• Jul. 21, 2008
Why Should You Choose Spanish For Your Homeschooled Children?
It’s a blessing to homeschool your children. Teaching your children at home brings the family closer together. Les than one generation ago homeschooling was virtually unknown as a way to educate your kids and keep them away from the dangers of public schools. On the other hand it can be challenging to teach a second language especially if you don’t know one yourself
Learning Spanish will help prepare your children for their high school language credits and many colleges look for language credits. Here are some practical reasons to choose Spanish for your child’s language credit.
Spanish is much easier to learn because the basic building blocks are straightforward. You can have meaningful communication in Spanish after only a few lessons. At the high school level, more than 95% percent of my fellow students chose Spanish to meet the foreign language requirement, according to internet research.
Employment opportunities are multiplied by having Spanish as a second language. Adding this skill to your child’s resume when they start working will give them preference over other job applicants. Employers like hiring people with diversity in their backgrounds and the initiative to reach out to others.
There are more opportunities in America to use Spanish in the U.S. workforce than any other language. Just a few professions where Spanish is a necessity include Police Officers, EMS, Doctors and Nurses, Teachers, Grocers, and Sales Personnel.
Spanish is considered an official language on four continents and is of historical importance elsewhere. From Spain in Europe to the Philippines , many countries in Africa , all over the USA, Mexico, Central America and nearly all of South America. It is, also an official United Nations language.
“Ethnologue: Languages of the World” is a web and print publication of SIL International, a Christian linguistic service organization which studies lesser-known languages. In 2005, Ethnologue calculated 322 million people around the globe speak Spanish as their native language.
“Encarta” by Microsoft came to the same conclusion as Ethnologue about native Spanish speakers. But they also found that an additional 100 million people who speak Spanish as a second language.
With these statistics Spanish is ranked as the second most common language spoken in the world making English the third most spoken language.
Make sure your child takes part in choosing the language he/she studies. Children should not be “assigned” to a foreign language class. Why? Pressuring children will back fire on you. Just like with music lessons, unless your child enjoys the language they bock and complain when it comes time to study.
Show them how Spanish is already a part of English with words like taco, burrito, the game Uno. You could even show them a Spanish article written for kids from the internet where they can pick out words that are similar to English words. These gestures will show your child how easy it will be to learn Spanish.
Children love secrets. Perhaps that's one reason children sometimes speak in Pig Latin or devise secret codes of their own. Tell them if they learn Spanish, they can use the language to create an exclusive club where Spanish has to be spoken to enter.
Native Spanish speakers tend to be more relaxed and understanding about Americans who speak incorrect Spanish. Incorrect Spanish is easy to understand. Last year when my church group went on a trip to Guadalupe, Chihuahua, Mexico, we had an American Mexican that was helping us translate.
My friend, Rosa, was the most experienced Spanish speaker in the group. Rosa was the one who made the biggest language mistake. She meant to say to two Pastors and a little girl, “tengo caliente.” In Spanish that means, “I am hot.” The funny thing is that kind of hot means she was standing too close to her husband.
Rosa thought the Pastors looked at her kind of funny. However, when the little girl’s eyes got really big and she cried out to her mother for help, our “translator” knew she was in trouble. The mother of the little girl almost fell off her chair with laughter when she heard what Rosa said. Of course when the rest of us heard what happened we didn’t let Rosa forget about it the rest of the trip.
Now that Spanish is your language of choice, consider a new learning environment that will excite and encourage your child to learn. Online teleclasses incorporate new computer skills as well as provide a fun interactive venue for your children. This is a great way to keep Spanish fresh and inviting for your children.
Michelle Rothwell has been instructing Spanish classes since 1998. She is the Founder and Owner of Dora & Diego Homeschool Spanish. The most comprehensive Biblically-based Spanish text.
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Comments
• Jul. 23, 2008
Untitled Comment
Posted by Anonymous
A great site for ESL students is AIDtoCHILDREN.com.
AIDtoCHILDREN.com is a dual-purpose site for building an English vocabulary and raising money for under privileged children in the most impoverished places around the world.
Check it out at http://www.aidtochildren.com
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• Aug. 2, 2008
Spanish is the way to go!
Posted by Anonymous
A child who grows up speaking both English and Spanish will have tremendous opportunities when they grew older. It's incredible the amount of additional doors that will open when one knows how to speak the language.
Regarding the funny incident with your friend Rosa, well those things happen. Next time, hopefully, she'll say "tengo calor" or "hace mucho calor" to avoid misunderstanding with the "caliente" meaning. :) But either way, I'm sure she'll never forget the reaction of her audience!
Saludos,
Cody's Mommy
http://www.codyscuentos.com
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