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The Thoughtful Spot
Friday, November 13, 2009
La Ronde des Jours
One of this past week's projects:
The girls were even more excited about these than I anticipated. I downloaded the template from this page, and we substituted a pretty front page made from scrap-booking paper. It's the first addition to our lap book about time (more on that later!).
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Saturday, October 17, 2009
Foreign Language learning à la Charlotte Mason: Part II
In a post at the beginning of the school term, I wrote about Miss Mason’s method for learning a foreign language. We ordered some picture books from Sweden and began our Swedish studies this year with the book En liten stund, by Anna-Clara Tidholm, a sweet little book about a little boy rabbit who makes too many pancakes. He wonders who will eat them all up, and then a little girl rabbit comes over to his house. Kom in och ät pannkakor! he invites her: Come in and eat pancakes! She later brings a little piece of pie, and ends up staying for "a little while" - en liten stund.
We read the book over a few weeks. First, I read a couple of pages, and then we translated the sentences that had been read. I drew attention to a few key words, read it again, and then asked the children to tell it back. We read only a few sentences per day, and each day we began again at the beginning of the story, with one of the children telling the story so far, and others giving the names of some of the objects in the pictures. Pannkakor (pancakes) quickly became an everyday word in our home! By the time we had worked our way to the end of the book, I was admittedly astounded to hear Katja narrate the entire book, in the style of the text, with no help whatsoever. The younger children weren’t quite as accomplished, but they all knew the most important words in the book, and could say some sentences.
As a final narration project, we made what we have come to call “Nino books.” (Click on the pictures for a larger view.)
They drew various pictures from the book on each square, and they can name everything they drew.
I am so pleased they did so well!
Book template from Making Books with Children
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Foreign Language learning à la Charlotte Mason:
' Children in Form IIB have easy French Lessons with pictures which they describe, but in IIA while still engaged on the Primary French Course children begin to use the method which is as full of promise in the teaching of languages as in English, that is, they are expected to narrate the sentence or paragraph which has been read to them. Young children find little difficulty in using French vocables, but at this stage the teacher should with the children's help translate the little passage which is to be narrated, them re-read it in French and require the children to narrate it. This they do after a time surprisingly well, and the act of narrating gives them some command of French phrases as far as they go, much more so than if they learnt the little passage off by heart. They learn French songs in both divisions and act French Fables (by Violet Partington) in Form IIA. This method of closely attentive reading of the text followed by narration is continued in each of the Forms. […]
We have not space to follow in detail the work of the P.U.S. in French, which of course includes the usual attention to French Grammar…
This hitherto unused power of concentrated attention in the study of languages whether ancient or modern appears to hold promise of making us at last a nation of linguists. We have attained very good results in Italian and German by this same method, both in the House of Education and the Practising School belonging to it, and we are in a fair way to produce noticeable results in Latin. The classical mistress writes,––
"Latin is taught at the House of Education by means of narration after each section has been thoroughly studied in grammer, syntax and style. The literature studied increases in difficulty as the pupil advances in grammar, etc. Nothing but good Latin is ever narrated, so the pupil acquires style as well as structure. The substance of the passage is usually reproduced with the phraseology and style of the original and both students and children learn what is really Latin and realise that it is a language and not a mere grammar." '
from: A Philosophy of Education, pp. 211-212
We studied Swedish last year, but I wasn’t satisfied with the content for reading and listening. This year for Swedish, we will be using living Swedish - short stories and real books, and listening as much as possible to native speakers. I have found several Swedish resources online, and I have ordered some picture books from Sweden, which all the girls helped to choose We will also continue learning a new Swedish song each term, and some Scripture memory.
I read a post on this topic a little while ago by The Linguist on Language Learning: Which Language to Study. The success of the German learners is encouraging and falls in very well with what Charlotte Mason has said. I hope we do as well!
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Saturday, April 5, 2008
Useful resource for French (or English!) vocabulary
I've put a link to the Visual Dictionary in my sidebar. Clicking on the animated button will take you to the English homepage. From there, you can choose the category you would like, and then once you have chosen a page, you can click on the "language button at the top to change the page to French. You can also search for a word in English or French.
For example, here is the English page for "Music" . From there, I choose the piano keyboard , and then click on "language" to go to the French page.
We actually have these pages as a book, which I was thrilled to find at a second hand store here for 50 cents. I find it very useful.
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Friday, October 5, 2007
Learning Swedish
Swedish is an uncommon choice for foreign language study, but I picked it because, firstly, it is the only other language I know besides French and English, and secondly, because it was the language of my grandfather and I want to preserve that part of our heritage. Besides that, Swedish is very beautiful, and it speaks to my heart! The girls also love Swedish, and Katja likes to listen to our Swedish cassettes, even if she doesn’t understand very much yet.
Getting materials is our biggest challenge, since bookstores in Canada don’t stock Swedish books. I have two Swedish courses, which is how I first learned, one for beginners, the other advanced. They are geared to adults, not children. Still, they are useful. What I would like is to get some Swedish childrens audio books, so that the children can listen to a story being read by a Swedish speaking person (as opposed to me, with my foreign accent) as they follow along in the book.
I have the book A Home: Paintings From A Bygone Age, which is a book of paintings by the well-known Swedish artist, Carl Larsson. We have used this book for picture study, and talked about it a bit, so they are familiar with the pictures and the family members. The text of the book is in English, unfortunately, but I have never read it to them, and I try to only use Swedish when we are looking at it, so that in their heads, it’s Swedish.
This is how our Swedish lessons went this week (The dialogue was in Swedish of course, but I’ll only write the English here.) :
I showed the picture Blomsterfönstret.
Here is a girl.
Her name is Suzanne.
Suzanne likes plants.
She likes flowers.
Then I pointed out a few things in the room: sofa, chairs, table, candlesticks, paintings, rug, … I mentioned their colours; we counted the flowers.
Each day I would say basically the same thing, adding more each time, asking them to point out things to me, or tell me the name of something. Yesterday, we talked about what Suzanne is doing.
Suzanne is sitting down.
She stands up.
She takes up the watering can.
She walks to the window.
She waters the flowers.
She looks out the window.
She goes to the chair.
She sits down.
We worked with that for a while; first, the girls mimed the action that I was describing, and then they narrated what Suzanne was doing.
Finally, at the end of the week, we listened to a lesson on cassette from a Swedish language course, teaching the vocabulary of furniture. They didn’t understand all the dialogue in the lessons, but I asked them to listen for all the words they knew, and they picked out everything I thought they ought to know, and then some (which is comforting, because that means my pronunciation isn’t too far off!) These lessons have served us very well, and at the end of the week Annalissa told Grandma that what she learned in school this week is Suzanne tycker om krukväxter!
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Friday, March 24, 2006
Increasing Your Vocabulary
Here are some steps that have helped me to become bilingual (well, trilingual, I suppose), and that I still use to improve my French and Swedish - and English for that matter!
1. Invest in a good dictionary.
This is indispensable. If your second language is French, Robert & Collins is a good French/English dictionary, or I have Harrap's Shorter dictionary. A full-sized dictionary is, of course, better than a pocket-sized, and if you are serious about learning a language, it is worth the expense.
Once you can read and comprehend fairly well (as in, you're not looking up every other word in the definitions!), it is time to get the single language dictionary. For French, I recommend Le Petit Robert. It is an excellent dictionary, and the standard for French language. Using a unilingual dictionary will help you start thinking in the target language (instead of translating everything in your head) and better grasp the connotation of words.
A good dictionary has an easy to understand phonetic transcription (the International Phonetic Alphabet is the best; le Petit Robert uses the IPA), and gives examples of how the word is used in a sentence.
2. Read slightly above your comfort level.
Trying to read something that you don't understand at all, looking up every other word in the dictionary, can be discouraging, but something a little more complicated than what you can easily understand pushes you to increase your vocabulary. Make sure you really understand each paragraph before you go on.
I highly recommend reading and memorizing Scripture as part of your foreign language program. We use the Ostervald version; it is based on the Received Text, like the KJV. One shared passion my husband and I have is studying the words of Scripture - sometimes a word doesn't mean what we think it does, or we can deepen our understanding of a word by looking it up in the dictionary.
3. Keep a vocabulary notebook.
In my notebook, I mark the page number of unfamiliar words, the word itself, and the phrase or sentence showing how the word is used. I leave a space for the definition. After I've read the paragraph, and attempted to grasp the meaning from context, I look up the write down the definition. Writing it down (it's also a good idea to say the new word out loud) helps you to remember it.
4. Narrate what you read.
This is key. ( Narration - the art of telling back - is explained here and here.) You can only use words that you know. Using the words yourself makes them part of your personal vocabulary; the language you are learning becomes a part of you.
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Saturday, January 14, 2006
Swedish site
Just for furture reference and the interest of my family: I am very excited to have found an excellent Swedish site from Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, interestingly enough. Introduction to Swedish by Urban Sikeborg has some excellent information and you can hear the pronunciation online. Unfortunately, our sound card isn't working right now, but he also gives a written pronunciation guide in Ch. 9.
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Sense & Sensibility ePatterns