To Be, or Not To Be! Verbs are my Question.

[mom2bee]

LilGal is doing pretty good during DST, I'm really excited she seems to be enjoying it. I ask her every few days what she thinks need to be adjusted, changed etc. She maintains that she's having fun, she likes it, she wants to continue. I want to keep her enthusiasm up...

Yesterday, LilGal started repeating phrases and even made up her own (vas a comer sus pantalonese negroes!) which is great. Today, she did it again (3 times) However, she's got her verbs all wrong. I know why: she's parroting me. There is no one for me to model the verbs with, so I just use 'yo' and 'tu' a lot. I don't really use subject pronouns much when I speak Spanish, should I?

I try and use gestures and emphasis when I'm using the 'yo' form of verbs that I'm talking about myself, but she hasn't picked up on that. She's only picked up on the 'tu' verb forms that I use with her. Right now, we're still working our way through The Complete Book of Beginners Spanish. We are scheduled to complete it on the 23rd of this month.

I was planning on talking more about verbs then, but I'm worried that she has plenty of time to cement the wrong thing...

Thoughts?

[jld]

I'm sorry if you've posted this already, but are you getting any formal training in Spanish? Do you have any educated native speakers (can be different than non-educated ones) you can consult with? I appreciate your enthusiasm, and commend you for it, but as you've suspected, it can really be helpful to have accurate knowledge of a language you want to share with a child.

[mom2bee]

I'm sorry if you've posted this already, but are you getting any formal training in Spanish? Do you have any educated native speakers (can be different than non-educated ones) you can consult with? I appreciate your enthusiasm, and commend you for it, but as you've suspected, it can really be helpful to have accurate knowledge of a language you want to share with a child.

(in)Formal Training: I've self studied spanish off and on for about 10 years now, I've taken 3 semesters of College Spanish, and continue to self study (pimsluer, fsi, etc). When I transfer to a 4 year school, I'm going to minor in Spanish, maybe even double major.

Consultants: I'm on first name basis with 95% of the Spanish department at my school. (I keep forgetting one guy's name.) and I hang out with a several Hispanic/Latino students at my school through the International Student Club with whom I speak in Spanish about 60% of the time we're together.

I'd appreciate any advise you have for me concerning the Original Post. I'm wondering if we should go over verbs sooner or later. We'll be at this 'zero' step for a while, trying to iron out the kinks and cement vocabulary and basic grammar and I really need to get things right.

[jld]

I never taught students younger than 14, so I'm not quite sure what to tell you. In school, we just explained to the kids that they needed to respond in the yo form. We practiced dialogues, also, so they had a model to follow.

My own children have always heard French, so responding in the je form was not a problem there, either, though they had trouble with je vais for some reason (they all spent some time saying je va). Dd mentioned that her little 3 year old cousin in France says je va, though, too, so maybe it's even a problem with native speakers growing up in France, lol.

It's good to keep a humble attitude when learning a foreign language, and to accept help from people a little farther along in language study, and, especially, from native speakers. I always let native speakers have the last word. If there's a dispute between a native speaker specifically educated in the language, and just a general native speaker, say a grammar disagreement between a French teacher in France and my dh, who is an engineer, I would of course listen to the teacher.

[mom2bee]

I never taught students younger than 14, so I'm not quite sure what to tell you. In school, we just explained to the kids that they needed to respond in the yo form.

So, should I tell her about yo and tu verb forms now, so she'll understand what it means to use the 'yo' form?

We practiced dialogues, also, so they had a model to follow.
LilGal and I are learning phrases, slowly but surely and we like to do at least one prompted (not scripted) skit each day using our phrases. We get pretty silly with them, making up outrageous characters even just to introduce ourselves. She isn't ready to read in Spanish yet, but I'm trying to put together more sources for audio input for her.


My own children have always heard French, so responding in the je form was not a problem there, either, though they had trouble with je vais for some reason (they all spent some time saying je va). Dd mentioned that her little 3 year old cousin in France says je va, though, too, so maybe it's even a problem with native speakers growing up in France, lol.

I have her using The Learnables Level 1 tapes and picture books every other day. I'm thinking of starting her on Pimsleur also, since I have it. Both, Pim and Learnables are about 30 minutes and would be used on alternate days...until the Learnables is done, in which case we could go to just Pimsleur. I think Pim could be a good fit for her...thoughts?

I want to work it up to her getting 1hour a day of solid Spanish exposure from professional media, not me. I told her to pay close attention to the pronunciation of the tapes and model herself after that. I bring lots of Spanish videos and tapes from the library. I've told her that the goal is for her to watch kiddy TV/ short cartoons in Spanish sometime this year.

One problem I'm running into is a lot of kids Spanish learning media is made by Americans, or at least the ones my library carries.

It's good to keep a humble attitude when learning a foreign language, and to accept help from people a little farther along in language study, and especially, from native speakers. I always let native speakers have the last word. If there's a dispute between a native speaker specifically educated in the language, and just a general native speaker, say a grammar disagreement between a French teacher in France and my dh, who is an engineer, I would of course listen to the teacher.

Wise words, I'll keep all this in mind. I know it was so humbling for me when I took Spanish I, even though I knew the material on paper, I didn't know squat in real life. I try and keep that feeling of 'littleness' with me a lot, to remind myself that as far as I've come, I've not yet made a measly dent in Mt. Spanish.

Thanks so much for all your time and energy, jld. You're awesome!

One more thing: I talked to some of the Spanish teachers/tutors at my school and they said some of the biggest mistakes mostly all non-native speakers make, even the really advanced ones, are:
1) agreement for number and gender,
2) prepositions
3) idioms

So I'm trying to give both of us a really strong base in all three. Right now we're just working on #1. (I think I do this one pretty well, but I'm constantly triple checking and on the lookout for exceptions--las manos, el problema etc--)

I'm still working on #2 and I'm not sure how to approach #3. There is a bilingual book that are for children that I'm using to teach myself, called See What You See that I like, in case anyone cares.

[jld]

Yes, I would try to explain yo and tu to her, explicitly, and see how much she understands. You'll know how much by whether or not she's able to do it properly in conversation.

I am not familiar with the programs you mention. I just haven't spent much time looking at programs. I use a series I taught from in the early 90s and am happy with it. I also just don't have any experience, once again, in teaching fl to little kids. That requires a patience I just don't have, lol.

It's good you're searching through old threads on this, as I'm sure others are a wealth of info on how to do this. I think matroyshka taught both German and Spanish to her children while they were still pretty small; maybe you could pm her?

Good luck as you work on this very ambitious project. I see you and your dd are highly motivated. As in any area, that counts for a lot. :)

[mom2bee]

oops.

[Ester Maria]

In my opinion, you absolutely have to combine explicit grammar teaching WITH immersion techniques at that age. I would write out entire paradigms for her, explicitly explain when which form is to be used, and have her actually formally practice it, fully conscious of what she is doing - both in writing and orally. That would speed up the process a lot and prevent wrong forms from cementing.

[CleoQc]

At 9yo, she's definitely old enough to get some formal grammar in the target language. Since conjugation doesn't explicitely exists in English, it might need to be explained loud and clear. From my very short experience teaching FSL, this is where English speakers hit the first wall. Conjugation often doesn't make sense to them.

I was teaching a group, so used a method you couldn't really use at home with one child. You could always role play with dolls, or lego characters though.

I used the verb 'to go' which is often an exception in romance languages. "aller" and "ir" vary a lot according to the person.

I would definitely introduce the notion right away.

[mom2bee]

Okay! For the 5th and final time I'm going to write out this post!

Verdict is in: Verbs + Vocabulary it is! Starting today!!! :).

I'm going to teach conjugation explicitely but I'm going to teach the more irregular verbs as vocabulary for now, but really push them. I'm going to talk about vas vs voy, but not 'ir'. I think that 'ir; would confuselate (confuse and/or frustrate) her, and I need her enthusiasm really high for the time being, but I'm going to make sure she gets that its the same word.

I've been hashing this out for a while and I just made a few more adjustments. If anyone has any input, please add it! I really wan't to do this right.. Later on tonight, I'll post the adjusted outline for our first 10 weeks of Study.

Thanks so much for the feedback.

[mom2bee]

We didn't get to have DST today, we did a few phrases earlier though. Luckily, I built padding into 'the schedule' and hopefully we'll get back on the DST wagon tomorrow.

I was really pumped to do verbs too. :(...