This series is a take off from one of Andrea’s blogs. In my intro I mentioned some reasons why homeschoolers tend to shy away from teaching their child a foreign language It is a difficult subject to tackle if you don’t have the background.
However, I also mentioned that one problem is many of the myths that surround teaching your child a foreign language. I went to a home schooling conference where I saw several curriculums for sale all touting similar benefits. They were all supposedly backed by research. Truth be told, I’ve yet to find something that is actually backed by research for the elementary grades! Here are some common myths:
1. It’s best for a child to learn a foreign language when they’re young!
This is simply NOT true. What the research actually says is that young children are better able to pick up a foreign language without an accent than are adults or older children. Their brains are no more hard wired to learn language than your high schooler’s brain. In fact, it is harder for younger children to learn to speak a foreign language than a high schooler unless there is a fluent speaker of the target language in the house. And then, the fluent speaker needs to speak to the child in that target language from the very beginning. . .by four months an infant can distinguish a ‘foreign tongue’ from their own. So if you’re thinking of starting early. . .you’re probably too late.
2. Foreign language is best taught by immersion.
This is the claim that is my biggest pet peeve. Curriculums that tout teaching by immersion are frequently very, very expensive. After all, you have to buy DVDs or CDs for the audio component. The reason this is my biggest pet peeve is that buying a DVD or CD filled with foreign language being spoken is not really immersion. Immersion is where you go to the foreign country and hear nothing of your native language and only the target language for a significant period of time. A DVD or CD will not immerse you and in fact worse, it won’t teach you the components of the language so that you can put thoughts and sentences together on your own. So in essence, it’s not that immersion is not a good way to learn a foreign language–it absolutely is. But buying an expensive program with DVDs and CDs is NOT immersion and generally NOT worth the money.
3. No experience is necessary!
So far, every foreign language program I’ve seen, tells parents they don’t have to speak the target language. No experience is necessary, they say. This is a two fold problem. First of all, what they omit is that to be effective, you’re going to have to learn the language with your child. The reason is that your child needs to interact in the target language with someone who is an actual live person for effective learning. Secondly, in order for your child to think in the foreign language (which is necessary for fluency), they really do need exposure to authentic sources (like newspapers and magazines) as well as a fluent/native speaker. It’s true–it doesn’t have to be you. . .but it can’t be the DVD either if your child is actually going to speak the language.
This is not to say that you shouldn’t even attempt to teach a foreign language. But if you have younger than high school aged children, and you’re thinking that you’ve missed the boat–you can relax. The fact remains that unless you are a dual language household (in which case you wouldn’t be reading this blog!) it is easier for older children to pick up a foreign language than little ones. Look tomorrow for my next blog on what you should focus on when teaching a foreign language to elementary aged kids.