Foreign Language and homeschooling
May 9th, 2007 by learningumbrella
My mom and sister were visiting last night, and J. was trying to remember how to identify household objects in german. Mom was correcting her articles, and we had some fun figuring out which objects are feminine in spanish but masculine in german and vice versa. We can’t see any real pattern or reason behind them all, but it was a fun little game.
It was a good decision to switch J. from spanish to german, because now she can work with mom and have someone to talk to. If mom had been up to learning a new language, I think they would have been fine with spanish, but it’s hard to learn all by yourself.
And that’s where the problem comes in for many homeschooling families. Most come up with great solutions, but non-homeschoolers can’t imagine how they do it. When people worry or fuss I hear these issues over and over again: 1. socialization 2. math 3. foreign language 4. science labs 5. sports
I’ve heard it suggested that Latin is a good choice for languages because you don’t have to worry about pronunciation. There may be benefits to Latin, but I don’t think I got any out of my year studying it. I didn’t get much from the year of french I did in high school, either. Both programs were canned home curriculum, with tapes and workbooks. I did both of them alone, and had no real way to transfer the language from the workbook situations into “real world” applications. And then I had trouble with my college applications because we hadn’t realized you have to have 2 years in the same language to satisfy most colleges.
In a twist that I find ironic, my brother chose to study Klingon when I was studying Latin. We were allowed to choose a language, you see. And he presented an argument that Klingon was a language, and some research he had found that said it was the patterning and exercising the brain that counted in studying a language. And then he got a course to Teach Yourself Klingon and he did that on his own. But he had some other nerdy friends, and I think they practiced together and it became a sort of “secret language” for them. I can’t say he wasted his time any more than I wasted mine - neither of us uses our languages now.
What I think would have been much more effective is if we’d had to choose one language to all do as a family. A chance to practice conversation and to use the language with each other would have helped us all retain some of what we learned. I plan on having one language of focus for my family’s foreign language studies - and right now that is Spanish for elementary school. My in-laws have a house in Mexico and speak spanish, and it’s fast becoming our country’s second language. My family needs to know enough to get by. Currently we read bilingual picture books in both english and spanish, we watch children’s spanish language videos, and Dora, make posters and displays of vocabulary words, and I listen to tapes in front of the kids. We practice together and try out phrases on Carbon’s Papi to see if we got them right. Carbon urged me on while I was driving on the freeway the other day: “mucho mas rapido” he shouted from the back seat. Nevermind the traffic in front of us.
In the future I picture having nights where only Spanish is allowed to be spoken at the dinner table, and reading books just in spanish. And at some point, we may decide to switch to another language. A club or class would be great if I found one. And a tutor could become necessary if we go for a language that isn’t spoken by anyone around us.
J. and Mom will continue their german studies, and they’ll be taking a trip back to Germany this year. Mom’s brothers are also brushing up on their german, and they can practice with each other over the phone. They are corresponding with family from Germany and having to translate letters and emails. It’s real, and very applied.
Real. Applied. Internalized. Used. Shared. That’s what I think language needs to be. And we can make it that way at home, where language is used all the time for real communication. I’d just like to communicate in a couple languages.
Klingon, huh? I could just imagine the dinner table conversations in THAT language! haha I absolutly hated my language studies in high school and college. I am so hoping to not pass that on. My daughter is doing Spanish with Power Glide… we’ll see!
I have to say that we are having the most fun with Latin this year because 1) I am taking the high school class with Scout, and 2) we meet with a tutor and a class of seven. It is so much more fun to learn together. Now we have enough base to continue on alone, but it really is hard to get to the point of general understanding all along.
This program is intensive, and we read aloud and conjugate and translate. It works on all senses, and we are getting a thousand times more out of it than the Latina Christiana we did prior with tapes. This is my third language, as I had five years of German and two years of Italian in high school. (I wanted to be a UN translator!) I find that Latin, even more than German, helps tremendously with understanding and reinforcing grammar. I see it helping Scout learn to logically takes steps and break things down piece by piece to translate, and as such he is learning to organize his thoughts better. I am hoping to get Girlie doing a little with me next year to get her feet wet, because it is fun to do together.
I used to think Spanish was a benefit, but most programs teach Latin American Spanish versus the dialects from Mexico or Puerto Rico. I have had friend who were native speakers who struggled to pass high school spanish for this reason! I ahve heard so many recruiters tell me that there are now so many bilingual native speakers that the what we would learn would not translate into the workplace.
Oh, I SO agree with you! That sort of individual motivation for learning a language via textbook and so forth is pretty rare in young kids. My summer goal is to pull together the resources I need to do Spanish as a family (my partner is already reasonably fluent, although his vocabulary has decreased a lot over the years) - things like labelling things all over the house, finding native speakers to converse with regularly (that one’s done already), putting together music and book lists from my library’s collection (which is a great benefit to living in CA - all the libraries have significant Spanish language materials!), and so forth, with a culminating goal of spending a month in fall 2008 in a Spanish-speaking country. I am already to set up to do individual study myself (to pick up the grammar more rapidly) - all I need is to find a regular time for that study. (Heck, even semi-regular would do!!)
I agree with you that language immersion is the best method for really learning a language. However, if my husband read this, he’d be ALL FOR teaching the kids Klingon!