About the Pimsleur method that I mention above: I've just discovered that this (among many other things) can be checked out electronically through NetLibrary, which I can access free through my local public library. You download it onto your computer, then can use it for three weeks (or six weeks, if you renew); after that the file becomes unusable. A six-week trial is a pretty good test. Unfortunately, the software that runs it isn't available for Macs, so my family can't do it that way, and the physical copies are constantly checked out.

I'd also like people's opinions on this - who it works for, who it doesn't.

Beth,
Just wanted to say thanks for your response. As a result, we are now seriously considering Latin!! Ds has stated that he enjoys studying roots, so dh and I were thinking maybe this would be a good route. As to the Spanish, no coop opportunities, no luck finding a Spanish tutor (although we hadn't tried really hard yet), and the nearest college is about a 40 minute drive away. We still have another year before high school, so if Latin doesn't work, I still have some time to decide what I'm going to do as far as a Spanish text! (There are a lot of Hispanic folks in our area, hence we thought Spanish was a natural thing to study.)

Thanks for making me think in other areas--I'll let you know what we decide!
Michelle

Just have to add, since I've been talking about Pimsleur: Yesterday I found a Pimsleur introductory Japanese course for $7.50 at a used book store, so I bought it. I played it for my family as we drove out this evening. All five of us chorused the responses, and we loved it! When we finished, kids asked, "Can't we do another lesson? Not until tomorrow? Why not? Well, if we can't do another one tonight, can we do this one again?" And the three kids are walking around the house asking each other, in rapid (and beautiful!) Japanese, "Do you speak Japanese?" "No. I speak English." "Are you Japanese? No, I'm an American."

My middle daughter, who's studying German, said, "I think I'll start doing the Pimsleur German, too. Can I do more than one lesson at a time, since I already know a lot?" "Yes, you can," I told her. "LUCKY! No fair!" shouted her younger brother. This is how they're talking about schoolwork, on the first day of their summer!

I've rarely presented something to the family and had it be such a success. Of course, my family is linguistically inclined and therefore probably doesn't have a typical response. I'd still like to hear other people's experiences with it.

Hi Beth,

It sounds like we do the same thing. I am also a former Spanish teacher and have a collection of Spanish texts, readers etc. I've been using Rosetta Stone with a small group of kids who are Middle School age (in the fall they will be 7th and 8th grade). I want to supplement the grammar.

I know you suggested Practical Spanish grammar. Do you think it is age-appropriate for that level? Some grammar books I've looked at are beyond what they need at this point. I would like something that covers the grammar, has exercises and an answer key in the book. I've tried looking inside the book on Amazon but it doesn't have that option.

I love the Amsco books--but no answer key.

Thanks for your input,
Christina

This was an interesting post to find since this is sort of what I plan to do. We have Rosetta Stone, so I was going to do that. I also have Spanish Now and Practice Makes Perfect Spanish verbs as well as Conversational Spanish in 7 days and a junior high textbook entitled Speaking Spanish and introductory course. Rosetta Stone just wasn't enough to help us on our mission trip to Honduras. I don't have a clue what I am doing, though.

Christine

Christina,

Practical Spanish Grammar probably isn't appropriate for the middle school level. Or let me say, you probably won't enjoy dealing with the parents over this book, because of the dealings with alcohol. I can't look at it again (just loaned it out to someone), but it also seems to me that the vocabulary presented, being mostly travel focused, might not appeal, either. I still really like the book, but I'm not sure it's what you're looking for. It might well move too fast for your kids.

I've used the Amsco books (the Spanish First Year and all, the older edition). I make my own answer keys. That's a one-time thing, and it was worth it to me when I taught (though I only did the third-year book, I think).

My favorite suggestion for the middle-school level would have to be the Converso Mucho (Ya Converso Mas, Nos Comunicamos) series. I think it's from NTC, a series called Viva el español. It presents grammar in small enough chunks for the kids to understand, generally with some nice exercises. It's out of print, of course, and therefore may be unusable. But if you can find copies, I recommend it.

I just looked over the titles available on Amazon. The Practice Makes Perfect Grammar may be a good one. I need to look around and figure out some good texts that are still in print. The main problem, as those of you who are Spanish teachers already know, is that no textbook, or grammar exercise book, offers enough practice. Books move too fast. Teachers are constantly writing and designing additional exercises for their classes.

I need to look and see what's available online now for grammar practice.


Christine,

It looks like you have a good start for books. You have some good resources. (I'm not familiar with the 7 Days one, although generally the ones that promise you'll learn in a specific length of time are designed more for easy marketing than for easy learning.) Keep looking out for resources to add, and dive in. Find a resource to help you with pronunciation first - you, not so much your kids; you can teach them gradually once you understand the basics.

If you get bogged down, reassure yourself that the problem isn't you! Language learning is tough, and learning without a teacher is tougher. Seek out help wherever you can find it.

I'm resurrecting this old thread because I'm back in the same boat I was in a year ago!! After nearly a year of Latin, ds14 has decided that Latin is even worse than Spanish was, and he wants to go back to Spanish. And since he starts high school in the fall, there's no more time to play. I think he is more motivated to study Spanish than he was before, especially since he now realizes 1) that he needs two years of a foreign language to get into almost any college and 2) he gets a kick out of being able to read the Spanish signs in our community (there aren't any signs written in Latin! .)

I've spent the last two days with my nose in "Homeschooling High School" and the "Form+U+La" books and I've realized that using traditional texts isn't going to work for us in the foreign language area. Although I'd love to sit down and learn with him, I've got to face reality--which is that with five other children, one of which is language delayed and needs LOTS of my time, I more than likely won't be able to keep up with him. So I'm looking for resources that are written for self-study (which textbooks almost always aren't). I've found materials written with the perspective of being able to share your faith. They have an indepth Spanish course that the author tells me that, in his opinion, if levels I-V are completed along with some outside reading, would be the equivalent of two years of high school Spanish. The company's name is Logos Language Institute, and the website is http://www.languagesforchrist.org/home
Mary Pride and Cathy Duffy both review it favorably. Is there anyone who has used this?

And Beth, in case you are reading this I'm still planning to incorporate Rosetta Stone and any other grammar resource we find necessary, and more than likely hire a tutor for conversation practice, eventually. I just have to have some kind of spine to start with!

Michelle

Hi, Beth. I realize this discussion was a year ago, but I so recently read it that I thought of you when I found this link: http://www.virtualhomeschoolgr...ourse/view.php?id=35

They are looking for volunteer teachers to help with Spanish - it's a free virtual homeschool coop kind of thing that I just discovered that seems pretty amazing. I just looked it up this morning and was pretty impressed.

Michelle -

I'm not ignoring you - staying off computer because of bad carpal tunnel - have more to say, but promised husband I'd stay off - I'm only online normally when someone else types for me -hope all is well, please reread earlier comments and combine lots of resources - find someone who can speak with him, not much good without that - also look at www.wordchamp.com which I like a lot for vocab drill - wish I could give more details but need to stop.

Beth

Dear Ladies,

I must tell you that this thread has been SUCH interesting reading for me!!

We graduated our first-born last year, and although we had diligently "done" foreign languages since 7th grade we never seemed to move very far into the courses.

We skipped from Spanish, to Latin, to French, to Latin, to Spanish... and then we got to senior year!

I called the University my son wanted to attend and asked them to tell me just what "Two Years" of foreign language entailed; they said he should be able to read and write. So, I created my own requirements (based on what I recalled from my own long years of foreign language studies in high school & college) and he was able to pass.

All this time, I thought I'd been agonizing on my own; reading all you have written has been such a relief!!!

I now have an upcoming sophomore, and we are going with "Tell Me More", which seems to answer a lot of the questions (grammar, etc.) but then, all new products promise so much. sigh...

However, because of all the excellent advice I have gleaned from you wonderful ladies (I cannot imagine how much time went into crafting all your questions and answers - thank you so much!) I shall now be combining the many resources I have (Rosetta Stone, various texts, readers, etc.) and creating a far better, stronger method!

THANK YOU for keeping this thread alive!!

Muchas gracias, mis amigas! (hope that is somewhat correct, and I don't know how to make the upside-down exclamation point)

Caryl, who sometimes gets to chat with friends from Mexico and make them laugh hilariously!

I'm glad it's been helpful!

Here are some new resources that I'd like to add to the mix.

***www.wordchamp.com is a fabulous language-learning website. My favorite feature is Absolute Recall: you give it vocabulary words that you want to learn (there are various ways of adding words to it) and then it drills you over time, keeping track of which words are hard for you and which aren't. The easiest words it may just ask you about once every few months; the hard ones you will see much more often. It takes some time of exploration to understand all the features, but it's really neat. And it's free, if you don't mind limiting your study time to less than 50 different "flashcards" per day. (I paid the $10 for the year so that I can do more, since I'm working on three different languages.)

Absolute Recall is not good for quick study - it's meant for long-term retention, and won't provide enough practice for learning this week's vocabulary words. But for long-term learning it's great; I'm using it for my quite basic Japanese study, for my intermediate-level German (AR has helped enable me to read some German literature without a dictionary!), and the random Spanish words that I continue to learn. Even with three languages, I rarely spend more than ten minutes a day studying, although choosing what words to enter next can be time-consuming.

Another feature is that you can use their special Web viewer to look at any Spanish-language website, and get an immediate translation of any word you don't recognize.

***An online dictionary for Spanish (and other languages too): http://wordreference.com/ This is the best I've found. There are associated forums for questions and answers, though you should read the policies before you post, to avoid annoying everyone. Mostly, you'll be able to answer your questions by reading other people's threads.

***The next resource is a set of graded readers published in Spain for language learners. The easiest ones limit themselves to a vocabulary of 400 words each. You need an understanding of verb forms, although in the easiest books they stick with present tense as much as they can, and they avoid the subjunctive. You need a fairly full understanding of pronouns (direct object, indirect object and reflexive ones), too. If you can handle those grammar points, though, you should be able to read these quite interesting books, which look like real novels and have about 15-30 pages of text each.

The disadvantage to these readers, however, is the moral content. The three I have looked at are about crimes, but they're not detective stories. Two are stories of revenge - and almost every character is committing a crime of some sort (sometimes murder). In the third, I don't think the main characters commit a crime exactly but one is intimately involved with pretty shady activities. I don't know whether all the books are like this, but I certainly wouldn't use these books with my younger children, or with any kids at all without pre-reading. I might use them with older kids simply because they're so valuable linguistically, and we could have some interesting discussions (maybe in Spanish) about the morality of these people.

Here's the description of another of these books, which I haven't read: "A teenager dominated by a woman older than him, a father who feels guilty, a drug dealer and a detective with bad luck form a complex story around a kidnapping...."

I was highly disappointed, because these books are in other ways excellent and would be quite a reward for a motivated student who has persevered long enough to master some basic vocabulary and grammar. If you're interested, here's a link which takes you to some excerpts from the stories, along with some interactive activities. El misterio de la llave is one of the stories I have.
http://cvc.cervantes.es/aula/lecturas/inicial/

And a list of books available:
http://www.santillanausa.com/c...pa_ol_8-12__C775.cfm

O.K.... this thread was FAR too long for me to read all of it. Besides that, I have found a way to make the Abeka texts work for me. All I really have to add to this is some opinion about readers. I feel from Spanish 2 on, that it is very important to add reading into the mix. Beyond what is in the normal textbook. I have two resources that I like pretty well. The first is "Easy Spanish Reader". It has three different sections. I find the first section to be boring and a little slow for the kids. It is a story about 2 teenagers and their high school experience. The second section is the History of Mexico. More interesting and culturally educational. The final section is the story of "Lazarillo de Tormes". This is a classic Spanish tale editted for easy reading. The second resource I would recommend for students (usually in Spanish 3, but a motivated Spanish 2 student could enjoy it as well.) This would be the Narnia series. I find most students are familiar enough with the stories to be able to follow them even though they are not "graded readers". I assign one chapter/week and ask the students to write a summary of each chapter as well as write down any new words they don't know. If by the end of the chapter, they have not figured out the meanings of these words from the context, they are required to look them up.

One final resource that I have found helpful is the website by the University of Texas called Spanish proficiency... Just google U of TX and Spanish and you should find it easily. They have multiple native spanish speakers talking on multiple topics. You can listen with Spanish text, english translation or no text at all. I assign one topic/week (this will usually have 5-7 short video clips for the student to listen to. I ask that they either listen with no text or spanish text first and test themselves to see if they can understand, then after listening a couple of times, they can check by looking at the english text.

Hope this is helpful!
Rebecca

Caryl,

For spanish accents and upside down punctuation. Most computers work with these keystrokes.

á - Alt 160
é - Alt 130
í - Alt 161
ó - alt 162
ú - Alt 163
ñ - Alt 164
¿ -Alt 168
¡ - Alt 173
(Alt = is the Alt key)

Rebecca,

Thanks for adding that about the UT Spanish website - I agree that it's great but had forgotten to post about it.

I also have found a very good reader for the first year that I'm excited about: the Cuéntame más reader. It has lots of readings which use the same structures and vocabulary over and over. If you use the associated textbook then the readings can be started quite early in the first year, but if you're using it to supplement, you'll want to wait a bit longer. Though the readings use a very restricted vocabulary, they are quite funny (well, actually they're silly, but they appeal to me). And there is LOTS of reading at the same level - it looks like they've got almost enough (very short) stories in there to read one every day for the whole year. If you go to the "downloads" page on that website, you can download the entire first chapter (20 readings!) and check it out.

I haven't used this series, but I plan to with the Spanish class I'm teaching. It requires a very hands-on teacher with facility in the language to be done as written, although the textbook could almost certainly be used as a supplement as well. The reader offers more value, though, since it's only $10.

This author (Blaine Ray) has also written a series of shorts "novels" for early students (much easier than the series I posted about above). I recommend these, no matter what you're using for a main text. I bought them at Teacher's Discovery. The ones I've looked at don't have the problems of the other novels I listed above.

The good thing about the Teacher's Discovery website is that you can see page samples of the books they offer.

Hello!

Just found your notes and thought I would add input for German. I too have collected texts, readers, childrens books, etc. As a language teacher I see the benefits of parts of one book then adding parts of another. RS is great with pronunciation, interaction, and I do like that in the upper levels you have to type in what you have heard. It lacks the reason Why? Why does that article change? (As it does often in German). As much as one may not want to study the grammar and vocab it is necessary to an understanding of the language. Here are some options:

German Made Simple: Great for explaining pronunciation including mouth posture! The lessons are short with some practice sentences and vocab. It is a gentle grammar approach. I found this at BN.

First 1000 Words in German: Not just for kids! Just words in a fun format.

Kontakte: This was one of my college texts, but is great to use at the HS level. The topics are more acceptable than traditional HS texts. Has listening component with workbook. It is designed for someone who knows German. McGraw Hill

Childrens Bible: Look for one at a used book store. Sometimes knowing the text in English then seeing it in German helps it stick!

Collect childrens books: We have a Powells Bookstore which has new and used and is HUGE. I will look up the name of a large German bookstore but that could be pricey and ordering in German could get tricky.

Love the idea of collecting many texts, books, audio! Studying a language everyday is the key.

Many blessings on your language exploration!

Shelli