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How to teach a 15 year old Spanish? | ||
Tags: Language Teaching | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4577 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes  Studies: English*, German | Message 17 of 22 15 September 2014 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
I am 16 and I use the same methods that the adults on HTLAL are using. Unlike a very small child I can concentrate for long periods of time without getting distracted. I have bought hammers German grammar book, some simple books in German such as Harry Potter and Assimil and membership at LingQ. At the moment, I am currently using Assimil but plan to finish it soon and then I will start on native materials. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 22 15 September 2014 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was also a teen like that when I first joined HTLAL :)
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| nj24 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4665 days ago 56 posts - 106 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, French | Message 19 of 22 15 September 2014 at 10:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you so much for all of your comments! They have been very helpful, and I wish I had time right now to
reply to each one. I definitely wasn’t trying to generalize about 15 year olds or compare them to children. I hope it didn't come across that way in my original post. I absolutely agree that every student is different, no matter their age. I have taught many very bright and gifted 15 year olds. And I was very advanced for my age when I was 15. If I had known about the FSI courses and this forum then, I’d probably be speaking far more languages now. As it was, I floundered along with Rosetta Stone and other programs I found in my library. But I also know that FSI is not for everyone, and I just wanted to get some outside perspective on any courses, etc. that particularly appeal to this age range. ;) Also, another reason is that I have never tutored a language before or had a foreign language tutor, so I wanted to know how best to help someone along and encourage them with their language learning while giving them assignments, etc. I haven’t used a textbook aside from FSI so I am interested in suggestions for textbooks with accompanying audio that would cover topics a 15 year old would be interested in (rather than the diplomatic ones covered in FSI). The Teach Yourself programs looks very good and affordable. If you’ve ever tutored or taught a foreign language (even your native language), I’d love to hear your different tips for how you organize your class sessions. I will most likely be meeting with the student over Skype. And, also, rdearman mentioned using Anki with an online account where I could check the student's progress. I've actually never used Anki before because I really dislike using flashcards. I took Latin classes in high school where we had to memorize vocabulary with flashcards, and I found I always forgot it no matter how many times I studied with the flashcards. I tried to use Anki once or twice when I first started learning Spanish, but found that I had no motivation to use it, so I ended up just letting my brain pick up vocabulary naturally (I've read a lot of books and watched a lot of Spanish TV, etc.). But I'm wondering if Anki might be a good choice for someone who doesn't read as voraciously as me? Also, his mom said he is very musical, so I'll definitely be using lots of Spanish songs for language learning activities. Thank you to EnglishEagle and Serpent for your comments! EnglishEagle, I am very interested in any input you might have. :) Do you have a teacher or are you learning entirely on your own? Do you like Assimil and what level do you think you'll reach after you've finished it? (I've actually never used it). Do you use Anki or any other program to memorize vocabulary? Thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5238 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 20 of 22 16 September 2014 at 11:14am | IP Logged | ||
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@nj24 - It is interesting the only thing you took from my post was the ANKI cards, which I personally find trying. ;-) So if you are going to use it with a student then I would be inclined to reduce the number of new cards per day to only 2-5. Also I'd just get a frequency list of words for example from here which are taken from movie subtitles. You can trim this down to the first 3000 words. Also if he wishes to create a second deck with the things he has learned and you can get a free ebook on flashcard creation from kobo. Because ANKI supports cards with Audio, Video, Photos, etc, they are good for giving better context, better than plain old-fashioned cards anyway. Finally you can create cards from films with movie subtitles using subs2srs (Subtitles to SRS) which will give you cards with the audio, and the English & Spanish subtitles for the movies.
And now since we are on the topic of flashcards, and I saw you are studying Mandarin; How are you learning Hanzi? I use flashcards heavily for my Mandarin studies, both basic hanzi, sentence hanzi as well as audio clips, pinyin and hanzi taken from the Pimsleur course I'm listening to. I also write some hanzi, but this less time-efficient for me than ANKI reviews of characters which I've stripped from books. One other thing I would say in regard to your comment about your latin flashcards, ANKI has a "leech" feature which will just suspend any card you are finding impossible to remember. For me when a card is marked as a "leech" I just edit the card so the answer is on the font and the back of the card. This way I still see the card, but no pressure to remember. Eventually after you see it enough times it will sink in. Phew! I only wanted to make a small comment! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 21 of 22 16 September 2014 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Anki is as fun as you make it. You don't have to use single-word cards. See ajatt.com and antimoon.com
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 22 of 22 16 September 2014 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say the main difference between teenage and adult learners tends to be the decision to learn a language. Vast majority of teenagers learns only because their school requires it or their parents want them to learn. Adults, while often having just as stupid reasons, still need to make the decision and noone can force them. This moment of decision is, in my opinion, very important for future success.
Other than that, there isn't much difference, in my opinion. Perhaps the teenagers have still got an advantage of learning faster (in comparison with themselves later), they have easier time acquiring the pronunciation and accent (but it is already more difficult than for children), they tend to be more curious about fun native resources and have more ability to find them on the internet (including the pirate sources) than the middle age+ learners. The moment of decision, that's why I wrote about giving him the responsibility, choosing with him and so on. A beginning like "your mum asked me to teach you Spanish and this is the best coursebook, here you are, this is the best vocabulary app ..." would be totally wrong. There are many good quality classroom meant courses for Spanish learners. Yes, they usually suffer from the normal faults of such books but it they can do the job, if the student follows the path and if you supplement them with a grammar book, perhaps a vocabulary book, music and so on. So, perhaps go to a bookstore together, discard the horrible courses of the "learn miraculously without any efforts in a week" kind and choose together. If you need recommendations, I've met people learning from Nuevo Ven and Aula who were content with the choice. But there are others. So, as you asked about recommended resources if we were to teach your teenager: -a colourful course with audio, key to exercises and so on. Probably a classroom meant one, such as Aula but there are others. -a grammar book like Gramática de Uso del Espanol (or the Anaya Gramática) -a vocabulary book like Viva el Vocabulario (or the Anaya Vocabulario) -anki, the best would be the app, if your teenager uses a smartphone -lyricstraining.com That would be for start. Following volumes of the books, easier novels like HP, a tv series or two, that would follow. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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