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We want to learn French
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Well my French “son” left yesterday. ;( We miss him so much… But we are ready to try to learn French because we hope to travel to France in two years to visit him and our other French “son”. I had a couple of years of French in high school…over 30 years ago, although I do still remember some vocabulary as well as some basic pronunciation rules.
I’ve read past posts but there are SO MANY choices! And some of them are extremely expensive so a mistake in this area could be very painful to our dwindling budget. My boys are 10. Can someone lay out a logical course of study with the materials we would need? I would like to begin with some basic vocabulary and conversation skills, I think, just to jump start them.
Let me also mention that we have satellite internet which can be iffy so a program that relies heavily on that might not be the best choice.
Thanks for any help!
Robin, thanks for posting this.
Dd13 is learning French right now, but we need a new program or teacher. I cannot recommend the French classes at http://www.currclick.com. DD is finishing her 2nd semester and while the class began well last term and she has learned a lot, the teacher gets too easily distracted and the students use the chat box for more than responding. The teacher has not given tools on how to study and learn the language. Our native French speaking guest left yesterday, too. I had her go through a class online and then through the book with dd and she said that this is not the class we need. She said our book is fabulous, but the teacher isn’t serious enough for dd to really learn. So, now what?
We’ve been happy with an online science class through Landry Academy, but their language classes meet only 1/week for 1.5 hours and that isn’t ideal. I know Cherrydale Press is releasing French version of Speaking Spanish with Miss. Mason and Francois this year I think. We’re using the Spanish one in our co-op next year. It may be we end up with a private French tutor via Skype, but I would love some recommendations.
I can give negative recommendations too 🙁
My dd tried Mission Monde (too little practical stuff and too focused on missions for us) and Ecoutez Parlez (too workbooky and became very dull). We finally bought Rosetta Stone but now she finds that boring too.
Nebby
Has anyone seen/used this?
http://learnfrenchwithalexa.com
I came across one of her videos on YouTube. Of course, it’s internet based so don’t know how often it would work.
Robin, I’ve not seen that, but will check it out and will ask my friend her thoughts. We’ve spent almost a year with our current class with very limited results, so I value her opinion on where to go next. She is an American who grew up in France and she does some translation work now. She sat with dd and explained conjugations clearly in one sitting. Something her online teacher failed to do in 1.5 semesters thus far.
On a recommendation from someone here on the forum, we chose Learnables over Rosetta Stone. My kids got a kick out of it (level 1 is mostly conversational French), and their retention was quite decent. Unfortunately, I can’t really give a full review as we ended up having to drop it last Fall when I became ill and had to scale back to “just basics”. I do plan to return to it at some point, though we own Rosetta Stone now as well. I’m not sure that either of these options provide the intensive (course work) learning you may be looking for, Robin. Hopefully others can verify. I, too, will be following this thread eagerly!
I would like to second the Learnables program. Although we use it for Spanish. . We did purchase a French program that one of my daugh used , and they adv. it as CM. well that might be ttrue , but she did not like the layout of the program. If you would like the name of that it is Easy French. ( sorry I don’t have the exact name as its down stairs packed in a box, waiting to take it to the used curr sale. ) anyways learnables fits CM philosophy of short lessons. And after listening to the pronunciation and following along the pictures , you then go on to the next level of the, reading and grammar .What I think is its set up just like we learn our native tongue. We hear words spoken over and over, and then one day voila, our child says dog! Etc.
My .02
Kk
Thank you. I know Learnables has been around a long time. I’m not looking for intensive right now. We just want to begin learning to speak. As they get older and some language proficiency under their belt.we will begin reading and writing.
My daughter is self taught in French … here is her experience thus far –
For 2 years she used free online sources to learn initial vocabulary and verbs well (Live Mocha – didn’t really care for it, Duolingo – great for grammar and understanding, Mango – start with it and you’ll have a better experience with it, BBC – young kids and beginer vocabulary, Mona Lisa – songs, anything she found which included newspapers, magazines, tv shows, cartoons, etc.) then she had a french tutor for 1 year which taught her all her grammar and had her begin speaking conversationally. That was pricey, but worth the expense for where it took her.
Unfortunately, now we are in a holding pattern where she’s really back at the helm of her learning. I’ve been picking up lots of school texts, grammar books, anything I see that seems current and well laid out. I think her biggest hesitation now is speaking. She’s able to read fairly well and write at a basic level, but speaking plagues her. We will have to find a class now, I think. In two years time she’ll go to France in the summer to study and immerse, but until then she’ll need to keep studying.
Hope that helps! I have found that language proficency and learning depend largely on the child’s desire to master it. My son, who is learning Spanish, is unmotivated for the most part and so his progression is very slow and lead primarily by my urging. As he matures I think he’ll have more of an interest and take over his studies more. Of course languages are learned best at a young age! My daughter started in ~4th grade.
Memoria press has a pretty great French set. Two volumes/years worth. It’s set up like one of their Latin programs and looks pretty thorough.
If you can get ahold of the Bonjour Les Amis DVDs (there are 3 volumes), they are a nice, gentle introduction to French.
Hi Robin,
We are a Mission ABC/Mission Monde family. We like the focus on missions. I will be adding their No French? No Problem! to our 14yos’ day in the fall. It will push him ahead in his abilities. http://www.mfbp.org/no-french-no-problem/
You might look at Lindafay’s suggestions for foreign language studies. You’d need to look at the 1-6 grade level suggestions. They are very helpful and you’d be able to use Claire’s suggestions in a similar way. I like MM because it’s laid out with our families goals in a gentle way that sticks with my kids. If we have to lay it down for any length of time, they pick it right back up and haven’t forgotten any of it. It may not have the written rigor early on that some would like, but we are looking at long term use. If crunch time is necessary, you’ll likely want something else if the NFNP doesn’t look like a resource that would be helpful in your situation.
hth
Oh. I would NOT recommend Muzzy. My kids thought it was fun early on, but the characters voices were extremely annoying and they didn’t seem to really pay attention to it enough to retain very much becuase of it.
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