thinking on languages

[celticdragonfly]

We got a flyer in the mail for the Muzzy courses for foreign languages for young children. I'm thinking about it. Especially if we're going to homeschool, we should consider a second language program. There's all sorts of evidence out there that it's really good for kids, and younger is better. Brendan's heading towards kinda late to start another language, but then he's had so much trouble with English, and troubles in general, that I'm not really thinking about him - although if we got something for the other kids he would get exposure from it, and might find it helpful. No, I'm more thinking about Maggie and then in turn Jamie. We probably want to start looking into getting some kind of foreign language program for the kids.

Anybody, especially the homeschoolers, have any advice or suggestions on how to get into this sort of thing? What's worth it, what's not worth the price, common pitfalls? Age to start at? I will definitely discuss this with Maggie's speech therapists before starting anything, but I don't see them for another week.

Which has a side branch of discussion - which language? I tend to gravitate towards German - it's from my family background, I already know some of it, so I can keep up with the kids even at my advanced ;-) age, and I can pronounce it okay. Don't know how USEFUL it would be to them. Spanish would probably be the most useful, but I don't want to teach it. French is possible, but eh, maybe not. I don't see much point in Italian. That's what's usually offered.

Comments

[marymont.livejournal.com]

It is offensive to me how much being Spanish/English bilingual helps in the business world. Unless they are going into scientific fields, German won't do them much good. French is classic for building expertise in their own native language, and is a lovely language. It used to be the international language, as recently as 20 years ago, but English has zoomed ahead. Italian is just plain a gorgeous language, and since the language was constructed deliberately out of whole cloth (to make a national language out of all the local languages, kinda like Esperanto) in the Renaissance, it's the language that makes the most sense. Unless you go true classical and teach them Latin. (Which I support with my heart and soul.)

Why not more than one? That's what they do in Europe!

And why, pray tell, is my Godsdaughter going to a speech therapist at the age of 2?

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

> Unless they are going into scientific fields, German won't do them much good.

Well, scientific fields sounds good to me. I figure it would have the generic second language benefits, helping understand how a language goes together better and that sort of thing. And links to part of my family heritage, and the fun of a family language that others may not understand. (Depending on how much German I can teach selenite.) And I should be able to keep up with them.

>Unless you go true classical and teach them Latin. (Which I support with my heart and soul.)

Oh, I expect we'll eventually get there. But I don't think it will be first. Something with lots of materials, tapes, something Mama can speak rather than just read, sounds better for first.

> Why not more than one? That's what they do in Europe!

Eventually! But I figure start with one.

> And why, pray tell, is my Godsdaughter going to a speech therapist at the age of 2?

She's not 2 until June - she started with the speech therapists back in December. Ironically, on Jamie's birthday. (I generally am there and participating in each session, but I missed that one!)

Back before we left California we had her evaluated, here's some of the posts on it:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/celticdragonfly/34957.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/celticdragonfly/37759.html
http://www.livejournal.com/users/celticdragonfly/44252.html

We worked with what they'd told us about in California - changed her shoes, worked on teaching her specific things, etc - then got her evaluated by the early childhood people here in Texas:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/celticdragonfly/56651.html
They tested her hearing
http://www.livejournal.com/users/celticdragonfly/64862.html

She has two different therapists who come out twice a month each, alternating weeks. They come HERE, and work with her in our living room, which is just too wonderful for words. They're great people, and really like Maggie. She's making tremendous progress. I think some of it is me learning from the therapists how to work with her, how to hear a sound and encourage it as if it was the word we're aiming for, so it can become that. I have hearing discrimination troubles, so they were hearing her say things and encouraging them and "modeling" them, for stuff I wasn't clearly hearing.

Anyway, they recently went through the checklist again, and said she'd gained something like 6 months worth of progress in expressive language, and almost a year in receptive language, in about 3 months. She's been very receptive to it. If they were evaluating her now, she wouldn't qualify any more! They definitely think she will NOT turn out autistic. Yay.

[patgund.livejournal.com]

Well, we're working getting Muzzy French for Little Bit, (since both her mum and me are at least semi-literate in that language), and plan to add Spanish to it later. In your case, I would suggest German, (goodness knows I wish I had taken German rather than French, oh well.....), and maybe Spanish later.

You do know they have Muzzy Gaelic, right..... ;-)

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

GAELIC? The flyer didn't mention that. The webpage didn't.

(goes back and scrutinizes the webpage. Muzzy By Language. Hey, there's a link for "other languages")

Migods, they have Gaelic. (And ESL, and Japanese)

selenite, honey, you reading this?

Hey, why don't they have Gaelic on DVD?!?

[selenite.livejournal.com]

As romantic as the idea seems, Gaelic is dying. I don't think it's a good investment of their time. Japanese would be better.

[archangelbeth]

As a total monoglot, I'd say teach ANYTHING you can teach. If you can speak German, that sounds like a good place to start. Latin can be very useful for figuring out roots of fancy words, and help on SATs potentially. Spanish, alas, is useful and has some small amount of Sesame Street reinforcement. French channels are around, and French graphic novels and manga come out that aren't in English for quite some time. (My friend in England knows French.) Japanese means they can mock subtitles. O:>

So, um, my notions. O:>

According to my early education beliefs, the earlier the better for starting. After about age 6, and I think 10, the brain changes in ways that tend to make learning harder. (These changes, according to what I recall, happen at around 6 months (you can teach perfect pitch before then, IIRC), 2 years, and 6 years. I think another one happens around 10.)

The sooner the better, if that's the case! O:>

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Ohmigod, QUICK, how do you teach perfect pitch?!? Jamie's only 4 months...

I'm wondering if it would interfere any with Maggie's learning English to start her on another language now.

[archangelbeth]

Get a xylophone, or whatever the fancy "not really a xylophone because it has the black keys as well as white ones" is called, which has perfect pitch. (A piano is not a good idea, because they tend to go out of tune at a moment's notice.) If you have a little four-note thing for tuning violins, that can do for those four notes... Couldn't hurt, anyway.

Wander by every so often, 15-30 minutes or so, strike a note, and say "B-flat" or whatever.

Repeat for however long you feel like doing it, several times a day as your enthusiasm and scheduling permits.

You can also show cards with the notes drawn on the appropriate bar, so you can get reading music as well.

(I suggest, BTW, reading cards. The minx is reading a book over here, at age 4, and GODS IT IS SO USEFUL. Except when she reads something like "ass" and I have to explain it's a rude word for "bottom" and an old word for "donkey." Er.)

This, and all my other early education stuff, is drawn from the material at
www.iahp.org .

Luck!

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Um. I *have* a piano. Tuned, too - I had it tuned before Mom came to visit, as I know how she gets about these things. Wouldn't that do?

And I really think under 6 months is a bit young for flash cards. Brendan is learning to read music, and I can see Maggie learning it in the next year, though.

Hm, I have music flashcards SOMEWHERE that I got for harp practice. I ought to dig them out and see if I can stand to work with Brendan that long. But I'll start doing the piano stuff with Jamie.

[archangelbeth]

According To My Data, Pianos go out of tune like crazy. You can probably get relative pitch, but the humidity, etc., warps them quickly so that you don't get perfect pitch out of them. *shrug*

Six months is not too young for flash-cards, done right. They need to be big (because kids are far sighted), and very simple, and you don't hold them out and say things like, "Caaaaaaat, this is caaaaaaaaaat." You just whip through them with "Cat, dog, caterpillar, elephant, california condor" and leave 'em at that.

I was showing the minx words... pretty early. Six months definitely. She'd sit on my lap and I could show her as many as 30 at a time! (Which I shouldn't have been doing, strictly, but she clearly liked it so much!)

I mean, at 6 months, the kid is learning everything like a sponge. By 2 years, they've got most of a language, right? The earlier you input data, the more of it sticks.

You could start it with German, too -- write the words on relatively large white paperboard, say, "Here are some words in german!" and then go through them. To explain what they are, you can do things like, "Colors in German!" And go through those, whif, whif, whif.

All the time is in the creating of the cards. Prep is a bear. One of my paternal unit's projects was renting out "bits" so that people could rent a bunch of stuff and send it back. (Good idea. Bad execution, and possibly simply not economically viable. My sire is not a good business being.)

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe I can do something with the Finale Notepad software on the computer.

Gack. Flash cards by 6 months? No, I did not want to do anything like that. Sigh, more data to make me feel like a total crap of a mother. I wouldn't even know where to start with creating flash cards. Just shoot me and drop me over a cliff now.

Maggie's almost two, and she DEFINITELY does not have most of a language yet. A good chunk, yes. Clearly in the process of download, starting to get it together, putting two words together several times a week. But NOT most of a language. And this is after 4 months of speech therapy.

[marymont.livejournal.com]

Sorry, Beth, that's not teaching perfect pitch. That's teaching either sight-reading, or note recognition.

[archangelbeth]

*spreads hands* If you can tone-match an exact note, and know what exact note it is, then isn't that perfect pitch? I don't claim that it will detour around, say, voice training to sing perfect pitch -- but I would imagine it would help a lot there.

Since it's not part of my early stuff (unlike the reading cards, which were), I don't know it for certain, and I didn't want to dig up the fancy not-a-xylophone-but-I-forget-the-fancy-name that the full scale technique is supposed to need -- so da minxness is merely a reader, like me.

Mind, I wouldn't mind sight-reading -- I vaguely comprehend how it feels to be illiterate, because I look at notes and I don't hear music in my mind or feel fingering positions or anything. I see dots and lines.

[marymont.livejournal.com]

You can't teach perfect pitch. You either have it or you don't.

You can teach someone to have a good ear, but perfect hearing pitch and perfect singing pitch are not necessarily hand-in-hand.

The best you can do is fill their lives with good music (classical is best, because most popular music is sung by people with untrained or semi-trained voices) and pray.