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Karen T
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| Posted: July 09 2006 at 10:18pm | IP Logged
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We're going to start learning Spanish this fall. Ds has had 2 years now of Latin, although only this last year was very rigorous (LREG). We'll continue to study Latin at a slightly slower pace, for the grammar skills especially, but would like to learn Spanish also. We are both interested in being able to converse in spanish (we have a fair amount of Mexicans, South Americans, Puerto Ricans, etc. around here) but don't want anything quite as heavy as the Latin we're doing. I took Latin and French in hs and college but no Spanish so it will be new to me, but I figure a lot of the vocabulary should be at least somewhat recognizable since it's also a Romance language. And I would expect the grammar to be similar to French?
The only program I've seen in person is Rosetta Stone. It wouldn't be my first choice. It's appealing in the beginning, but I think would be monotonous after awhile and the cost is pretty high, considering I'll also be paying for LREG again too.
any recommendations?
Karen
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TracyQ
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| Posted: July 13 2006 at 10:14am | IP Logged
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We're planning to use Baaron's Spanish Now, which Seton uses. I took three years of Spanish, and the little I saw of it, I thought would be pretty doable. You can see it here:
Spanish Now
I emailed, to be sure that Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 are considered a full Spanish 1 and Spanish 2 course for high school, and they assured me they are. They also offer a Spanish 3 course too.
We did some Latin, but decided to switch to what I understand better. We'll do Latin Roots, etc. to try to hit what will be helpful for the SAT, and some Latin for our faith, etc., but I think Spanish makes more sense to our family.
Hope this helps a little. It's hard to find good programs out there that don't break the bank! 
__________________
Blessings and Peace,
Tracy Q.
wife of Marty for 20 years, mom of 3 wonderful children (1 homeschool graduate, 1 12th grader, and a 9th grader),
 homeschooling in 15th year in Buffalo, NY
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Natalia
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| Posted: July 13 2006 at 11:36am | IP Logged
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We have used The Learnables. I liked the results I had with my dc. This program has several components: it starts with a audio component-the student listens to some audio tapes/cds. The speakers have are native speakers and the vocabulary is simple at the beginning and it gets more complex. it starts with single words and it progresses to senteces. The second component is the Basic Structures- a workbook that reinforces the audio. Then it has a grammar component. I have found that my kids do pretty well when they go home to the DR. They understand a lot because their ear is trained because of the tapes.
This program lends itself to short lessons and the audio part can be done in the car or during lunch etc. It can get boring though, or so says my 9 yo ds.
Kathryn in UK mentioned Galore Park. She mentioned it for Latin actually but the Spanish course seems pretty good to me. I am toying with the idea of buying those. The price doesn't seem too bad but I need to find out how much shipping will be.
Other than that I have had my children read books in Spanish Lectorum has a nice selection. Sometimes I have had them read a book that they already have read in English, that way they feel more confident.
I have also find some online grammar exercises that we have used to supplement Study Spanish the Spanish grammar.
HTH,
Natalia
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Karen T
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| Posted: July 13 2006 at 10:51pm | IP Logged
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TracyQ wrote:
We're planning to use Baaron's Spanish Now, which Seton uses. I took three years of Spanish, and the little I saw of it, I thought would be pretty doable. You can see it here:
Spanish Now
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Thanks, I will check this out; I hadn't heard of it before. It definitely looks affordable.
Karen
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materdei7
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| Posted: July 14 2006 at 12:02am | IP Logged
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Karen,
You might check out your library system. I was able to get the Barron's Spanish Now I and the tapes at our local library...they even have the next levels! 
Then at least you can try it out before buying...or keep checking it out? 
__________________
Kathleen, mother of five on earth, three in heaven.
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Kathryn UK
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| Posted: July 14 2006 at 2:52am | IP Logged
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Natalia wrote:
Kathryn in UK mentioned Galore Park. She mentioned it for Latin actually but the Spanish course seems pretty good to me. I am toying with the idea of buying those, price doesn't seem too bad but I need to find out how much shipping will be.
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Hello Natalia,
I haven't seen the Galore Park Spanish, but I know Jane (mumofsix) has it and is very pleased with it.
__________________
Kathryn
Dh Michael, Rachel(3/95) Hannah(8/98) Naomi(6/06)  (11/07)
The Bookworm
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Karen T
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| Posted: July 14 2006 at 9:20am | IP Logged
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I just checked our library's offerings and found they have several things on CD or downloadable audiobooks. I've downloaded the beginning level of the Pimsleur course. I think I have seen a few references to this one before, but anyone have direct knowledge of it? I figured I could listen to it for awhile and then see if it's a good fit.
Karen
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mumofsix
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I am using the Galore Park Spanish course for my dd and I can strongly recommend it. It leads to GCSE level in the British system, which is probably equivalent to two years in high school. The good thing about this course is that it marries a sound grammatical approach with lots of oral work. In the "good old days" (when I was at school!) we learned French (and other modern foreign languages) in exactly the same way we learned Latin. So by age 16 I could read Maupassant and Racine in the original French, but I was hard put to it to ask for an ice-cream in a shop when in France!
On the other hand, my grammatical base and width of vocabulary and sheer depth of understanding of the idiomatic peculiarities of French meant that after one month in the country I could speak it fluently, though probably only de Gaulle used the subjunctive more than I did! (I often used to be told: "You sound like a textbook!)
Recent attempts to make foreign language learning more relevant have mostly been catastrophic in that yes children can ask for an ice-cream, but can do little else; as for reading Racine or being able to write anything in the target language accurately, forget it.
The Galore Park books, to my mind, straddle that divide really well. There is lots of practice in listening and speaking, so that the child certainly could converse in the language after doing this course, but it is grammatically sound too, using an incremental approach that is coherent and explicit: no muddling about being "immersed" in the language and expected to work it out for yourself ("just like a baby learning to speak" - hah! what baby learned to speak when exposed to the language for just half an hour per day or whatever?!). I think a child could certainly read texts in the original language after completing this course.
Before finding the Galore Park books I had used a modern GCSE course to teach the oral skills essential to GCSE and an old-fashioned textbook to teach grammar, but my daughter was frustrated by the former and bored by the latter. She really enjoys the Galore Park books and tapes. They include a teacher's manual which gives all the answers to the exercises.
Jane.
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Natalia
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Janet,
thank you for the review of the Galore Park course. I have not liked the textbooks I have seen in the States so far. Do you think I need to order the CDs and the teachers manual? what about the assessment pack?
Thanks,
Natalia
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Diane
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Jane,
What do you think is the appropriate age range for beginning the Galore Park program?
Thank you for your thorough review. It sounds like an excellent program.
__________________
Peace,
Diane
Mom to five fair lasses and one bonny prince
The Journey of a Mother's Heart
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Karen T
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| Posted: Aug 18 2006 at 9:39am | IP Logged
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TracyQ wrote:
We're planning to use Baaron's Spanish Now, which Seton uses. I took three years of Spanish, and the little I saw of it, I thought would be pretty doable. You can see it here:
Spanish Now
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I wanted to update this thread now that I've started using Spanish Now (are you using it yet Tracy?) I am very disappointed in it, b/c we've only done the introductory pages and I've found so many errors. It shows pictures of ie, a house with items in it and then asks questions with other pictures like is this a chair, is this a radio, etc. and the student is supposed to correct them (no, that is not a chair, it is a television) etc. There are things labeled as one thing, but called differently in the questions (according to the answer key); there are some that are not labeled at all but then have questions requiring a noun not given, etc. I just emailed the publisher, after checking their webpage for an errata list. This book is orig. copyrighted 1975, with multiple updates and newest is 2005. you would think by now the errors would have been discovered and fixed. I think I am going to look for something else for ds; I may continue to use this on my own for my benefit, but it takes me too long to check over his work to see if he is really correct when the answer key contradicts him.
If anyone has more recommendations, I'm all ears.
karen
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TracyQ
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Great Karen!
We will start on Tuesday, and I already have the Barron's all set to go. 
I don't have the means to buy something new. If you hear form the publisher, would you please let me know? I'll need that list too if that's the case.
I may try to email Seton too, and see what they say regarding errors, as this is what they use for high school spanish, and is one of the reasons I chose it. 
__________________
Blessings and Peace,
Tracy Q.
wife of Marty for 20 years, mom of 3 wonderful children (1 homeschool graduate, 1 12th grader, and a 9th grader),
homeschooling in 15th year in Buffalo, NY
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Natalia
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| Posted: Aug 18 2006 at 12:08pm | IP Logged
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Karen, I ordered the Galore Park Spanish course. I found this company
The Book Depository that have free shipping from the UK to the States. Still the course is not cheap especially the CDs. We have been using it for about a week and been very pleased with it.
Just something for you to consider,
Natalia
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Karen T
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| Posted: Aug 18 2006 at 7:54pm | IP Logged
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Thanks, I just looked it up and did the currency conversion and yikes! I'm really surprised there aren't more basic Spanish courses around, considering how many people probably take it.
I got a form reply to my email to Barron's that they've received my email and the person will be back in the office on Monday. I plan to look through the book a bit more this weekend and get an idea of how the course is laid out more and see if I spot any more obvious errors.
Tracy, I know what you mean about not having the means to buy something new; I'm stretched right now as it is, with all the other new things we need for school, although I've put off buying some things that we won't get to until mid-semester at least. maybe, since you said you've had a lot of Spanish yourself, the errors won't be a big problem for you. If I use it for ds, I will just have to go through each lesson ahead of time (which is a good idea anyway I'm sure but I was hoping for this to be mostly self-taught, and the book does promote itself that way)
I'll let you know what i hear.
karen
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mumofsix
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I have only just realised I did not look back at this thread and therefore appear to have ignored two questions: sorry!
The CD is mandatory for the Galore Park course, as well as the student book. Many of the exercises involve both simultaneously. The teacher's book is basically an answer book, so you would need it if you did not have a background in Spanish, but not otherwise. I don't know about the assessment materials, but these could be useful if preparing for an exam. We will probably use past GCSE papers.
As for age at which to begin, we were talking about this today, and my husband thought 11+. The Galore Park French series can be used from age 9/10 (year 5 U.K. or fourth grade U.S.) but we think the Spanish books are a little more accelerated, though not much. A bright 9 or 10 year old might cope well.
Hth!
Jane.
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Natalia
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Jane,
I am using the GP with my 9 yo bu,t we are taking it very slowly: two pages a lesson. So far so good. My dc are very familiar with Spanish so that helps. I went ahead and ordered the whole set for book 1 and 2. The teachers book has the transcript for the tapes so technically, if a parent knew Spanish, they could use those transcripts and read the exercise to the kids. I decided against doing that because then I had to do the work with them and also because I wanted them to get used to someone else's accent besides mine. The Spanish used in this tape is Castillian Spanish.
Natalia
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Karen T
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| Posted: Sept 11 2006 at 4:20pm | IP Logged
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TracyQ wrote:
Great Karen!
We will start on Tuesday, and I already have the Barron's all set to go.
I don't have the means to buy something new. If you hear form the publisher, would you please let me know? I'll need that list too if that's the case.
I may try to email Seton too, and see what they say regarding errors, as this is what they use for high school spanish, and is one of the reasons I chose it. |
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Tracy, have you heard anything from Seton, or have you had problems with the course yet? I still have not heard back from Barron's, although I got a form reply that they'd received my letter. I replied to that and the woman said she'd passed on my letter to the editing dept and was surprised I hadn't heard anything back. A week later I wrote her again saying I still had not heard from them. I've received no further replies. I'm pretty disgusted by this point. The book wasn't cheap. I don't expect a book to have NO errors, but I do expect them to publish an errata if there are several, and I do expect replies to inquiries about the content. Right now I'm in limbo; I don't want to continue with it if I'm going to have to research every answer to be sure they are correct. we're just continuing with Latin for now.
Karen T
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Topic: Best spanish course for 13 yo?
