Let's Learn Spanish Today! Pt. ll

Here's a quick schedule of my Spanish learning with Visual Link. For the 30 days I want to cover the following topics: a) Basic Needs b) Greetings c) Survival Expressions and d) Comprehension.

Basic Needs

Day One
1) Sección 1
a) Movie #1
b) Vocabulary #1
c) Verbal Quiz #1

Day Two
2) Sección 1a
a) Movie #2
b) Verbal Quiz #2

Day Three
3) Sección 1b
a) Movie #3
b) Vocabulary #2
c) Review Game - Group 1

Day Four
4) Sección 1b cont'd
a) Movie #4
b) Vocabulary #3
c) Review Game - Group 2
d) Verbal Quiz #3

Day Five
5) Sección 1c
a) Movie #5
b) Review Game - Group 3
c) Verbal Quiz #4

Day Six
6) a) Review Game - ?/Ans/Links
b) Practice Quiz

My schedule for the other topics will follow. I plan to start Monday, May 5. You could follow along to some extent with the free lessons they have.

Jessica

Let's Learn Spanish Today!

I’m so excited about my blog. I’ve always loved keeping journals as a youngster. Writing about my day, my friends, my hopes was like a way of escape for me.

Anyway, I was looking over the Visual Link Spanish program website the other day to see what was new. I bought this program 5 or 6 years ago to help me learn Spanish again. I liked the program. It helped me learn Spanish in sentences.

I took a look at their guarantee again:

With approximately 30 minutes of study per day, become
conversational in 30 days - GUARANTEED.

“Yes, this is what I want!” I was immediately motivated to take them up on their promise. This time around I’ll have my blog and you visitors to help me stick with it. So along with posting my Spanish lesson plans for children, I’ll keep you posted about how I’m doing with this program.

Here’s a little background on where my spoken Spanish is. I don’t speak Spanish fluently. My Spanish vocabulary is very large, though. So I will admit that I probably know more Spanish words than average. However, when it comes to speaking, I’m not confident at all. My speech is slow, and I have a hard time understanding Spanish that’s spoken to me or played on T.V. I just know enough Spanish to teach my children different words and simple household phrases.

We had the ideal situation when Patricia, our former Spanish-speaking babysitter was around. I did not seize the opportunities to speak with her as much as I could have. My insecurity got the best of me.

And when I go to the corner store—they speak Spanish—the most I’ll say is “hola,” “Puedes ayudarme? (Can you help me?) and “gracias.” I told one of the guys there in Spanish (after much thought) that I want to learn Spanish but I’m shy. He said something about “poco,” then followed up in English with “one word at a time.”

I’m mentioning this just so you’ll have an idea of where I’m starting with this Visual Link Spanish program again. During the 30 days I’ll document what I’ve done each day for the 30 minutes. After the 30 days I’ll let you know how confident and conversational in Spanish I’ve become.

I'll need to come up with an assessment. Maybe I'll strike up a conversation with the Spanish-speaking store owner across the street. Or I could call my husband's friend's wife, she speaks Spanish.

Have any of you used this program? Tell us what you think about it.

Hasta luego!

Jessica

Raising Children to be Bilingual

A couple of days ago I posted a comment on a blog called Just me - http://milindobebe.blogspot.com. It seemed like she was keeping a blog as a school assignment, but her research topic was how to raise her son to be bilingual in Spanish and English.

I jumped in to add my two-cents worth, but I was astounded by how much I had to say about the topic. My comment was longer than her post-LOL. I guess with at least 6 years worth of researching, teaching and learning Spanish with my own children, I had a lot of information to draw from.

I hope that you too gain a lot from my experience teaching my children Spanish.

Posting has been put to the side a bit because I'm still working on my website. I truly believe that English-speaking parents can teach their children Spanish with dedication and the right mix of resources. It's totally worth it to lay a firm foundation in your child's life for acquiring a second language.

Hasta luego

Jessica

No Harm in Learning Two Languages

Researchers: No harm in learning two languages
by Susan Knapp

Laura-Ann Petitto, Professor in Dartmouth's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences
In bilingual children, brain develops as though there were two language centers

A Dartmouth research team has determined that children exposed to two languages early in life are not language delayed, nor are they language confused, which fuels the scientific and political debate over when to introduce children to a second language.

Laura-Ann Petitto, Professor in Dartmouth's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Department of Education, and Dartmouth graduate student Ioulia Kovelman, report their findings at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting, Nov. 2–7, in Orlando, Fla."

(Read more)

New Resource of Spanish Lesson Plans for Children!

Hi everybody!

I took some time from my blog because I've been working real hard on my new website.

The site showcases the eBook resource I've created to help English-speaking parents teach their children Spanish.

Basically, I've compiled 6 of the lesson plans that I've done with my children and made it available in eBook form. In another 3-4 months, I plan have another 4 lessons available.

Hope you enjoy it and find it useful. And sign up for our monthly e-newsletter Spanish Time! where you'll get muchas ideas to help you and your family keep up the Spanish fun.

¡Hasta luego!

Jessica

Bilingual Celebrites and their Children

Here's another article about celebrities and how they're raising their children to be bilingual. Madonna's piece was a little funny to me because her kids have "secret" conversations with each other in French while she and her husband don't understand a word they're saying.

That won't be our situation, right? Because we're learning Spanish along with our children. And, I hope this blog gives you the help you need to keep the Spanish fun going.

Famous Multilinguals and Their Stories

“If you know two languages, the level of your intelligence is multiplied a hundredfold in other people’s eyes.”

--Bill Cosby, actor

Read on

Quality vs. Quantity Spanish Language Exposure

Do you feel that your child doesn't get enough exposure to the minority language?

Remember, it is not only quantity, quality matters too.

I really appreciated this article because sometimes I feel that my kids will learn Spanish better if they were in a Spanish-immersion program or playgroup. But until I'm able to make that happen, there's plenty our family can here right at home to provide a rich Spanish-learning environment.

Read on and be encouraged too!

5 Ways to Improve The Language Interaction

No, you don't need to speak differently to your baby, but bear in mind that he can tell if you're engaged and enthusiastic. However, if you feel your baby is getting only a limited amount of the minority language and you want to be as 'effective' as possible in the way you communicate, here are some useful pointers.

Speak TO your child

The sheer quantity of speech addressed to the child is the single most important factor in learning language, regardless of how many languages you are working with. It doesn't help if you talk on the phone all day or make the baby watch television (although TV can be great for preschoolers). Babies will only make sense of what they hear if the words refer to something they can directly relate to -- the here and now. Particularly for young infants, face-to-face contact is key. Babies are absolutely fascinated with human faces which make language even more engaging for them. As early as four months, babies have already started linking sounds to mouth movements, although they can't see how their own faces move. Maybe this is why babies love to be imitated so they can finally see what their faces must look like when they make their sounds. So, coo back to your heart's content."

(Read more)