Languages: Dead and Alive

In the last couple of posts, I’ve told you all about the literature my students will be reading this year. But, of course, reading is only half of the “English” equation.

My older student writes very well and has been writing poetry and stories pretty much as long as she could hold a pencil. And up until now, we’ve always just treated the more formal writing as an outgrowth of her history and literature study. She would read a certain number of books, then write about what she read. When she was younger, this was in a pretty traditional book report format, which has developed over the years into longer and more complex essays. She’d turn in a draft, let me read it and suggest corrections, then take another stab at polishing it.

And it worked pretty well, except that she continues to find academic writing daunting. The product is usually very good, consistently earning her A’s even in her outside-graded courses. The problem is that getting her to actually sit down and do the writing is downright painful . . . for both of us.

So, this year we’ve decided to try a writing program called Wordsmith Craftsman. We looked at the online samples and descriptions of several different essay-writing books, and this is the one she thought looked most appealing. It’s designed for the student to do independently. I’ve helped her to figure out how to schedule the work, but the actual doing of it will be up to her. My hope is that the writing process will become much more “mechanical” (in the best sense of the word) by the end of this year and that she will build some confidence in this area.

My son has decided he likes the format and approach of the workbook series from Harcourt Family Learning. So, he will be working through three of their workbooks this year: Spelling, Language Arts and Writing. He will, of course, continue to outline his history and science reading and write book reports and narrations, too. And he’s looking forward to working on his vocabulary with the second installment of Word Roots software from Critical Thinking.

That pretty much does it for English.

Both of my kids are studying Latin. My daughter used Oxford Latin for her first couple of years, but is transitioning to the wonderful So You Really Want to Learn Latin series this year. She read through the second book over the summer to get used to the style and is ready to hit the ground running with Book III next week. She’ll be supplementing with their Latin Translations book, just for fun.

Meanwhile, my son will be working through Primer B of Latin for Children this year. He had a great experience with Primer A last year and is looking forward to continuing. He will have his own translation work to do, since the publisher’s Lilellus de Historia for Primer B coincides nicely with our historical focus for this year.

In addition to English and Latin, my daughter decided to learn German, “just for fun.” She worked through most of Rosetta Stone’s German Level 1 last year (which the publisher claims is equivalent to two years of high school language study) and did some supplemental grammar. I think this gave her a good foundation, but she feels ready to move on to a more conventional, grammar-based program. Again, after looking at several alternatives, we’ve decided to enroll her in a German 2 course offered by the University of Missouri’s distance education center.

Thank goodness for outsourcing! (More on that in a later post.)

Spanish is the modern foreign language of choice for my son. He’s dabbled in this for a couple of years with an assortment of materials off the bookstore shelf. He doesn’t seem to have retained a lot, though. So we’re making an effort this year to get serious. We’re going to give The Learnables a try, moving at approximately half the recommended speed.

I must confess that the whole area of foreign languages is one that occasionally makes me sit up and take notice. The fact is that the only one of the three foreign languages being studied in my home that I might be qualified to “teach” (at least to a beginner) is Spanish. And, although I had a few years of that language in high school and college, it’s pretty rusty these days. This is just one of the ways in which it is already clear my kids will surpass me educationally, and may already have done so. And, while I’m excited and proud that we’re able to offer them those opportunities, I do sometimes have trouble really accepting just how much they are learning and doing.