What do you use for French?

We are using the Learnables, and like it OK. It is not very exciting, but seems to be solid and my dd6 seems to be picking up stuff from it – we are about 1/2 way through level 1. (She doesn’t speak a ton yet, but The Learnables emphasizes listening and understanding in the beginning and speaking later as it comes.) We also supplement this with these videos http://www.knowitall.org/instantreplay/content/program.cfm?SeriesIDpassed=45 and other French cartoons on YouTube which my dd6 likes, but I would venture to guess your 11.5 year old would not. I also speak French conversationally so I speak to them and read French picture books with them. We are also in the process of working out a language exchange with a French friend (she would come and do some French speaking/activities with my kids, and I would do some English with hers)…haven’t started it yet, but we’re looking forward to it. Anyhow…all that to say that I’ve done quite a bit of searching, and I don’t know that there IS a complete program out there – I think you have to attack a language from multiple modalities to really make it stick. We tried the Easy French and did not like it at all. I thought the actvities were kind of dumb and there just wasn’t a lot to it. My kids liked listening to the CD that came with it OK, but it was a lot of money to pay for just a CD – and again mine are younger so they didn’t mind these CDs..but I’ve heard of others with older kids who didn’t like the dialogues on the CD – so you may want to use caution with that before you buy, especially if your older son isn’t that excited about it to begin with.

HTH some,

Jen

Here is what I am doing with my 11 year old daughter.  I bought a copy of Beginning French by Victor E. Francois.  This is a textbook from early 1900’s.  You can find it at gutenberg.org, I believe.  I found a nice copy on ebay.  We have completed the first four lessons (this took about a month) and we are now ready to begin working our way through the Easy French Reader http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0071428488/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00 and Learn French the Fast and Fun Way  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0764125591/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00.  We will work through these together.  When she is working on a lesson, I have her type in the sentences at http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.html to hear correct pronunciation.  She practices saying the things along with them.  

This is working very well with her because she really wants to learn french and because she is a child who learns best by reading and writing, as opposed to learning by auditory or kinesthetic methods.  So, depending on what type of learners your kids are, this may or may not work for them.  We also use the videos at knowitall.org to gain some vocabulary and get used to hearing french spoken.  I have not done this with any of my younger kids, although they have been watching the videos with us.  They have not really shown me that they are ready to “work” at learning French, so I am going to wait a bit.

I haven’t purchased our curriculum, yet (for 12yo & almost 6yo). But, I’m seriously considering French Mission ABC (w 6yo) and Mission Monde (w 12yo). Have any of you used these?

Becca<><

Is there an answer key to the book by Francois?

Eva