Beginning Foreign Language in High School

I wouldn’t introduce two languages at once.  If you are beginning Spanish, then I wouldn’t also try and begin Latin at the same time.

With younger children, absolutely doing just hearing and speaking can work very well.  For older children, it would depend on your goals.  If you have a goal of assigning a credit to the language work, and the child might go to college, then one credit of work should be comparable to one year’s credit at a school.  If you tell a college upon application that your child has two Spanish credits, then it ought to mean something to them–it ought to be roughly equivalent to two years study at a high school.  And that will require also reading and writing and grammar study. 

OK, but I’d still strongly recommend at least getting a typical high school text book so you can have some idea of what you are calling a credit.  I wouldn’t assign a year’s credit if the student hadn’t learned the typical grammar that is learned in the first year, no matter how long a time period of study.  I’d compare the book you have to a typical text before calling it a credit–or she’s going to be very surprised in college when she shows up for Spanish class.  Also, I strongly recommend finding someone who is a good speaker, native if possible, for conversation practice, unless your Spanish is very good. 

I realize that not every college is the same, but most colleges in GA, strongly recommend, if not require, a placement test in foreign languages within the first week of classes, if not before being able to register.  This is so the many students entering college, with a public school induced, overinflated sense of their mastery of a language, can switch to a lower class level.  I am both a student (and work in the legal profession) and I volunteer/work with the Dean of Students and I can tell you that the percentage of students coming out of the public school system who test into the “college-level” foreign language classes is in the low single digits.  Some students can handle the college-level rigor of foreign language classes, but many cannot and end up dropping.  A lot of times the school will overbook the foreign language classes because on average at least half of the class drops after the first test.  

I cannot stress enough how important (for college foreign language study) a good solid foundation of English grammar is.  For example, in studying college level Spanish, would your child be able to identify subject, predicate, direct and indirect object pronoun, prepositional phrases, demonstrative adjectives, demonstrative pronouns, reflexive verbs, adverbs etc. in English. This will be imperative to studying foreign language grammar at the college level.   If one does not have a solid foundation in the parts of speech in English, it is almost impossible to keep up with another language’s sentence structure.  Most Spanish texts do not do a review of English grammar.  Or those that do have some kind of review, it is not very helpful to most.

Balance is very important.  There are students at my college that can flawlessly verbally communicate in Spanish, but cannot pass Spanish, because they can not read and write in Spanish.  Then, there are those who can read and write but cannot communicate effectively.  At least at the public colleges, I would say the student who can read and write has an advantage in getting a good grade but will have difficulty in applying the read and write to being able to speak the language and understand it being spoken.  For my son, being able to communicate is of primary importance to me, though I do not diminsh the ability to read and write.  I think CM had the right idea in teaching foreign language in the way we learn our primary language.

I would suggest at the high school level to balance the “read and write” with the communicative abilities in “hearing and speaking”.  Many of the students at my college are saved in their ability to pass by using Rosetta Stone.  But I have used other less expensive audio cd’s that go through the hearing and speaking abilities.  I think it depends on your daughter, if she can study the read and write and apply to hear and speak.  The communicative abilities of high school studies is so low – how many high schoolers can speak the language they studied for two to three years?  Most of the college level classes are conducted completely in the foreign language.  You can’t understand the lectures by only studying the public school’s primary plan of reading and writing.

A book I would suggest using, which is the “remedial” level book for the college level is Adventuras, published by Vista Higher Learning (http://www.vhldirect.com/Store/).  You can probably buy the book used (cheap), but I would recommend purchasing the “super site” key so your daughter could access the online activities and mulitmedia components.  There is online audio and video labs, as well as online workbooks and pronounciation help.  The audio and video are not as extensive as I would like, but they are a good start for the beginner.  This is not a college level text, it is used for the many coming out of high school who do not have a solid foundation in Spanish.  If you went slowly over each lesson, adding in hearing and speaking opps, I think this would give your daughter an edge in college.  

I would also say that it is better to learn pronounciation first, before seeing how a word is spelled.  This is because when we see a word, we automatically try to sound it out using English phonics, which does not always work so well.  =)  If I were using this book for my son (who is 9 now), I would do the online audio, video, and pronounciation activities, possibly on Day 1-2, before getting into the textbook lesson.  I think for reinforcement, we would probably do one lesson a week, including the online activities and pronounciation activities and trying to add some other speaking opportunities with a native speaker or listening to an audio cd.  I also use well known children’s books in Spanish for my son now.  Most libraries have a Spanish children’s book section.  So we would use books like Goodnight Moon, Dr. Seuss, etc.  While this may be a little corny for your daughter, I think the reading of well-known children’s books in the language they are learning, is greatly beneficial.   In college Adventuras would be two semesters of remedial level classes, but you could easily expand the time frame out to ensure mastery.  My son is not there yet but, I this is my first choice for high school level foreign language.  The online features are great.

There are definitley some students coming out of public school who are college ready, but there are a lot who one wonders what good high school was to any of them.  Many of our professors lament the ineffective teaching of the public school, especially in the areas that the public schools are extensively focused on, Math and Language.  I have math professors who would personally like to fire every Algebra teacher that some students ever had!

Just my opinions and experiences.  Hope this helps.

Blessings,

Stephanie

**Also, if you look at Adventuras, the 2nd edition and the 3rd edition are almost exactly the same.  I have reviewed both, and so far I have only noticed the format and graphics look different.  For a reference book, I have the 2nd edition because I like the format.  The 2nd edition would be much less expensive to purchase used.  GA colleges are not using the 2nd edition anymore so if you look at Amazon or Borders Marketplace for books in GA – they will probably sell for a few dollars!  There are also cultural sections in this book.  In remedial college classes, students are expected to make a presentation on an aspect in Spanish culture, completely in Spanish.  So that might be a good end of year “exam”.  =)

One thing I think we need to discuss is exactly what the “CM method” entails for learning a language.  Virtually none of us can do what Charlotte’s schools did.  They regularly brought in fluent speakers of the language to work with the children.  True, in the very early years mothers taught beginning French phrases to their children.  This was helped along at the time because virtually all upper-class women spoke at least some French.  CM’s schools did not generally have people who do not speak a language, come in a couple of times a week and practice saying phrases with the children.  They had intensive lessons with native speakers or very fluent speakers.  They were expected to learn to speak. communicate, read, write, take dictation–this is not a “phrase a day” method.  You can learn a phrase a day for ten years and not be able to communicate effectively in a language.  They learned grammar–SERIOUS grammar–they had to.  They progressed fairly quickly–again, they had to if they wanted to begin French in early years, add Latin, and then German and Italian in the upper years. 

Compared to what CM schools did, most US language learning is dilettantism. 

There is pretty good research support for learning a second or subsequent language as a teen or an adult in just a couple of ways:

1) Intensive immersion.  This would involve taking our children and dropping them in Madrid, or Paris, or Guayaquil, or wherever, and leaving them there to sink or swim while hearing only the target language.  This works, and works marvelously well.  This is not the situation available to most American homeschooling moms, however.

2) A multi-pronged, serious study of the language, ecompassing vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing, speaking, listening to the language AT SPEED and CONVERSATION.  No conversation, unlikely any significant language learning is going to take place.  Conversation does not mean listening to a native speaker read phrases on a CD.  This is another thing you can do for 10 years and yet be unable to carry on even the simplest basic conversation with a native speaker.  I wish I could tell you how many people I know who have used Berlitz or “XXX” in Ten Minutes a Day” or even Rosetta Stone, who then encounter a person who actually SPEAKS the language, only to be unable even to utter a single coherent, relevant sentence. 

I agree that learning grammar is important before serious language study.  However, in my experience and the experience of many of the students I’ve worked with, there are some things that you just don’t really understand in English grammar UNTIL you encounter them in another language.  I’m not talking about subjects or direct objects, but things like subjunctive mood (without an understanding of which you will be unable to read anything meaningfully in a Romance language, for example) And which are really not things you are ever just going to mysteriously “get” in a foreign language by hearing and speaking only, without grammar instruction.  And which most American students have no clue at all about.  (I have fantasies of doing one of those webcam things where I get to go up to people and ask them what the subjunctive mood is, LOL)  I may not actually have any books Charlotte used in her schools here, but I sure bet they taught the subjunctive.  Even speakers who learned by immersion as an adult, regularly butcher the subjunctive.  Apparently you either learn it naturally when you’re five, or you study it intensely, or mess it up forevermore. 

So.  I guess I quit worrying about what “CM” language learning is like, when I looked at The Easy French and The Easy Spanish, was told “This is CM” and then was sooooo disappointed with the poor quality of the instruction.  That is simply NOT possibly what Charlotte’s schools used, or there is no way her kids would have been comfortable, let alone fluent,  in ONE foreign language, let alone FOUR. 

My kids will tell you I’m too hard on them in languages.  They will be leaving high school with a smattering of Spanish (learned in typical homeschoolish ways) most of which didn’t stick (they will NOT be getting any high school level credits for it!) four years’ credit in Latin, and one will have three years’ credit in French, a language I speak well, so he has an easy conversation partner (although we regularly look up other people for him to converse with) and then a student who wants to have two credits in German.  I do not speak German at all, and I am really working hard to provide him with any kind of practical experiences, since I can’t afford an online class.  He has two online programs, both of which have the ability to write back and forth to a native speaker, which he does, but it’s not the same as speaking.  And then we have instructional grammar materials and dictionaries.  We are trying our best to get somewhere, but it is HARD.  If he wants those two credits from me, he’s going to need to work and find a conversation partner.  🙂