Age and the Second Language!

Some time ago I received an e-mail asking my opinion on what age is an appropriate age to start reading and writing a second language.  

Before I answer the question, It is very important to mention this is my way of homeschooling.  Homeschooling is a very personal issue.  The ideas I’m sharing here is what works for our family, with our family structure, for our family size, with all the different personality characteristic of our family, our learning style preferences, and my preferences and shortcomings as a teacher. 

Take out of this posting what is suitable to you and throw out the rest and if you don’t agree, just let it pass.

My answer, taking in account we are an Afrikaans family and English is our second language, will also most likely differ from English families, whose second language might be Afrikaans or a European or African language.

  

English is the language of the world.  Wherever you turn or go, you need or hear English.  My children are exposed to English from the day they are born through electronic entertainment and electronic media!  Andrew my 6 year old speaks English with a proper English accent which I can only dream off, since I’m an Afrikaans girl from the Free State, and I grew up before TV was a regular visitor in every home.

All this said and done, I only start English, the second language when my children are at least nine years old, or fully in control of their mother tongue!  I remember years ago when CJ, my oldest son the one who had to spearhead life for his siblings to follow, told me about his friend. who at the age of 8  started to learn English, second language, in grade 2.  We were still in the process of learning our Afrikaans phonetics and I didn’t give thought to English in my wildest dreams! 

In our homeschooling journey I follow the path of Better Late Than Early. 

My children, especially the boys, must play while they are little boys.  Until they are ten years of age, I don’t expect them to do more than an hour’s work of language and maths. 

We will have fun with lapbooks, arts and crafts and read aloud, but formal learning is more or less an hour.  We learn reading in our mother tongue, the phonic way and not by sight words. 

From our 3 year old to Danika (8) enjoy playing with phonics and Call-out-a-word-starting-with..., look at pictures, name the word and identify the beginning sound, etc. 

Only after I’m convinced my nine/ten year old has a solid foundation of the phonics of his/her mother tongue, able to read easy reading books fluently,

and without hesitation can write in his/her first language, will I introduce the phonics of a second language, for us, English.  That might mean my child is already in ‘grade 4’!  I use Adventures in Phonics by Florence M. Lindstrom  Level A and Level B books.  The simple way it introduced phonics to my children made reading and spelling in the second language a piece of cake, without frustration and keeps learning fun!

By the time they are finished with Level B they can almost fluently read English and are ready for LLATL Red, the curriculum we use for English.  Since my children only start the second language at the age of nine/ten, LLATL blue is far to childish for them and I’ve experienced it doesn’t concentrate so much on phonics, since it is written for the first language.  But after they’ve mastered Level A and B of Adventures in Phonics, they are ready for the second LLATL book and the books that follow.  

The most interesting of starting with the second language later, is how fast they master the language, with very little effort!  I was still busy teaching Josua my almost 11 year old the English phonics 18 months ago, when Christo mentioned to me, that he was already reading the Tintin books all by himself.  I didn’t notice!  Now 18 months later he is correcting his Mother’s pronunciation, when we are reading out loud in English! LOL! 

Since they master the second language so quickly, though starting at a later age is not a problem, it is easy for them to catch up when thinking in terms of grades.  

I guess part of the swift way my children learn English as their second language is because all our Homeschool resources are English.  We do Maths-U-See, not available in Afrikaans, but in my opinion the best maths program for my visual learning children.  I know it is of uttermost importance that children learn maths in their mother tongue, so I translate all the DVD teachings and translate all the maths problems into Afrikaans until at least the 11th or 12th year.  But, when Mother has a very busy day and doesn’t have time to translate the maths problems, they cannot proceed with their maths.  This is enough of a motivation to master the English Language.  The same is true for their Science.  

At the age of ten, we will start with the Young Explorer Series (Creation based Science) and we just started a Footprints of South Africa e-book (for History and Geography), all in English.  In the busy home we have with many little children, all demanding Mother’s attention, the older children just have to master their second Language to satisfy their hunger for information!  Then there is the internet and Science magazines too.  If they are not able to read and understand English, they miss out big time!

I guess the secret is motivation.  And though I’ve been frustrated with English being our second language, having the implication of me having to translate everything the first 10 years, especially lapbooks for the little ones, I guess it is a blessing in disguise, forcing my children to be bilingual at a very young age!  

My word of advice for families learning a second language? After the basics of a second language has been taught, find a very interesting resource in that language, then try to stay a little in the background and force them to figure it out on their own. But most important, don’t start to young with the phonics!

With love

Linnie

Home Schooling - Back to Basics!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve neglected the basics of home schooling a little - okay a lot.

There were a few reasons for this

1. We, especially me, are tired and in urgent need of a vacation (we are leaving in a few days!);
2. I am 6 ½ months pregnant and can feel the strain on my body;
3. When I’m tired I get distracted very easily (I am an ADD-adult!);
4. We were so busy learning the skill of growing our own vegetable garden and reading/forecasting the weather (we are busy with a cloud lapbook) that we didn’t have time for Maths and Language Arts; and
5. After a very long, cold and rainy winter, who wants to be between four walls, when the sun is shining warmly outside?

Since Monday I could see there was lack of commitment and self-control in the older children – Heidi-Mari, Josua and Danika. As always I took these attitudes to the Lord and asked Him to please show me what I am doing wrong. In His faithfulness the Lord answered my prayers and I sensed that we need to get back to basics.

And this is what we did:

I just love to use “Clever” to teach first language - Afrikaans.

To give you some back ground: my mother was a preschool teacher in the good old days, before the educational department of South Africa started experimenting with various curriculums. When we announced in 1999 we were going to home school CJ, she immediately dumped boxes of learning material on me! At that stage Martie du Plessis advised us to do unit studies and NO formal curriculum. I dived into the boxes of material my mom gave me and found worksheets for Grade 1 Afrikaans.
My mom also advised me to teach reading on the syllable method and not the whole word or sight word method. The Grade 1 Afrikaans worksheets were from Clever and taught reading and spelling by sounds / syllables. Over the years I could not find a better Afrikaans spelling curriculum and used it with every child as the basic for reading and writing.

On Wednesday morning, I pulled out Danika and Josua’s Clever worksheets.

I introduced Danika to the letter ‘b’. I slowly pronounced words beginning with the letter b, showing her the pictures in the worksheets, to help her get the rhythm of b as in bed, b as in ball, etc. (we obviously did this in Afrikaans) After a few words, I all of a sudden saw the “a-ha” in her eyes! That moment is always so special, seeing the understanding in her eyes.

She practiced the letter b, first in her Clever worksheets and then independently on lined writing paper (I’ve download this from the first school website). She also coloured some coloring pages on the letter b.











Josua also did his Afrikaans through Clever. I believe in “Better Late than Early”, especially with boys and give them a lot of playtime until they are 10 years old. He is currently halfway through the Grade 2 worksheets. Today I introduced the Afrikaans prefix ‘be-‘. The worksheets make use of pictures and he had to write in the words, according to the pictures. He did 4 worksheets, writing the words and I made sure he understood the meaning of each word.











I asked him to write the words on a separate piece of paper, to make sure he knows the spelling of each word. I then allowed him to choose 5 of the words and wrote sentences, illustrating the meaning of the word.

I also had to do some catch up with Maths. Danika struggle with writing the numbers zero to nine. With CJ we started with Maths-U-See. Over the years I have never found a maths program that is more visual or simple in explaining the concept, than Maths-U-See. In my opinion the main reason why Maths-U-See is such an excellent maths program is because it is based on the decimal system. Over the years I’ve observed, as long as you keep the decimal system in tact, the calculations itself is ‘chicken feed’!

I let Danika count out loud, and then had her write the numbers 0 to 9. She has a tendency to turn around some of the numbers. So we practiced the two and seven. She also gets confused with the six and nine. So I told her a story about six and nine to give her an association with the number. Only then could she do a worksheet in her Math-U-See primary student book. She is a very eager learner and would do 3-4 sheets if I allow her.

With Josua I had to mark about two weeks’ work. Often when I’m busy with CJ or the young ones, I would ask Heidi-Mari to help Josua with his lesson. She is such a right hand in our home schooling and can explain Maths with great patience and often translates the word problems for Josua in Afrikaans.

Thankfully Heidi-Mari could work on her own this morning, doing her Maths-U-See and LLATL. We also started with LLATL years ago and since I am not very strong on English and it is our 2nd language, I’m very comfortable with LLATL. Heidi-Mari is doing her LLATL worksheets in the form of a lapbook and that gives her lot of satisfaction.

CJ is very much working on his own and he was the only one that stayed on track during these past few weeks. Every morning before doing his maths worksheet, he does a maths drill on the Maths-U-See website. Yesterday he finished the last two worksheets of his Math-U-See lesson, so I needed to mark the worksheets before he could do the test.

After the test we decided to watch a new lesson on the DVD. We want to finish his current workbook in less than 36 weeks (the work for one year), so we try to do two worksheets a day. I prefer to be present when a new Maths-concept is been explained. Every Maths-U-See workbook comes with a teacher’s manual and DVD. Steve Demme has the gifting to teach a new concept with great patience and fun on the DVD. So there is no need for me to get stressed out about division, decimals or algebra! After we watched the DVD and I was sure CJ understood the new concept, he did the first of the six worksheets in the new lesson.

By now it was 11h30 and Daniel had fallen asleep in my arms. Andrew and David was quietly playing with Lego the whole morning (this does not happen very often), but needed some attention by now. Heidi-Mari cut us some apples as snack while lunch was being prepared and I just sat with them – exhausted after the morning’s output.

I prefer to have lunch by 12h30, so Heidi-Mari and CJ started to prepare tuna and avocado sandwiches. After lunch, CJ finished a Science assignment, Heidi-Mari continued with her LLATL lapbook, Josua watered the vegetable garden and build a few extra pieces of his 300 piece puzzle, while I took a nap with Andrew, David and Danika. Daniel woke up, just before I took them for their nap, but between CJ, Heidi-Mari and Josua, they gave him his sandwich and kept him happy.

When I woke up at 14h00 I took Daniel from Heidi-Mari, I saw Josua was busy putting towels on the line and went to CJ to check on his LLATL. He works through each LLATL lesson on his own and then I check the assignments and make sure he understands the grammar rules. This afternoon we gave attention to prefixes and their meaning.

He is also doing the Excellence in spelling program. Since English is not our first language, we all struggle with the spelling rules and I’ve experienced very good results with this program. I took the last three lessons and dictated the spelling words and he did very well.

And here we stopped with our school day. CJ had to be dropped at the horse riding at 15h00, to give horse riding lessons for young riders. Meanwhile the little ones were waking up and wanted to play with Josua. I needed to get supper going as we eat at 18h00. In-between all this I’m trying to make shorts for myself to wear on our vacation. It is no easy task to get comfortable maternity pants. It seems like the market is for young women in their twenties, who don’t mind to wear uncomfortable pants, as long as they are in fashion!

We didn’t get to our weather lapbooks and I couldn’t do an art project with Andrew and David, but I feel good about the day. We cannot fit in everything, everyday. I’m definitely going to try and stay on this schedule for the next few days, before we leave for our vacation!