What homeschooling works for you, specifically foreign languages?

Question

I have small children and I would like to start a foreign language with them.

Answer 1

I have homeschooled my children for the last 15 years. We have enjoyed using the Learnables program. It has some definite benefits and a few weaknesses. The benefits are that the teacher need not know the language being studied, it is picture based rather than written word based, so young children can enjoy it and learn without good reading skills, it is not tedious as there is no paperwork involved unless you want to get that involved, the speakers in the program are native speakers and a variety of speakers is used so you hear the varieties of inflection and pronunciation, and it is readily understandable. The negative is that if you want structured grammar and spelling rules, you will feel that they are lacking. It works like this: As you listen to the cd, you look at the pictures in the book. They are comic strip type pictures. The speaker on the cd describes what is in the picture. As you move through the pages, more and more information is given about the pictures, and nuances of grammar and spelling are given (by moving from singular to plural, present tense to past tense, masculine to feminine). There is no instruction. Just listening. You don't even attempt to speak because they want you to develop a finely-tuned ear for the nuances of the language in all its sounds. After a while you find that you can understand most of what is being said without much effort, and the parts that are unclear can be figured out by logical deduction.You can listen to each lesson as few or a many times as you want, and move on to the next one when you feel you fully understand the last one. The company claims that working through their program equals two years of high school language study, but I'd disagree with that. As far as listening and speaking skills, yes, but not for grammar and structure. However, some students would test well even in grammar and structure because of an innate ability to decode all the rules and structure that were in the language as they listened. This program really works well for all ages but is especially suited for younger students. If they do the whole program, I imagine that working through a more structured high school program later would be a breeze. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

I'm not a "small child" but I use Rosetta Stone. I'm sure it would work for children though, because from the beginning they don't use a word of English. They mainly teach through seeing, reading, and hearing the language.

Answer 3

Hire a nanny. Most of them speak a foreign language.

Answer 4

My children are learning Spanish and French. As for the French, I took it from 4th grade until late college, and I still have my text books.

For Spanish, I got a textbook from the obsolete books warehouse for free.

Answer 5

I just started PowerGlide Intermediate French with my 6th grader and he's loving it (and picking it up rather quickly). He has 3 years of Latin behind him already, so I'm sure that's helping, too. We're using the new junior high i-course, so I don't know anything about the elementary curriculum.

Answer 6

Rosetta Stone http://www.RosettaStone.com
Power-Glide http://www.power-glide.com
Learnables http://www.learnables.com

These are the most popular homeschool language courses on the market.