Home School Heartbeat Radio Program

Once you have made the decision to teach your homeschooler a foreign language, your next step is choosing the most effective teaching materials. Today on Home School Heartbeat, Mike Smith discusses some of your options.

Mike:


For those parents who do not speak a second language, there are plenty of resources to make language training possible. Homeschool instructional materials, including tapes and books, often do not require a parent to know anything about the language. Ideally, the parent will learn alongside the student to provide more possibilities for interaction.


When selecting books, use the ones that include pictures or games to help build vocabulary. Remember that any time you can incorporate a game or reward into the language session, you will increase your child's satisfaction with learning. The most effective way to teach a foreign language is to combine several different types of teaching tools.


Every student should also listen regularly to a language tape. Even if you as a parent are fluent in the language you are teaching, it is important that the child hears the model accent or neutral dialect. Many children learn better by listening than they do through the written word.


Another helpful teaching aid is a DVD player. You can acquire many classic movies on DVD and most of them have either Spanish or French speaking tracks and subtitles. Listening to the movie in another language will greatly improve your child's conversational skills. And until next time, I'm Mike Smith.