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Spanish for a 12-year-old? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4827 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 9 of 14 08 June 2011 at 4:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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I might be completely off base here in the age group recommendation, but there's a kids course called Muzzy by BBC: http://www.early-advantage.com/
Note that I haven't actually used or seen the course, but it's the only children oriented starter course that sprung to mind. See for yourself whether it's suitable to your child's level and whether it would interest her. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| alegnab Newbie United States Joined 4722 days ago 4 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 11 of 14 08 June 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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As for Spanish, I took it in high school, have been brushing up on it lately, and know quite a lot. I'm far from being fluent, but I can help my children at a basic level. I just need to get a good resource to use with them.
I don't teach all of the subjects. There are some online schools that were created for homeschoolers. My children participate in one of those in the upper grades. My two older children have taken Spanish classes that way, along with a lot of other classes. They have to attend each class at a certain time each week. The teacher teaches the lesson, and each student has to participate in the class through a chat box and microphone. They have to submit work to be checked by the teacher. There are correspondence schools available, some offering videos of teachers teaching classes of students. They offer an evaluation service, so the student's work can be submitted for evaluation by a teacher. Many homeschoolers take part in co-ops (cooperatives). Several families get together weekly or so for various subjects. A parent will teach one or more subjects that she has an expertise in, while others teach other subjects to the kids. Homeschooling doesn't mean that every student stays home all day each day and is taught everything by one parent-teacher. As for sports, nearly every community has a Parks & Recreation division that offers various sports for children in the community. Some public and private school systems allow homeschooled children to participate in school sports. In some areas where there are lots of homeschooled children, homeschoolers form their own sports teams and compete against other teams. Local museums and businesses offer art classes. Every community has music teachers, and many of the teachers like homeschoolers, because homeschoolers are usually available for lessons during the school day, whereas students who go off to school are limited to lessons after school or on weekends. There are many publishers who create curricula for homeschoolers. There are currently well over one million homeschooled children in the U.S., so the market for homeschool curriculum is quite large. Homeschoolers also have access to materials published for public schools and private schools. A parent doesn't necessarily need to teach all of the subjects. My older child didn't use a science curriculum before he was 12 years old. We tried a couple of different curricula for a short while (maybe three weeks each), but I gave up on finding one we would like and just got oodles of books and videos from the library for my child. Sometimes we did experiments. He learned so much that way. He was well-prepared for upper levels of science. Children can learn on their own, if they have good resources. For example, there is one line of math produced for homeschoolers that doesn't require the parent to do anything but check the work of the student. The lesson text is written to the student, explaining thoroughly everything that is being taught in each lesson. There are CD-ROMs with the creators of the curriculum teaching the lessons, and the student can choose whether or not to use them. There are practice problems on the lesson CD-ROMs that are worked out and explained step-by-step. There is a printed answer key with just the final answers for each problem, but every lesson and test problem is worked out step-by-step on a CD-ROM so that the student can look at any he doesn't understand. The science line that my 12-to-17-year-olds use was written by a university professor specifically for homeschoolers, eliminating the need for a parent to do anything other than check work with an answer key or make sure the science experiment report follows the guidelines given by the textbook author. Some curricula have step-by-step daily instructions for teaching the material. A teacher is not required in order for a person to learn. Access to good resources is important. Homeschooling is a great success in the U.S. Homeschoolers are typically well-prepared for college. Universities, including the top ones in the U.S., actively recruit homeschoolers. Thanks for the suggestion, s0fist. I'll look into it. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4690 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 13 of 14 18 June 2011 at 3:23am | IP Logged | ||
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My soon to be 13 year old is struggling with French at school, so I have decided to take
it up along with him. You don't have to know all about something to teach it, you just have to be willing to learn. I now look forward to our 1/2 hour each evening, even if he doesn't quite as much. We are using Elisabeth Smith's Fast French, by the way. It is cheap, has a lot of audio, and I figured we can use something a bit deeper after we get through it. I supplement it with some kids books with CD's and we listen to Earworms as well. (I know I'm talking about French, but you can get the same things for Spanish). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Deji Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5221 days ago 116 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Hindi, Bengali | Message 14 of 14 16 March 2013 at 6:45am | IP Logged | ||
Muzzy is fantastic. My kids learned French with it. It's very entertaining in a Sesame Street-type way. I used to watch it with them for fun and we would try to imitate it by out-frenching the French. After we did Muzzy I and II we started buying French cartoons (no subtitles). Asterix, etc. The kids watched and understood. (We didn't). I should also mention that we got this to work by cancleing our cable, and only using videos (this was a while ago). Gosh, the TV broke! We had a rule that there was no English videos during the week--only French. Also the kids were 8 and 4 at the time. At a later age this would be harder to pull off. I only wish I had a Muzzy for my language study: Bengali. Edited by Deji on 16 March 2013 at 6:46am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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