BJU French or First Start French for middle school?

[MIch elle]

My older ds is taking French this year in 9th grade at his private high school; they use Glencoe Bon Voyage! I think the textbook stinks, no audio for home use. I would like to learn more French to help him now and brush up on my French. His school is planning a trip to France in June and we would like to go.

I want to start French with my 6th grader at home. We have The Learnables French 1 & 2 but it doesn't follow the traditional learning sequence of Glencoe Bon Voyage.

First Start French and BJU French both follow the traditional high school sequence of learning French (as far as I can tell from the TOC). I think First Start French would be easy to implement at home but too easy to use myself to catch up with older ds. I'm afraid BJU French would be too hard to implement at home considering that I don't remember much from my 2 yrs of high school French 30 years ago.

Thoughts? :confused:

[OhElizabeth]

Since you have a trip in view, have you considered something more oriented toward travelers? There are some audio series, Pimsleur, etc. that are good specifically for that.

[danielle]

When I began teaching dd French back in 2nd grade, I discovered I couldn't read the all-in-French teacher's manual that came with the series I was using for her. In order to "refrench" I started reading French fashion magazines (something I knew I'd be interested in, and that would have short articles). I took a highlighter and started underlining any word I could not figure out from context, and occasionally parsing a whole sentence. I made index cards with the definitions and carried them around with me.

Then I read Le Petit Nicholas, and started reading kids books and magazines with her. After about 6 months of doing this, the instructor's manual was tres facile.

Another good review for someone who studied French way back when is the Assimil series, allegedly 15 minutes a day.

I hope First Start French will be your choice, for obvious reasons, but good luck--French is just a fabulous language to immerse yourself in.
Danielle

[Jen3boys]

I would not recommend First Start French. I have been using SYRWTL French with my dc, and bought the First Start French package also, to compare the two programs and see if FSF would have some extra practice.

First Start French - each lesson consists of a proverb or song, a list of vocabulary words, some grammar, and a dialogue. All of this is on ONE page of text. The following page is a brief exercise for the lesson. There is NO instruction at all in the student text. The audio cd which accompanies the text is of poor quality (I have to turn the volume very high to hear the speaker), and the same speaker is used throughout the book. She basically reads the textbook words aloud. This program is lacking a listening to a french speaker/responding in french component. I don't think it would prepare someone for a trip to a French speaking country. After reading the Overview in the teacher's edition, I think FSF is geared toward reading (and not speaking) French.

I have not looked at BJU French. I like SYRWTL French because it includes listening, reading, writing, and speaking, and has an audio cd with various speakers throughout each lesson, and the text has instruction included. The downside (for me) is that there is no source for extra exercises.

[Donna A.]

We'll be doing a combination of First Start French and The Easy French this year. First Start appears to give a good grammatical foundation, and I'm hoping that The Easy French will provide more of the immersion opportunities.

Otherwise, I'd go with Rosetta Stone for purposes of preparing for a trip and quickly being able to engage in simple conversation.

[MIch elle]

Thanks anyway! Maybe this will help someone else. :D

P.S. My older ds is doing French at private high school.

[Donna A.]

Oh my, I didn't even notice the dates! :001_huh:

[Jen3boys]

Oh my, I didn't even notice the dates! :001_huh:

Neither did I! Oops. :tongue_smilie:

[danielle]

Somehow missed that it was 2008--it came up in the similar threads to the one I was looking at.:ack2:
Danielle

[OhElizabeth]

deleting myself. :)