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My dh was asking me about this last night. At what age/grade do you start a foreign language and what do you use/recommend? I am leaning towards Rosetta Stone only because I have heard really good things about it. We would be learning Spanish, since that makes the most sense living in AZ.

Thanks
Sarah

I know in public school they start offering it at 9th grade (at least around here). I would thing that 3-6 grade would be a fine. I know what you mean about learning spanish. So many ads I see are now saying how it's helpfully to be bilingual.

This is info has been pounded into my head by my dear papa the linguest.

Up to age 4-6 children have wide open language paths in their brain. Language aquired during this time will give the child a native speaker pronounciation ( rolling yours R's or gutteral H's) are stored there. Children will store languages learned early on in the language center of their brain. After this time Languages are stored in another sector of the brain and are processed away from the language center. Once a child speaks a language up to age 7 they will retain it for life. But if they stop they will loose it and the new language will replace their primary language in the language center. So IMHO the sooner you start teaching the language the more words they will store and the better they will be at it. Since most of us only have english we are not able to teach the language naturally.

My parents tried an experiment with my sister Mom spoke only french to her Dad spoke only spanish to her and of course they spoke english to each other. It age 3 she was speaking a mishmash. "I want Agua sie vous plaite" The local preschool teacher yelled at them so much, they stopped. My sister lost her ablity to speak spanish and french but when she learned spanish later in life she had no trouble with the sounds. If my parents had ignored the teacher my sister would be proficient in 3 languages.

I have to admit I have been very impressed with Fluenz they are coming out with a spanish version I think you can download lesson one here. I have been using the Manderin Chinese with my Daughter and she has learned the new words very quickly. Ands runs around the house prattling them to anything that will listen.

http://www.download.com/Fluenz-Spanish/ ... 51680.html

being in the world of daycare, I completly agree with Tansy! The more words a child hears before age 5 the better! If they are taught or spoken to in a foreign language as early as can be, the easier it will be to pick up on. I teach Spanish and Sign Language to all my daycare kids (well, and my own of course ) and I start whenever they enter my program, whether it be 6 weeks or 4 years old. I had one little girl who I had since 3.5 months, and she is 6 now. When she went to her preK screening, she answered everything in Spanish!! I was so proud....

Just a note...I found out this year that we can get Rosetta Stone through our library. Well, not our library in our tiny little town, but in a slightly bigger town an hour away. We can use it online with our library card.

You may want to check if you can do anything like that in your area.

Kathleen wrote:Just a note...I found out this year that we can get Rosetta Stone through our library. Well, not our library in our tiny little town, but in a slightly bigger town an hour away. We can use it online with our library card.

You may want to check if you can do anything like that in your area.

I've heard about this elsewhere, and it's my understanding Rosetta Stone is stopping this practice.
We are doing latin; my youngers will be doing the prima latina and the olders are doing latina christiana. I figure laitn will give them a good background in all the romance languages as well as help them with english grammar.
I also have a spanish program that we will use, too, but maybe not together with the latin. We'll see. My bil is from Mexico, and even though he's 6 hours away we use him for our Spanish pronunciation helps! He tapes bilingual books for us so we can hear him speak spanish. Besides the boys like to hear his voice too!

Darci...that is super cool!!

May I ask, which Spanish program do you use? We're having a hard time choosing between Spanish and ASL.

I got the Spanish from CLE called "Speedy Spanish" I actually got it free from Homeschool E Store once. I don't have the tapes; those are on my wish list.

Thanks Darci! I didn't even know CLE had spanish. I'll have to check into that. I would definately need tapes....I was born in TN and lived in TN or north MS until I was married and that southern drawl mixed with spanish....well it's bad....