Charlotte Mason method for learning foreign language

[SereneHome]

I really like the idea of doing series approach. Cherrydale press only has 4 language study books, does anyone know where I can find other language study guides that use the same method?

thanks

[Not_a_Number]

1 hour ago, SereneHome said:

I really like the idea of doing series approach. Cherrydale press only has 4 language study books, does anyone know where I can find other language study guides that use the same method?

thanks

What’s the series approach?

We’re still doing mini-immersion here 🙂 . DD8 is working on conjugating verbs and gendered nouns. She can say relatively complicated stuff with atrocious grammar and understands a lot. 

DD4 is starting to talk.

[Little Green Leaves]

2 hours ago, SereneHome said:

I really like the idea of doing series approach. Cherrydale press only has 4 language study books, does anyone know where I can find other language study guides that use the same method?

thanks

Sorry I can't help, but thanks for posting this -- I didnt know about this method and it looks very sensible. I guess you mean this?

https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/teaching-foreign-language-subject-by-subject-part-8/

 

Maybe it's worth emailing Cherrydale press?

[SereneHome]

1 hour ago, Little Green Leaves said:

Sorry I can't help, but thanks for posting this -- I didnt know about this method and it looks very sensible. I guess you mean this?

https://simplycharlottemason.com/blog/teaching-foreign-language-subject-by-subject-part-8/

 

Maybe it's worth emailing Cherrydale press?

Yes, I saw youtube video and it made a lot of sense to me, but they don't have the language that I want. May be I'll try emailing them...

[Not_a_Number]

This is actually very close to what we do, looking at the link.

[Little Green Leaves]

1 hour ago, SereneHome said:

Yes, I saw youtube video and it made a lot of sense to me, but they don't have the language that I want. May be I'll try emailing them...

Ambleside Online has some links to free foreign language resources, I think. Maybe someone on their message board would have ideas.

I wish the Cherrydale site had samples up. I am really tempted to just buy the French book but I hate paying for something that I can't see at all.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Little Green Leaves

[SereneHome]

4 hours ago, Little Green Leaves said:

Ambleside Online has some links to free foreign language resources, I think. Maybe someone on their message board would have ideas.

I wish the Cherrydale site had samples up. I am really tempted to just buy the French book but I hate paying for something that I can't see at all.

I am guessing Amazon doesn't have any preview either?

Yeah, I am not a fan of buying anything unseen....

[Little Green Leaves]

10 hours ago, SereneHome said:

I am guessing Amazon doesn't have any preview either?

Yeah, I am not a fan of buying anything unseen....

I wrote to Cherrydale and asked for samples. I hope this works out. I've been wanting to teach my kids French, but I almost never do anything about it. Maybe it'd be easier if I had a book to use.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I wrote to Cherrydale and asked for samples. I hope this works out. I've been wanting to teach my kids French, but I almost never do anything about it. Maybe it'd be easier if I had a book to use.

Remind me, do you speak French?

[Little Green Leaves]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

Remind me, do you speak French?

I speak French, but it's a deeply imperfect French. So, I can read literature and argue about politics, but I also make simple mistakes with things like gender and prepositions. That's why I'd like a book to lean on.

[Not_a_Number]

1 minute ago, Little Green Leaves said:

I speak French, but it's a deeply imperfect French. So, I can read literature and argue about politics, but I also make simple mistakes with things like gender and prepositions. That's why I'd like a book to lean on.

I wonder if finding a fluent tutor would be a good idea? That was going to be my plan for something like French... although your French is obviously miles ahead of mine!! (I took it at school, but very unenthusiastically.)

Edited November 20, 2020 by Not_a_Number

[Little Green Leaves]

3 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I wonder if finding a fluent tutor would be a good idea? That was going to be my plan for something like French... although your French is obviously miles ahead of mine!! (I took it at school, but very unenthusiastically.)

Yeah, eventually. I have also tried to get my parents (both fluent speakers) on board, so we'll see. But I think for the early stages we'd be fine with me and a book.

[SereneHome]

2 hours ago, Little Green Leaves said:

Yeah, eventually. I have also tried to get my parents (both fluent speakers) on board, so we'll see. But I think for the early stages we'd be fine with me and a book.

I am very fluent in a language I want to teach - including grammar and everything. But I am finding out that I need a book to teach it from and I really like this method.

[Not_a_Number]

3 minutes ago, SereneHome said:

I am very fluent in a language I want to teach - including grammar and everything. But I am finding out that I need a book to teach it from and I really like this method.

Why do you need a book? 🙂 

[SereneHome]

5 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

Why do you need a book? 🙂 

Just to make it easier for myself

[Not_a_Number]

26 minutes ago, SereneHome said:

Just to make it easier for myself

Got it!! I haven’t been finding it hard, personally.

[wendyroo]

23 hours ago, SereneHome said:

Yes, I saw youtube video and it made a lot of sense to me, but they don't have the language that I want. May be I'll try emailing them...

I've read about the Charlotte Mason method for foreign language and there are a couple parts that I question.

First and foremost, it sounds boring. Any enthusiasm my kids had for Spanish would quickly be extinguished if I tried to talk about boxes and doors and books opening and closing. My 5 year old does not know the Spanish word for book...but she knows unicorn. My 7 year old probably doesn't know open or close...but he knows crash and behead. My number one language learning goal is to empower my kids to communicate about things they are interested in, things they want to talk about. At our house that means a lot of talk about explosions, prime numbers, guitars, and Inspector Gadget.  "I take the box. I open the box. I close the box." just would not cut it.

Second, I'm not sure how the method fits into the day. Those are not normal statements I make to my children in English, so it is not like I could just substitute the Spanish throughout the day. Would you really spend 30+ minutes having a student parrot canned repetitive phrases? I think the strongest language learning tools are being immersed in comprehensible input and then trying to spontaneously communicate ideas to a patient, supportive listener/coach who can nudge the learner toward correct grammar and broader vocabulary. 

Third, it feels like the method could easily lead to clunky, ungrammatical language. Yes, you can directly substitute book for box in the sentence "I open the box.", but but no means is all language that interchangeable...if it was, it would make the task of learning a language much, much easier. In my opinion, this method puts far too much emphasis on translating from the native language. Different languages handle grammar and structure in wildly different ways, often inconsistently even within the language. If I actually had access to a native, fluent Spanish speaker, the last thing I would have them do with my kids is directly translate simple, predictable English sentences.

[Little Green Leaves]

Charlotte Mason always reminds me a lot of my grandmother's style of teaching, which she used on me whenever I stayed with her. I don't remember half hour sessions of talking about opening and closing boxes but I definitely had to sit and take dictation about any number of repetitive subjects, in French. I also have seen her teach adults French and it was a lot of repetitive talk...I drink from the bowl. I eat from the plate. etc etc. 

@wendyroo I can definitely see how it sounds horribly boring when you read about it. In my experience, it was not boring at all. It was just what we did. It was done in spurts, sitting at the kitchen table while the dishes got washed or the toast got made (on one of those dangerous asbestos stove-top toasters). I think Charlotte Mason-style lessons are meant, in the early years, to be short and to the point. Obviously not the only way to do things and it sounds like your kids are getting an amazing foreign language education in quite a different way.

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

Does the Getting Started With... series have the language you're looking for?  I think they have Latin, Spanish, and French, maybe German as well.  These books contain lessons that are 5-10 minutes maximum, and the books are a great introduction.  

We know significantly more about how people learn language that CM did.  I love lots and lots of CM ideas, but I wouldn't restrict myself to CM style materials for language learning.  

[Not_a_Number]

21 hours ago, wendyroo said:

I've read about the Charlotte Mason method for foreign language and there are a couple parts that I question.

First and foremost, it sounds boring. Any enthusiasm my kids had for Spanish would quickly be extinguished if I tried to talk about boxes and doors and books opening and closing. My 5 year old does not know the Spanish word for book...but she knows unicorn. My 7 year old probably doesn't know open or close...but he knows crash and behead. My number one language learning goal is to empower my kids to communicate about things they are interested in, things they want to talk about. At our house that means a lot of talk about explosions, prime numbers, guitars, and Inspector Gadget.  "I take the box. I open the box. I close the box." just would not cut it.

Well, I don't follow Charlotte Mason (I don't follow anything), but the way I've been teaching Russian has been via mini-immersion, and I've been making sure to connect their ACTIONS to their words. So, while it's not "I open the box," a lot of the things DD8 can say so far are things like "I'm coming over here" or "I'm bringing you a book," because her vocabulary is quite limited. She's now trying to communicate harder ideas (with atrocious grammar, lol), but it's simply too difficult at this stage. On the other hand, she's definitely thinking in Russian and she's associating words to things and not to words in English, which was my goal. 

 

21 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Second, I'm not sure how the method fits into the day. Those are not normal statements I make to my children in English, so it is not like I could just substitute the Spanish throughout the day. Would you really spend 30+ minutes having a student parrot canned repetitive phrases? I think the strongest language learning tools are being immersed in comprehensible input and then trying to spontaneously communicate ideas to a patient, supportive listener/coach who can nudge the learner toward correct grammar and broader vocabulary. 

What we do is just spend 30 minutes speaking Russian and by necessity we use very restricted vocabulary while we do this. I don't think I could do it with less restricted vocabulary, because we would then need to use some English, and my goal is not to use ANY English during practice time. 

But no one is parroting canned phrases around here... it's just that when your vocabulary is limited, you can't say very much. So a lot of what DD4 can say so far is stuff like "This is my nose," "this is your nose," "this is my hand," "the couch is over there." The sentence structure is, indeed, quite limited. 

 

21 hours ago, wendyroo said:

Third, it feels like the method could easily lead to clunky, ungrammatical language. Yes, you can directly substitute book for box in the sentence "I open the box.", but but no means is all language that interchangeable...if it was, it would make the task of learning a language much, much easier. In my opinion, this method puts far too much emphasis on translating from the native language. Different languages handle grammar and structure in wildly different ways, often inconsistently even within the language. If I actually had access to a native, fluent Spanish speaker, the last thing I would have them do with my kids is directly translate simple, predictable English sentences.

Yeah, I don't think I'd do the "translation" thing. On the other hand, my experience with simple sentences is that they quickly become associated with objects and actions. 

[Not_a_Number]

31 minutes ago, Monica_in_Switzerland said:

We know significantly more about how people learn language that CM did.  I love lots and lots of CM ideas, but I wouldn't restrict myself to CM style materials for language learning.  

What do you do for language learning? 🙂 We've been doing Russian for a year now and I'm overall pretty happy with the result. But I always like ideas. 

[wendyroo]

5 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

What we do is just spend 30 minutes speaking Russian and by necessity we use very restricted vocabulary while we do this. I don't think I could do it with less restricted vocabulary, because we would then need to use some English, and my goal is not to use ANY English during practice time. 

I don't use any English during Spanish time (at least not until much later when we are jointly discussing a sentence that we are both unsure of). However, I also don't overly restrict the vocabulary because my goal is not precise translations.

I follow the method of comprehensible input, so my goal is general comprehension...which in my experience can be achieved through many avenues. Yesterday I was reading aloud a picture book in Spanish. The characters rode on a teeter-totter; none of us had ever encountered that word in Spanish, but with the help of the pictures, it didn't slow any of us down.

Also in the story, a unicorn and yeti are arguing about who should keep a shiny stone they found. The yeti says something along the lines of "You are already shiny. I should keep the stone. That way I could also have something shiny." None of us are entirely comfortable with the conditional tense (and the younger 3 could not conjugate one to save their lives), but in the context of the story we all understood it well enough. The 11 year old and I certainly understood the gist even if we would not be able to independently produce the sentences (yet!). The 9 year old picked out enough words to build a fairly accurate meaning. The 7 year old understood that the yeti was offering an argument for why he should keep the stone. And the 5 year old probably didn't get anything out of those particular sentences, but was still able to follow the story well enough to enjoy it and answer questions about it.

Since my Spanish is strong-intermediate at best, I utilize a lot of books and videos to expose us all to a wide variety of Spanish grammar and vocabulary. I'm reading aloud a Scholastic book about ancient Egypt in Spanish. There are certainly some words and sentences that none of us understand, and generally we just make a few educated guesses and move on. I would much rather we run into an unknown word like acaudalado and learn that whatever it is, it can describe an Egyptian scribe, rather than limit our vocabulary sufficiently such that we never run into words that stump us. I have faith that just like we learn our native language, that if we keep immersing ourselves in a wide enough variety of Spanish, that over time we will hone our understanding of acaudalado as we run into it in other contexts. (And I often "cheat" by looking up the stumpers so that the next time we run into them I can use emphasis, miming, and circumlocution to help the kids understand what is being said...but obviously I could often skip this step if I were fluent in the language and already knew the words.)

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

11 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

What do you do for language learning? 🙂 We've been doing Russian for a year now and I'm overall pretty happy with the result. But I always like ideas. 

 

Although I don't use the methods exactly as laid out (I don't like anki), the book Fluent Forever has a great summary of the research we know about language acquisition.  (And if Fluent Forever takes you down that particular rabbit hole, the book Moonwalking with Einstein is amazing, but has nothing to do with language learning per se...)

 

The truth is that language acquisition is hard and time-consuming, and there are absolutely no shortcuts, although there are a few hacks, like spaced repetition.  

In our family, the kids have two first languages- English and French.  Maintaining both at the same academic level is the main time-consumer of our school day.  In most bilingual families, only one language is advanced academically, while the other is a heritage language that the children speak and understand, but are not literate in.  Keeping both English and French up academically is a huge investment of our time and energy.  

And then there's the "second" language- German.  The kids are learning this as a foreign language, and luckily for me, DH does this with the kids.  They use the school textbooks, because this was what he was most comfortable with.  Each child keeps a vocabulary notebook, and he has them review the page for the week, plus various pages from the back in a somewhat "spaced repetition" sort of way.  The kids know that reading through the vocab page is useless, and that they must quiz themselves each time (cover one side and say the translation before checking if they are right) in order to get benefits from it.  He assigns them work to do during the day- essentially "homework", then does their language lesson one on one in the evenings, after work.  DH is absolutely meticulous, and when my ds took the standardized exam in German last year, he received the highest score and had a nearly perfect paper.  

For Latin, we are using a more organic approach.  As I'm sure you know, receptive language acquisition (the ability to understand) is much easier than expressive language acquisition.  With our modern languages (English, French, German), the kids need both.  With Latin, I am happy if they simply acquire receptive language.  I would not have added Latin to our ridiculous language arts regime if the kids had not really, really wanted it.  Not speaking Latin myself, I've had to lean heavily on pre-made resources, and we've had success with Getting Started with Latin, Visual Latin, and Lingua Latina.  What I'd really like to be able to do in the next two years is go through Winnie the Pooh or Petit Prince or The Hobbit in Latin, and just parse as we go.  I think there's a lot to be said for learning to decipher a text, even at the rate of a sentence per day.  This is how I went though the opening to Beowulf in Old English in college, and it was a cool experience.   

 

ETA- I think you already knew this, but my first language is English and I'm fluent in French.  DH's first language is French and he's competent in English and German, and we live in a French canton, so the required testing is done in French.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Monica_in_Switzerland

[ealp2009]

TalkBox.mom is Charlotte Masonish in approach and they have about 11 languages.   It is fun and easy to implement.  You could start with the book or the homeschool phrases and see if it what you are looking for and then move on to their boxes if you like it.  They have an app that comes with the book that has a native speaker speaking each phrase.