credits, we both get $10 extra.)

Then, have her read books in Spanish, listen to Spanish music & news, and watch movies in Spanish. Start with movies and books she is familiar with, then move onto new ones. My DD watched Spiderman Far From Home this summer in Spanish (no subtitles) and could follow it even if she didn't get everything.

If she wants to work on her grammar still, the Practice Makes Perfect workbooks (of which there are tons) are helpful. Just pick one to start with (maybe an all-in-one) & work through it. Then pick what she needs to work on (like the subjunctive) and get another.

[Srtepe]

I don’t think Homeschool spanish academy “fills up.” My daughter used it for years and we just scheduled the lessons week by week. 

For conversation practice, baselang is another option.