Spanish.

I've been thinking a lot lately about Spanish --- teaching it to the kids, that is.  There's so much material available for Spanish speakers, and we live in a heavily Spanish-speaking part of town.  It's the obvious language to do, if we're going to do a foreign language at all.

Problem:  I don't know Spanish.

I'd like to learn, though.   I wonder if we could learn it together as a family?

I'm not happy with the "complete curricula" I've seen.  Frankly, I'm spoiled.  I studied French off and on in elementary school, took four years in high school, and got a minor in college.  I had excellent teachers, and my high school education in French was very traditional and rigorous:  lots of vocabulary drills, copywork, and translation; journal writing; classes taught mostly in French after the first year.  I keep expecting to be able to find something out there for kids to learn Spanish that reminds me of what I had as a high school student (albeit written for a third- or fifth- grade level).  Haven't found it.  I am really disappointed, so far, in what's available for homeschoolers. 

I was a bit tempted to pick up the classroom curriculum that's used by our parish school, which does Spanish in grades K-6, for no other reason than that I know the other curricula they use are extremely high quality and tend to the classical/traditional style (Saxon Math, for instance, and the Faith and Life series of religion texts from Ignatius Press.)  It's Viva El Espanol, a McGraw-Hill series.    Unfortunately, it appears to come with a bunch of classroomy educational crap, like an octopus puppet.  Also the descriptions are full of edspeak, like "The Total Physical Response Storytelling (TPRS) technique is now a part of lessons!" Whatever that means.  I don't suppose I could get away with just using a textbook, or maybe a text plus a teachers' edition.

I suppose I could start the way I started in French, with a boatload of vocabulary drills.  I remember how helpful the vocabulary drill was back in high school --- the eighth-grade "pre-French" year consisted of almost nothing but vocabulary drill and a little bit of conversational stuff.  A bit tedious at times, but having all those vocabulary words at hand really helped when it was time to learn grammar in ninth grade.   Technically, all I need for that is a good dictionary and a stack of 5 x 8 index cards --- picture on the front, Spanish word on the back.  I found this website that sells access, $30 for six months, to downloads of 2000 or so clip-art type flash cards.  So for $30 plus the cost of printing and filing I could have a starter kit of 2000 vocabulary words.  It's hard to beat that.   I tried --- there's lots of "English/Spanish" flash card sets out there, but just about all of them have English words on the front and Spanish on the back (no good for teaching nonreaders --- and anyway, forces the learner to "translate" rather than to think in the new language) or English words on the back, Spanish words and pictures on the front. 

So suppose we spend a couple of years just working on vocabulary.  I bet the kids would enjoy learning the Spanish names for colors, animals, various verbs, conversational phrases, and so on.  Maybe during that time a   decent Spanish curriculum for homeschoolers will come along.  In the meantime we can supplement with various videos, multimedia stuff, and the like.  Still, I wish some publisher somewhere would read my mind and put together a program exactly like the one I imagine using in my head.   I just finished phonics --- I don't want to design my own Spanish program unless I absolutely have to! 

Comments

[Jamie]

I wanted to teach Spanish without knowing it myself (well, I know a smidge of Spanish -- never took it but have tried to pick up bits and pieces). It didn't work terribly well for us, and we've moved on to languages that I know better: Latin and German. I think the way kids absorb language is by hearing it often -- things like, "Pass the salt" and, "Was that a delicious booger you just ate?" (I'm sure your kids would never eat their boogers so you would need different practice sentences, of course.) My boys were *not* enthusiastic about learning vocab without a broader context, and I didn't have the skills to provide that context for Spanish. Let us know what you decide and how it goes.

[Angela C.]

Something else you might want to consider is what kind of accent your children will have if you plan on teaching them Spanish. Do you want them to sound like they're from Spain or Latin America?

I took two years of French in college from a professor who was originally from northern Italy. While on trips to France, her graduate students were asked who taught them French because they had Italian accents. (Just thinking of that story makes me smile.)

[Louise]

OK, I will plug for the Rosetta Stone computer program. They offer Latin American Spanish or uh, Spanish Spanish!!

You can try their demo CD-rom which gives a smattering of a variety of their languages.

Really, its very good. I think it was about $300 US for the Two Levels. You can buy one level for less.

Cost-wise its pretty comparable with what you'd pay for a course for one person, but in this case you get to offer it to the whole family.

My kids love it.

[Kelly]

Power Glide is also popular among homeschoolers.

[bearing]

Louise - I am familiar with Rosetta Stone, as we were able for a while to access it online through the local public library. I noticed the $300 homeschool kit --- can you tell me about the materials that come with it, the text and worksheets? I was pretty impressed with the Rosetta Stone technique. I think the money'll be better spent after my oldest can read and write somewhat fluently (in English), so that he can use the text features.

As for context, I agree. I'm hoping that we can create some by drawing on the community we live in (heavily Hispanic) and maybe through literature and movies in Spanish.

[Louise]

I think the Latin American Spanish program has some workbooks with it. The Spain version doesn't though.

They are just supplements really; the student learns to read and write the language on the computer.

It would be possible to use the program with a non-reading child, but they will probably get more out of it if they can read and write at least a bit.