foreign language

Angela - posted on 03/03/2009

I think teaching them any language while they're young is a huge benefit. Since I am also in Texas, Spanish is our first choice. I taught eighth grade Spanish for 3 years, and I've tried to teach my boys some Spanish, but haven't taught them nearly enough. One thing I have been good about though is singing Spanish songs to them from a very young age. I think it has helped them tremendously with pronunciation, and that is a difficult thing to teach sometimes. My husband butchers the Spanish language so much that I have finally begged him to stop trying to speak it. Both boys have beautiful accents now though, and they have decent vocabularies (colors, numbers, animals, people). I'm hoping that my oldest will pick it up quickly, as he does most things, when he starts taking it in school in the 7th grade, but I really wish I had done more when he was younger. I'm reading this thread with interest to decide what I should do for my almost 5 year old.

Morag - posted on 03/03/2009

Spanish or Chinese will be of the greatest value as they grow up. Both my girls speak Spanish but we live in Spain so they speak English at home and Spanish at school/nursery. When thrown in the deep end it only took Tia 3 months to learn Spanish and she had speech problems. Lil miss has only been at nursery a few weeks and can already say lots of words and sentences and she's just turned one. Having a couple of hours a day where they only hear that one language is invaluable.

I have to admit that immersion is the quickest and best way to learn a language properly. I learnt French at school, it was my worst subject.. and would have said linguistics is not my strong point. But I moved to Spain at 23 and learnt the language in 6 months without a single lesson, merely from immersion. So if you could find a Saturday school etc in that language that would go a long way :)

Kimberly - posted on 03/03/2009

Kids are hardwired for language acquisition so almost anything you do will be beneficial.  Personally I would recommend Spanish....because it is fairly similar to English in Gramatical Structure (unlike German which uses a verb final construction), is Latin based so has MANY cognates (words that sound familiar like "diferencia" and "different"), Follows it's own rules fairly consistently (even its irregular verbs come in groups that behave the same), and can be read phonetically. (Which means our little gifted ones can start teaching themselves with the dictionary. heheh)

Also, Spanish TV channels are easy to find and the library is more likely to have familiar books in the foreign language in my experience....and many if not ALL of your DVDs for kids at home have foreign language tracks.  Disney typically provides Spanish or French if not both, as an example.  If you live in an area with a heavy population of any specific "minority" language you could go with that as well.

Disclaimer: I have a Masters in Linguistics and I taught Spanish and ESL at a k-8 for a few years. :)  So yes, I have a bit of a bias. k. hartvigsen

Jen - posted on 02/16/2009

you can buy adult 'learn to speak' tapes or cd's. my 7 yr old daughter is learning French (we live in Canada) and LOVES IT! she is also picking up a bit of Spanish and German on her own. My 3 year old regularly throws Spanish words into her conversation and smirks a bit because she knows i don't understand her :) I am not linguistically gifted like my children.

Deborah - posted on 02/12/2009

Absolutely with no doubt immersion is the best for learning languages. My best friend's daughter went to a French immersion school starting in 1st grade. She left the program over a year ago so in middle school but is fluent in French and classified as native tongue when she speaks it. But most people can't afford this option and some do not have this option in their area.

Tammy - posted on 02/12/2009

Although children pick up launguages fairly easily as chidren if you want them to retain it it is an ongoing life time thing or they loose it quickly too.  My daughter didn't take foreign languages till freshman year and they only offered Spanish she was a quick learner but when she went to a gifted school this year as a sophmore she is taking French and Mandrian Chinese.  They use immersion and she is doing great.  Can have conversations in all threee languages and I can barely speak English lol.  Immersion is much better for picking up a language.

Michelle - posted on 02/12/2009

Thanks for all the help. I'll let you guys know what I go with and how it's going.

Natasha - posted on 02/11/2009

My daughter learns languages fairly easily, some dvd's have the choice of languages and that's how she learns easily; it helps that i speak multiple languages too, so i can help her...She also likes portuguese and german songs on youtube. I would do the combination thing; classes and other exposures, like movies, songs etc.

Kelly - posted on 02/11/2009

As strange as it might sound - Latin is actually a good language to learn first. It is the basis of the romance languages making them easier to learn and is peppered all through the English language. It also has the benefit of making it easier to learn English grammar.

Lauryan - posted on 02/11/2009

This is very interesting... I'd love for my kids to learn German (husband's family is German.) He barely speaks it though so he is useless (in that regard!) And although I have asked the in-laws repeatedly to speak to my oldest son in German - what he gets is a mixture and very watered down version of their own mixture of German, the dialects that they each grew up speaking (from Austria), baby-talk-german phrases and words and a weird English mixture all jumbled up together. Very confusing indeed :(

Spider - posted on 02/11/2009

Although I am hispanic my children didn't speak spanish until they started school. They are enrolled in gifted classes and had to take a spanish as part of their curriculum. They picked it up rather quickly through songs. I have also heard of Rosetta Stone and I heard that it is wonderful. A friend of mine used it to learn German and says it was the easiest way to learn. I was thinking of looking into it for myself and my children.

Emily - posted on 02/11/2009

Rosetta Stone is usually marketed for adults. Therefore I think it's probably for older children. I haven't tried it, though, so please, if you try it out, let us (or at least me) know! I suspect we'll be getting into it ourselves later.

Deborah - posted on 02/10/2009

Rosetta Stone has a place in the mall where I am at and I will take a look at it next time I am in there. Do you know if they are designed more for the older children? It might be something for us to get in the future.

Zoe - posted on 02/10/2009

One thing I have found.... with classes that only meet once a week are fun for immersion from a live person, it's better to work on the language daily.  You might want to combine programs.  It's really amazing what you will find on Amazon.

We ordered the free Rosetta Stone demo CD to check out not only the different languages, but the system.  We are really impressed with it and keep meaning to buy the homeschool version so we have some parental monitoring on lesson progression.  (We also liked that it was portable for vacations, or if she needed to wait a year it wasn't going to waste.)  Our daughter liked checking out the different languages, and it REALLY challenged her.

(She had taken Spanish in preschool and lost most of it by the time she was 5.  She is very interested in French.  We are not sure if it's because mommy and daddy try to use it for private conversations in front of her, or she is interested in the "some of our family came from France".  I would also like her to take Latin or Greek, but she isn't buyin' it!)   We are thinking we will start with French to brush up ours as well!  We really liked the Rosetta Stone system and found it fun.

Emily - posted on 02/10/2009

My son is a home schooling Kindergartener, and wanted to learn both French and Spanish, so part of his curriculum is a fun instructional series that promotes learning a foreign language by singing familiar songs in both languages (with some additional vocabulary in between songs). We all love it, and even my 2-year-old daughter has started joining in. The series includes a staggering number of languages, all available as a book and cd set from Amazon (or, presumably, any other book store). It's called "Teach Me...[Insert Language Here]" by Judy Mahoney. I enjoy it because, even if we have a really hectic day full of driving, we can just pop in the cd and sing along. And if he's extra good, sometimes I let him watch a Samurai Jack DVD in his language of choice - a sneaky way to expand his vocabulary and sentence structure.



I started foreign languages early, but I think the series is adequately suited to just about any age. My son is just learning to read, so the workbook is nearly useless, but he's learning by listening quite well.



As corollary, my husband and I have been collaborating to help teach our children how to say "please" and "thank you" in as many languages as possible. At younger ages, any exposure at all to a foreign language makes it that much easier to pick up later.

Catherine - posted on 02/09/2009

My son is 8 and wants to learn Japanese. We figured to see how into it he was, we would get him My Japanese Tutor for his Nintendo DS (he isn't allowed to play any other games on it anymore...the whole mind warping thing:) He loves it so far and we are looking into formal instruction.

Deborah - posted on 02/08/2009

Which one really is personal choice. I live in Texas so Spanish is what we are teaching my daughter because of the practical side and there are programs readily available such as Spanish Summer Camps. I will say that I would prefer for her to learn French or German because academically those are the languages a lot of programs require along with Latin but it really is about starting them on a language which opens the door for them later on. So I would suggest looking around in your area to see if there are classes and/or camps and what language they are taught in. Also some libraries have storytime in different languages which might be a free thing you can take to to supplement her learning. Programs in your area might direct which language she learns. As far as a program from the house: Look up Muzzy. We have it and my daughter loves it. Comes with DVDs, CD, and Computer Program. Also you can look at Hooked on Phonics. They have foreign language programs.