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How important is learning a foreign language in the elementary years?
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I am wondering if some of you out there more experienced than I can shed light on how you do/did foreign languages with your elementary age children. (My oldest is only in K this year, but I am starting to think about our ‘big picture’ plan for the rest of the elementary years.) I know that in CM philosophy, the child should focus on learning to hear and speak first, before doing any written work, but that still leaves me at a loss how to get started, given that I don’t really speak a foreign language myself (mostly-forgotten HS French doesn’t count!). Teaching a foreign language is the one subject matter that REALLY intimidates me. Part of me wonders how important or necessary a foreign language really is? And is it better to start younger (as in ‘should I really look into making this part of our curriculum beginning in grade 1’), or can I wait awhile? I read quite a bit about classical education before I found CM (which overall resonates with me a lot more!), and I know in Classical education philosophy they emphasize teaching Latin. Is there any real advantage to learning Latin over learning a modern language like Spanish or French? Are there any good CM friendly programs for young children out there that are designed for a mom who will be learning along with them that you can recommend? I’m thinking most likely we would go with Spanish simply because we have a single lady friend who is like an “auntie” to our children who speaks Spanish and so I think she would be able to help provide conversational practice…but as you can tell I definetely don’t have my mind made up definetely about anything, so certainly open to other ideas as well.
Thanks for sharing your experiences!
No answer for you, but I feel like we’re in the same situation! We have done Latin (Latina Christiana). I really like it more for the vocabulary/derivatives, but I’m not pushing the actual Latin as much. I’ve been trying to decide French or Spanish. I had 3 years of French in high school which would help a bit (although I’ve forgotten alot, it would put me ahead of the kids! LOL) My husband says spanish b/c there’s so much of it in the States, but I spoke to a friend recently that said that’s mainly a US thing. That French is predominant in the travels she’s done to Europe, Africa, etc…
So I would love to hear the thoughts on this too!
I took French in high school, just one year, but my desire to learn it never went away and I played around with it for several years. But then I realized that my children would have much more opportunity to use and need Spanish. We live in Texas and in our neighborhood there are many Spanish speakers. We are using First Step Espanol as well as various other resources like Instant Immersian Spanish on the computer, and Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day. What I’m trying to do right now is learn some basic conversation sentances that I can speak to the girls and they can respond in Spanish daily. I think it helps that I am very enthusiastic about it as well, and we are learning together. My girls think it’s great fun.
As for Latin, I don’t have any plans to teach it but that might change in the future. I wouldn’t use it to take the place of a foreign language though.
I think foreign languages are critically important. There are so many reaons it is hard to think of them all at once! Foreign languages make learning English easier–I have things I never really understood or learned well about English that I HAD to master when I was learning a foreign language. I conducted in grad school an informal, highly UNscientific survey, but it showed that I could easily predict which students had studied a foreign language for more than 3 years simply by their writing on papers I was grading! They just wrote better. Foreign languages broaden horizons, make it easier for children to imagine people who think, act, live differently than they do. Then of course there are all the communication opportunities! I think it’s arrogant to assume that the rest of the world should learn English if they want to have anything to do with Americans–if we want to trade with, communicate with, evangelize the rest of the world–we’d better take the trouble to learn to speak to them!
As for learning in early years, studies show that if you begin language learning as an adolescent or after, it is much, much more difficult to master the pronunciation of a language. Also, I have honestly run into teenagers who were not exposed to foreign languages at all, who were totally perplexed that ANYONE would have other words for things–I had one young man I argued with over and over–he simply couldn’t understand why the rest of the world would not want to call a dog a dog. He just could not get it through his head! IN my experience, young children don’t really question this–they enter into the project of learning different words with delight and gusto.
In my home, we begin with Spanish. It is practical, easy to find speakers to practice with, it is an easy foreign language to learn for an English speaker. Then around age 10 we learn Latin. I am a huge Latin supporter, as well, but the reasons for that belong in another post. Then in high school age I require at least one more language, learned for at least two years. In my home we currently have a 10yo doing Spanish and Latin, a 14yo doing Latin and German (who has previously also studied Spanish and Swahili) and a 16yo doing Latin, French, Spanish, Italian and Indonesian (don’t ask–he’s not typical, lol!) I know French, Latin, and some Spanish, and it’s partly because of the benefits of foreign language study in my own life that I am so enthusiastic about it for my children. I think it is a tremendous gift to give a child another language, and it’s worth all the frustration and worry and intimidation. You have to learn to take risks when you are learning another language, but IMO the look on someone else’s face when they realize you care enough to try to speak with them in their own language is all worth it!
I haven’t yet found the perfect young-children Spanish curriculum–we have tried many, many things over the years, and end up using quite a conglomeration of things. But I wouldn’t even consider for a minute NOT learning a language. IMO anything I can come up with, even if it’s imperfect, is valuable enough to be worth the time.
Bookworm, do you know of any exercises to loosen up the tongue?
We are okay pronouncing the single “r” in Spanish, but the “rr” has proven difficult. I’m amazed at my Mexican neighbor’s ability to roll her r’s.Also, I’m very much interested in your thoughts on the importance of Latin, should I start another post?
It is easier to learn a language when younger – and in fact I’d even consider a child friendly program right away! I agree with the “First Step” program mentioned above – They have Spanish, French, and German.
This site http://www.milestonesacademy.com/Site/Curriculum.html has some good simple recommendations in each Year for foreign language learning (Spanish, then Chinese) to give you an idea.
Thanks for the thoughts and suggestions, ladies. Definetely gives me some food for thought. If anyone else out there has thoughts, or ideas of programs I could look into, I’d love to hear from you too.
Bookworm, if and when you have time I’d be interested to hear your ideas on why teaching Latin is a good idea. It’s one of those things that I’ve seen listed as ‘important’ in various places, but still not really sure I understand why it’s important. (But no rush…I’m not looking to make a decision about this right away, just starting to think through our ‘big picture’ as we come closer to starting ‘real school’ next year.)
Thanks!
Been doing a little research on this this weekend, and stumbled across “The Easy Spanish” curriculum (looks like they also have it in French). I liked what I saw of the sample – seems doable even for this Mama who is scared of teaching a foreign language. I was looking at the Junior level in particular that is primarily focused on speaking and not so much on written work or grammar. Has anyone ever used this? Would appreciate thoughts and comments. (Unfortunately I can’t use anything that involves audio/video online since we are overseas and pay per MB for our internet usage – too expensive!)
Also something cool that came up as I was talking this FL over with my husband – he’s always been supportive of our decision to homeschool, but has really thought of it only as “my thing”. Now this weekend as I was saying how I understood that FL was important but I was so worried about being able to do it and he offered to help and sort of make the language learning into a ‘family project’ of sorts. This was a HUGE encouragement to me to really understand that he is REALLY supporting us in this homeschool journey, whch was especially important given that we don’t really have many other homeschoolers around. (Much of the expat/missionary population where we are living send their kids to a local International School for MKs and think I’m kind of nuts for choosing to homeschool even though we have a ‘good school’ available.) Just thought I’d share. =)
In my kindergarten class in England we started to learn French and then that continued through high school and we also had German and Latin. At the age of 14 we specialised ready for our exams at 16 and 18 – I chose German because of my heritage and then continued it to O and A level standard, I could have done the other languages as well, but I wanted to do other subjects and I wanted to be very proficient in German as I planned on working there – I did for 10 years in the medical field, so it really paid off. I think it is important to start young – children soak up languages like a sponge and it is easier if started early. Even one language is better than none. It is not so good in Britain anymore from what I hear, but in mainland Europe it is not unusual to find children who turn into adults with a good working knowledge of 2-3 languages. I have a polish friend who is still quite young, and she speaks 4 languages not including Polish, she started young as well. It is a great skill to have, and certainly helps with English as well. 🙂
This site has free videos. I have checked it out quickly. Pending hubbys approval we will be using it for now. He speaks German (it was his first language) so he wants to check it out first. I am very excited to find a free site to give us a start! My son is exceited to call his Oma and speak German to her instead of English.
http://www.knowitall.org/instantreplay/ then you will see the foreign language. (sorry my copy and paste is not working)
My husband and I were just talking about this last night, coincidentally!
We both took French in high school, and we probably could remember enough to teach at least a very basic level … but we feel like Spanish is probably a more useful language. So if that’s what we decide, I’ll probably be learning right alongside the kids!
(One of my friends, incidentally, has a husband who is from Colombia. At home, he ONLY speaks Spanish to her, and my friend ONLY speaks English to her. She is only 3, but apparently is learning both languages very well. So if you have anyone at home who speaks a different language, that might be a route to try.)
My 2.5 year old niece is bilingual in Spanish and English thanks to the fact that her daddy is Mexican-American and her mommy is fluent in Spanish and they speak lots of Spanish at home. I tried having my brother-in-law speak only Spanish to my kids, but they looked at him like he were an alien from Mars – LOL!
I guess their weekly exposure wasn’t as good as my niece’s daily exposure.
We are okay pronouncing the single “r” in Spanish, but the “rr” has proven difficult. I’m amazed at my Mexican neighbor’s ability to roll her r’s.
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