conversational Spanish?

[schang011]

We have the opportunity to host a young lady from Mexico for 3 months. We'd love to grab the opportunity to learn conversational Spanish. We only know numbers and very basic vocabularies.

Do we need a curriculum? She is not a teacher by trade and I wonder if we should have some kind of materials. Or is it good enough to learn daily conversation naturally? Btw, my kids are 10 and 12.

Thanks in advance for your help!
Shirley

[Ester Maria]

A great combination would be some formal study in addition to the daily exposure. Formal study would clear up on some things, grammatically (by the way, native speakers without a degree in their language are often unaware of some subtle nuances and unable to really "teach" the language as they often don't know how it works), since your children are already at the age when they profit from analytical learning in an academic setting just as much as from the immersion experience.

Get the young lady talk to them on the daily level for some period - or, even better, to talk to them exclusively in Spanish whenever they start some kind of communication - but supplement that with the actual learning of what's being said and why is it being said that way. I think that would be the bingo combination for you.

I'm planning something similar for my daughter in French next year - I'm planning to have her done formal study on her own (she's older though, and a native Italian speaker so it's doable for her), and use tutor only for real communication (though it's going to be weekly rather than daily in our case) and putting in practice what she learned.

I think it should work, but I would absolutely recommend some kind of formal study in addition to pure immersion. Good luck.

[schang011]

Thanks, Ester Maria! It's a good idea to be a bit more structured. My kids are learning Mandarin already, my older is starting Latin in the fall, so I am not sure how we are going to fit Spanish into our schedule. We just happen to have this opportunity. To make it more complicated, this young lady is staying with us to learn English. : )

Do you have any suggestion about the curriculum?
Shirley

[Shifra]

There's a book called Conversational Spanish by Juan Kattan-Ibarra that's not bad--you may be able to find tapes for it. You will probably need At Home Abroad Spanish: Practical Phrases for Conversation by Helen Harrison and Nigel Harrison (I have the UK version, which is called Your Spanish Exchange). It is a phrase book with things like how to play board games in Spanish.

[USDGAL]

We have the opportunity to host a young lady from Mexico for 3 months. We'd love to grab the opportunity to learn conversational Spanish. We only know numbers and very basic vocabularies.

Do we need a curriculum? She is not a teacher by trade and I wonder if we should have some kind of materials. Or is it good enough to learn daily conversation naturally? Btw, my kids are 10 and 12.

Thanks in advance for your help!
Shirley

Keep in mind though that she will probably want to practice her English as well. It may work out though, while she is asking about things in English, yout dc will pick up Spanish by being her little helpers.

Danielle
in Mexico:lol:

[schang011]

Our library has Conversational Spanish and I will look into the other book you mentioned.
She is coming to learn more English. It would be nice to learn some conversational Spanish from her, but our main responsibility is to help her learn English.

Thanks all for your help. We are looking forward to this exciting experience.
Shirley

[cathmom]

I was a conversation partner once, and what we did was spend about 2 hours a week together - one hour speaking English, and one hour speaking Spanish. That way we both got practice and we took turns feeling like the idiot! :lol:

Perhaps you could plan a Spanish conversation time in the evening when she is feeling tired. It's hard to speak a different language when you are tired!