Awhile ago, I wrote about why I believe that teaching foreign languages to young students is over rated. It’s quite hard to teach your child a foreign language if you don’t speak it yourself. Consequently, I do not advise parents to spend an arm and a leg on a foreign language curriculum in the early elementary grades. You will find that it does very little, if any good towards producing a child that can speak the foreign tongue. Exposure on the other hand is never a bad thing.
I do feel like I need to make the point that I am assuming the home schooling parent in question does not have experience in the target language. After my last article someone asked me if I teach my own young children foreign language and indeed I do. The key difference however, is that I speak the target language I’m teaching. I follow this basic pattern that I’ve outlined here, but I include more opportunities for speaking and response and I use the vocabulary we are working on throughout the day in natural situations.
In the early grades, I mentioned that the focus is all about exposure rather than learning to speak. Any phrases that you teach in the early grades have to be phrases which your child would regularly use in English as well. The idea that the world is bigger than one’s own immediate surroundings is key in teaching foreign languages and is a good building block to start with.
Starting in about 4th grade however, the focus can change provided that a couple of conditions are met:
1) The student is interested in learning the foreign language. Many parents force their kids to take Spanish early on, explaining that it is practical. This will do little more than kill the desire to learn the language because 4th graders have no need for practical yet.
2) Learning is still not completely structured but rather centered on learning the child’s own environment.
Assuming however, that your child has interest in learning the language, this is a good time to start working towards a conversation. You can break learning down in this way:
Key Phrases
Things like introducing yourself, and asking and answering basic questions should be worked on here.
Expanding vocabulary naturally
Personally, I still think it is too early to have kids memorize vocabulary word upon vocabulary word. Rather try learning one verb a week with appropriate nouns. Focus on one type of activity or space per week. For example, if you want to focus on sports for the week a verb you might use would be ‘jugar’ which is Spanish for ‘to play’. Teach your student how to conjugate it, and then work on appropriate nouns or phrases that go with ‘jugar’. And where do you find all this out? You can look online and you can also look in the foreign language section of your Barnes and Noble. Steer clear of really expensive packages but something as simple as ‘Spanish in 10 Minutes a Day’ would be just fine.
So when should you spend the big bucks on a foreign language curriculum? No earlier than 7th grade. By this time, the student should be writing fluently (and well) in his or her own language. Hopefully too, you’ve been building a foundation that foreign language study is important to communicate with the world around us and is a necessary and valuable skill.
Related Articles:
Teaching Foreign Languages: What the Research Really Says
Teaching Foreign Languages: Intro
Creeping Doubts: Missing Something?