Add foreign language study to your homeschool curriculum

"Hey, wait!  I slept through high school Spanish!"  I hear you say.  I didn't even learn Spanish, so I understand your panic, especially as my 6th-grade daughter is now studying - you guessed it - Spanish.

My Background

So, how am I doing this?  Let me give you some background on my own foreign language studies to start things off.  I took three years of French in high school and did well (thank you, Madame Petrens!).  I took a year of German in college and another year or so right after graduation. 

Then we moved to Italy.

I'm not much of an immersion-style language learner, I discovered.  My husband, who studied Latin in high school, taught himself to speak Italian by watching Italian TV and talking, talking, talking whenever we were out and about.  Not me.  I learned a lot of Italian vocabulary and no verbs at all.  After three years in Italy I could do every possible tourist thing (eat, buy train tickets, read signs) but I couldn't talk about what I did yesterday.

Fast forward a few years to Virginia Beach.  While we lived there, I took a year of college French and a non-credit conversation course.  I beefed up my studies by watching French-Canadian news, reading French newspapers online and hosting a French exchange student who really, really wanted to learn English.  (Thank you, Sandrine!)

Our Homeschool Experience

When we started homeschooling, I bought Latin is Fun, Prima Latina and a few other resources.  I'd seen for myself how helpful Latin really is - not just in boosting your vocabulary but in helping you learn any Romance language.  Things didn't go very well, though.  I couldn't figure out how Latin worked, my children disliked the Prima Latina approach and my husband - you know, the one who knows Latin - was at sea or standing watch most of the time.

When high school rolled around, I really sweated the foreign language issue.  My son was thinking about Chinese, Russian and other languages I don't know.  I couldn't afford Rosetta Stone software.  We were able to access Rosetta Stone through the Montgomery County Public Library System (don't get excited, Rosetta Stone cancelled this program), though, so we logged on and checked out a few languages.  That's when I realized that I, personally, can't learn languages solely via Rosetta Stone.

Fortunately, my son settled on German instead.  We did fairly well - he used Rosetta Stone and a couple of textbooks I bought at a local bookstore.  When the library sent an email saying that Rosetta Stone was no longer available, we didn't worry too much, because they offered Tell Me More instead.

Now, Tell Me More is probably a good program, but we had tons of trouble accessing it from home.  It loaded slowly and couldn't accurately recognize sounds from our laptop microphone.  Discouragement set in.

At this point I reverted to the writer's creed - Go With What You Know - and I bought my old college German textbook from an online bookseller.  We started at the beginning and went slowly.  This was okay, as most universities agree that one year of high school foreign language is equivalent to a semester of college-level foreign language study.  We finished two years of high school German in this way.  We were fortunate enough to take two trips to Germany during this time, which gave us a chance to practice listening and speaking and to learn a lot about German culture and history.

This year, my son announced that he was switching to French.  My daughter picked Spanish.  I bought a homeschool Spanish program (book, CD and songbook) at a homeschool conference and studied it over the summer.  For my son, I bought the textbook used in my own county's public schools.  (Actually, I swapped for it, but that's another story.)  I went online and discovered that our library can borrow French In Action VHS tapes from the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and sent in a request for the first three.  I had used this VHS series - you guessed it - in my college classes in Virginia Beach.  They're great for building listening comprehension skills.

Did It Work?

A semester or so into the year, we're doing pretty well.  I feel comfortable with my son's progress in French.  He's figured out how to study a language and has made a lot of progress so far.

My daughter, who has a lot of very good reasons for wanting to learn Spanish, finished her whole program in about three months.

Fortunately, our homeschool co-op offered Spanish for her grade level this fall, so we used those materials, some printable worksheets and bilingual books from the library to finish the first semester.  We went to For This Child in Essex and found a middle school Spanish textbook there, and we're using this book as her spine for at least the rest of this year.  I'm still borrowing bilingual materials from the library, and we'll probably watch a favorite DVD or two in Spanish (you can change the language tracks on most DVDs).  It turns out that beginning Spanish isn't too hard to understand, so now I'm learning along with my daughter.  Maybe someday I'll get around to Latin.

Is my approach typical?  Well, for me it is.  I tried some of the highly-recommended materials for each language.  Some were a good fit, while others weren't, so we made changes.  I worked hard to stay within my budget; while Rosetta Stone would be great to have, I can't justify the expense right now.  When we were struggling, I reverted to books and materials I knew I could use.  When my daughter selected a language I didn't know, I bought a kit that could help her read, write, listen and speak - all the elements of foreign language study.  This is how I've handled nearly every subject we've tackled in the last seven years.

That's what's worked for me.  Your results may vary.