Teaching Foreign Language at Home
Melody Moore
Sounds like an impossible task? Don't lose heart! In spite of the challenge, teaching a foreign language can be an enjoyable, rewarding family experience.
Begin your efforts be finding a foreign language curriculum that will meet your needs. Look for interesting content and an exciting approach that utilizes student involvement. Find out about the philosophy by asking yourself questions as you browse through the textbook. Does it promote the right values? Are there any humanistic or anti-Christian ideas? Will it push your student beyond academic goals and prepare him for a ministry? Are there dialogues that students (and family) can act out? Does the program contain ways for students to learn to present the gospel, pray, and memorize Scripture in the new language? Are supplementary materials such as audio tapes and workbooks provided?
Once you have chosen your curriculum, the next step involves preparing for the learning experience. Getting ready include personal preparation, planning lessons, and preparing visual aids. The goal is to remain two or three weeks ahead of your student. To prepare yourself, consider taking a night class in a local community college. This will give you a foundation in the language and will make you more comfortable with what you will be teaching.
Background provided by the language class, along with your curriculum, will give you a starting point for your lesson plans. Local high school teachers can give advice on what materials they use, examples of how they test, and ways they present a lesson.
The final step in preparation deals with visual aids. To relate new vocabulary to family situations, start be labelling common items around the house with their foreign language names. (Your students can help.) Identifying words by association and repetition will definitely aid in learning. Every night he will see 'cama' instead of 'bed'. Whenever he walks out of his room, train him to say 'porte' instead of 'door'. As time goes on, he should use these words to construct sentences such as 'la cama está en el dormitorio' or 'fermez la porte, s'il vous plaît.'
Transition between lessons will be easier if your student is already a little familiar with the vocabulary when he sees it in his text. Look for everyday ways to encourage participation with visuals.
Now you are ready for the job of teaching. The four basic skills-reading, speaking, listening, and writing-should be practiced in every lesson. Sadly enough, many programs follow a procedure of simply completing a reading and writing exercise, correcting it, and moving on to the next lesson. However, having prepared yourself for the lesson, you can expose the student to the material so that he discovers a new idea before seeing it in the book.
For example, in a grammar lesson, use visuals to demonstrate what the prepositions are doing in each sentence. For the sentence "The dog is next to the cat," draw a dog next to a cat. Show the visuals and have your student say, or write down, the proper sentence. This will give a visual reminder of the prepositions when it is time to fill in the blanks.
What about pronunciation? Try using your new language in family devotions. You can read a familiar verse in the language and help your children to memorize it over the course of a week. You and your foreign language student should also take the opportunity to pray in the target language. Find a native speaker and practice pronunciation in real conversation. This will help you with the flow and rhythm of a language, as well as the pronunciation of individual words and sentences.
Good pronunciation comes from listening and repeating good spoken examples. Whether included in your curriculum or as a supplemental tool, audio recordings of native speakers are a must. Check with your local library and bookstores for audio resources. Even foreign language music tapes will help make your student familiar with the language. As your student listens to the native speakers on tape, have him repeat the words and sentences used. Since he often cannot judge his own pronunciation, be available to compare it to what you hear on the tape. Once he is pronouncing correctly, your student can record his own voice. Playing it back can be both humorous and encouraging.
Now that you know how to teach reading, writing, speaking and listening-how can you assess each of these? The answer is simple: test the material the same way you taught it. Assessment should be a natural outgrowth of the teaching time. While keeping in contact with your student all along, you have discovered how he learns, what types of exercises he has been doing, and how long he takes to complete each task.
When designing tests, make sure you include sections for speaking, writing, reading, and listening. Test questions should be similar to the exercises the student is accustomed to doing. When a particular section includes two or three exercises, use one for a quiz. Or, choose one or two items from each exercise as quiz and test questions. Quiz frequently so that your students do not have to face a large amount of material at one time.
Constantly reviewing will keep concepts from dying with the lesson. Repetition not only aids learning but also is essential. Therefore, testing needs to be more than written. For example, to test prepositions, have the student act out 'the pencil is on the book.' Then ask him to call out the preposition after you demonstrate 'the cat is beside the sofa.'
The same method can be used to test reading and writing. Have your student act out the prepositional phrase you have written on a flash card. Or, act out the phrase and have your student write it. Since one concept builds on another, review previous lessons before beginning new ones. Tests and quizzes are a good time of review.
After you have assessed a student's command of the material, make it permanent by getting your teen to use the language. When studying food vocabulary, for instance, teach your children the expression used at the table. Fix an authentic Mexican meal, for example, and try to use only the target language while you eat. Younger children will enjoy dressing in the attire of a country in which the language is spoken. Inviting a native speaker to the meal will make the occasion even more memorable.
Do not limit the foreign language to an allotted time. Encourage your student to use it in his other subjects. When studying a country in history class, place a label on the map with the name of that country in the foreign language. Make a chart for each country with words such as 'area, population, government, and capital' written in the target language. You can even use the language when you write out work assignments.
Successful teaching in foreign languages is worth all the effort. More important than even the vast number of jobs he will be better qualified for, your student will be able to pass out tracts and witness in the foreign language. So go ahead-teach foreign language to your teen. You both will be surprised at how much fun it can be--'nicht wahr?'
Reprinted from Home School Helper. Used with permission of BJU Press. Please write hshelper@bjupress.com for permission to reproduce this article. All other correspondence (subscription requests, change of address, etc.) should be sent to bjup@bjupress.com.
BJU Press now offers Elementary Spanish along with Secondary Spanish and French curriculum:
