@Bookworm – I am considering Breaking the Barrier French for dd13 for the coming year. She completed 3/4 of a so-so class on currclick and loves the flow of French, but needs to be taught the proper tools. I have 2 families of dear friends that she could converse with in French via phone or skype. Both ladies are native French speakers. Spanish is more practical here in FL, but she is not interested. Would you recommend BtB for dd and would you count it as French 1 credit? Also, have you used the digital textbooks on iBooks (iPad or Mac) and if so, thoughts?
Thanks,
Christie
PS – I have been going over and over Latin, but have decided that is simply not a road for us right now. We will do some work with roots, but that’s about it, I think.
Yes, Christie, if she could get regular conversational practice, I think Breaking the Barrier would work, and would count one level as one credit. I did not use an electronic version, but had the paper version and the CD’s, so I can’t speak to that. Tell her she has good taste, I love French too! My oldest son is now determined that I learn Romanian, he is emailing me lessons. LOL But I still prefer French to any language I’ve learned to speak.
I see that there are 12 lessons or chapters in the first volume. I would assume that this would mean we could spend up to three weeks her lesson to cover it within a one-year timeframe. Does this sound right to you Michelle?
Yes. We didn’t track or assign it, we just worked on it about 30-40 minutes a day, plus some working on vocabulary cards. I also gave him things to read that I found here-and-there as he got better.
We don’t speak Spanish, and my son used Tell Me More. He got the homeschool version which is two years of high school. He did one year of it, but retained very little. Foreign language and vocabulary are his weak points. His sister used it also and had conversations with him, but not enough for fluency. It is very difficult to keep a foreign language usable if you are not using it often.
The following year, we did sign language as a family. My daughter loved it and was a natural. She uses it daily and is going to become an ASL teacher. Thankfully our church has a deaf ministry, so she can use the language often.
All that to say, I think whichever language a student has the best access to use often is key.
We use library videos for practice too.
Tell Me More is fine if the goal is to earn high school credit. If you want fluency, lots of time with native speakers is needed.