We started learning Spanish this summer.
Thumper is a teenager, way past 12, and Astroboy is under 10. I mention this because it affects the way people learn a language. Your brain fossilizes twice in your youth, once around 7, and once around puberty (10-12).
This affects how people learn language. For us, Thumper is learning it more as a second language, and Astroboy closer to first.
Part of the reason it took me so long to get started is because I have very specific ideas about learning languages and of course that stops me from actually doing anything. Because implementation takes research, which stops me from doing anything.
For example, all these years, I’ve been saying that when you learn Chinese, you really need to start with massive listening. But, I didn’t know actually how one would implement that when learning Spanish. What resources are available? Plus, most programs don’t teach Spanish that way. How would I do it then?
But I think I’ve figured it out more now with what I’ve cobbled together. I think these can work as well for people who are learning Chinese as a second language, except for the fact that Chinese is way harder to learn if English is your first language.
My ideas of how to learn come from reading all these forums when I got really into learning Japanese as a second language 15-20 years ago. At that time, I was so surprised to see that adults super motivated at learning a language don’t learn it the way I learned French in high school.
What’s different? They do lots of listening, use curriculum and resources more relevant to how they want to use the language, and utilize space repetition techniques.
Anyways, here’s what we’re doing so far. Yeah, I have a problem just following recipes and like making my life hard. The general idea is that we have once a week Spanish class, then I supplement with things the kids can mostly self-learn.
Weekly Spanish Class (speaking & listening)
We group purchased a year’s worth of program with an online language school in Guatemala. The cost came down to ~$11 for 2 kids for 50 minutes of class.
The primary reason for a Spanish class is to have access to a native speaker to practice speaking and listening. I’m not really counting on the teacher to teach my kids Spanish. An hour once a week class isn’t going to do that quick enough, especially for a second language learner.
But the teacher will be there as the kids pick up enough vocabulary through home study to be able to speak complete sentences. And she’s there now to provide listening practice.
Fluent Forever (reading, grammar, vocabulary)
Fluent Forever’s method is very much inline with my experience in learning a second language. Namely:
- use spaced repetition
- don’t translate vocabulary you learn
- importance of learning proper pronunciation
I read years ago that you need to learn the first 250-500 most commonly used beginner vocabulary before you can start conversing. So we’re using Fluent Forever for that purpose: vocabulary building. And of course, vocabulary building requires spaced repetition.
There’s an online article comparing Fluent Forever and Duolingo, and I think it convinced me not to use Duolingo, even though Thumper had been using it to learn Spanish half assedly the last 6 months and likes it better. (As in, I never told her to do it and she does it when she feels like it.) I’ve also heard Baba trying to learn Chinese through Duolingo, and I wasn’t impressed.
The second aspect of Fluent Forever is for Thumper to learn some grammar rules. As second language learners, knowing grammar will help you construct sentences, since you’ve likely learned grammar rules in your first language and need help making sense how it’s different.
Notice I keep mentioning Thumper and not Astroboy. It’s partly because for Astroboy he’s at an age where he can still pick up languages relatively quickly, so I’m not emphasizing these second language tools like memorizing vocabulary using flash cards or practicing listening and pronunciation tips as much.
Podcasts for Learning Spanish (cultural background, listening, pronunciation)
This podcast I found through Taiwan’s National Public Radio isn’t long enough to actually learn Spanish. They have two other programs for that. But since I’m not a fan of learning Spanish through these types of traditional curriculums, I picked this one.
The first lesson talks about what other countries speaks Spanish, the second language talks teaches you how to pronounce Spanish through Chinese lens, which I love.
I deliberately did this because Spanish is a romance language and uses most of the English alphabet. When the kids read, they’re influenced by their knowledge of English phonics. So I wanted them to hear how to pronounce things using Chinese phonics as well. Sometimes some sounds are closer.
Well if you look at their PDF, some of it is closer to Taiwanese, like the pronunciation for /b/, and the pronunciation for ch would be easier if you know the Chinese ㄑ sound.
Netflix (listening)
Watching and listening massively really helps the ears pick up individual phonemes more clearly in my experience. For example, I learned all these pronunciation tips through Fluent Forever, but it wasn’t until I binge watched Jane the Virgin this week that I could hear that /b/ sound in action. I mean, yes, Jane the Virgin isn’t in Spanish, but the little repeated Spanish they do have helped in my understanding.
The same goes with my massive listening of Korean and Japanese. After months of watching you can actually hear the way people speak different dialects of the language.
So we’ve started with some Netflix Spanish children’s shows. Sadly, I don’t know enough about them to pick the right level yet. So I had to turn the subtitles on for Dr. Seuss.
For me, it definitely helps with sub titles. I pick up new vocabulary this way. Like Dr. Seuss kept saying purple bird, and I got curious enough to look up how to say purple, then I started hearing purple in the show.
I’m not sure if it’ll work with the kids. In a way, they still are able to pick up languages faster than me and don’t need to rely on their other language knowledge. I shall report back.
Reading A-Z Spanish (listening, grammar, reading)
Finally, we’re using Raz Kids’ Reading A-Z, which I got for about $10 a year, to learn kids Spanish.
Raz Kid’s Spanish books are similar to their English books in terms of progression. In the AA level, you’re learning phonics through books. In the A level, they start doing simple sentences. These simple sentences are a great way for kids to pick up new vocabulary and grammar without you knowing every word you read.
Throughout all this, you’re building vocabulary.
For example, a book will say things like, “I see the color red”, “I see the color blue”, “I see the color orange.” If you’ve learned all the colors, then you get how to say “I see”. If you didn’t know all the colors, you now have learned all the colors because only the names of colors change in each page.
This is how Better Chinese does it with their Chinese leveled readers. It’s super great for second language learners. (Unlike Sagebooks, which is much better for Native or heritage speakers.)
Youtube Videos (listening, speaking, vocabulary)
Lastly, we use Youtube videos as a way to help us learn vocabulary we’re learning in class. More on that in the next section.
Putting it Altogether
During our Spanish trial class, the kids super quickly learned their numbers and colors. It’s crazy and not how I’d ever teach Chinese, learning all your alphabet, counting to 10, and 10+ colors all in the first 50 min class. But again, I’m paying for the class for speaking opportunities, so I didn’t care.
This week, we added these elements in our Spanish “camp”:
- A daily 30 minutes with me to review numbers and letters using Youtube and Raz Kids. I googled for Spanish color and number songs and lessons on Youtube and watched it with the kids. I had them pick books about colors and numbers in Raz Kids to listen to themselves. They could choose to read along if they felt comfortable. And yes, everything in 30 minutes to an hour cuz that’s the extent of my attention span with my children. And yes, I did not manage to consistenly do it daily, but it helped them with the second Spanish class when they reviewed.
- Daily Fluent Forever review. Either I did it with the kids or they did it with each other.
- Daily Taiwan NPR podcast. The kids did this themselves. I didn’t enforce it. This was just more, the more exposure to listening the better.
- Netflix shows when I had time. We only managed to watch one day.
So basically, the kids just had 3 tasks for Spanish study daily, Raz Kids, Podcast, and Fluent Forever. All of these they can do without me.
Yeah, totally half ass. At this point, my goal is vocabulary acquisition through massive listening and some speaking, not reading or writing.