Monthly Archives: December 2009

3 Reasons Why Homeschooling Rocks

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1.  It’s not boring as all get out.

I spent the first 5 and a half years of my education in public schools. There were, of course, times when I enjoyed learning things and talking to my friends. On the flip side, though, there were long stretches of monotony and boredom. And that was just grade school! I can’t even imagine what it would have gotten like in middle and high school. I vaguely remember a class I took in 6th grade before I began to be homeschooled. “Conflict resolution” they called it. It was an entire class we had to sit through for 50 minutes a day on how not to get in a fight. Instead of teaching us something useful like math, history or science, we had to sit and learn that getting in a fistfight wasn’t good for anybody.

I think it goes without saying that homeschooling was far more interesting. I was either doing something and learning, or I was enjoying my free time. I never had to sit through extended periods of monotonous lectures or stare at a chalkboard while a teacher catered to the slowest student in the classroom. I was able to learn at my own pace and enjoy it.

2.  No one gives you wedgies.

Unless, of course, you have an older sibling and then you might get more wedgies than you can handle. One of the fantastic things about being homeschooled is that there is no awkward social structure that you have to fit yourself into. Unless you live in a very complicated family, there are no bullies, no drug addicts and so forth.

Again, the advantage is more than what you don’t have to deal with, but also in what you do get. Being homeschooled enabled me to develop much stronger relationships with my parents and my siblings, and I did find a variety of friends through our homeschool group and church and so forth. I found that when I got to college I was able to comfortably communicate with everyone from the older students (some who were even grandparents, coming back for their education) to the younger students and even the professors and staff. None of these people ever gave me a wedgy.

3.  Odds are your teacher will probably like you.

I didn’t personally ever have issues with a teacher that didn’t seem to like me or treat me well, but I do know that those experiences are out there. The odds increase, I think, as you get into high school that you might run into a teacher that you either don’t like or who doesn’t like you for some reason. I wouldn’t say that it’s anything personal, just sometimes there are personality clashes.

On the other hand, I think you benefit from homeschooling because you’re able to develop a much deeper relationship with your parents. Instead of coming home from school and simply telling them what you did (if you can even remember all the details) you live it with them.

Benefits Of Homeschooling

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Why let Tim and Lisa learn at home than send them to school? Well, first of all, you don’t have to wake them up at 7 every morning and bundle them off to school with umpteen numbers of instructions, and wait with an anxious heart till they return. Homeschooling gives you more control over the influences that affect your child. The growth and development of your child is removed from the realm of the unknown. You, and you alone can decide what your child needs to do or learn. Tailoring the curriculum to suit the needs and interests of the child is one of the most obvious benefits of homeschooling

Individual attention is another salient benefit of homeschooling. For instance, if Lisa needs more time to learn Math, then she can reduce the time for her English lessons. There are no fixed hours of learning per subject. This means that a child has the advantage of assigning more number of hours to the subject that seems tough WITHOUT any additional pressure. The amount of time needed to learn each subject will depend on the abilities and interests of the child.

The schooling of the child becomes an extended family activity. Parents get involved in every step of the learning procedure. Field trips and experiments become family activities. Thus, the child receives more quality time with his parents. The entire family shares games, chores and projects. Family closeness becomes the focus here. The child is also free of any negative peer pressure while making choices and decisions.

Competition is limited when it comes to homeschooling. The child does not need to prove his ability with regards to other children. His confidence remains intact. Since parents have a deep understanding of their child, they can plan the learning program to pique the child’s interest. It is also possible to intersperse difficult tasks with fun activities. A tough hour with Algebra can be followed by a trip to the nearest museum. Learning becomes fun. Parents can also tailor the curriculum to suit the learning style of the child. Some children learn through reading, while others need to write, and still others need to see objects in action.

Homeschooling allows parents to take control over the moral and religious learning of the child. Parents have the flexibility to incorporate their beliefs and ideologies into the child’s curriculum. There is no confusion in the child’s mind either because there is no variation between what is being taught and what is being practiced.

Lastly, more and more parents are getting disillusioned with the public school system. They believe that their children are being pushed too hard or too little. Other worrying issues pertaining to discipline and ethics also make the school system less welcome. Many repudiate the educational philosophy of grouping children solely on the basis of their age. Some parents themselves have unhappy memories of their own public school experience that motivates them to opt for homeschooling when it comes to their own children.

Homeschooling is the best way to teach a child if you have the time, the ability and the interest to follow through with his education. After all, nobody can understand or appreciate your child more than yourself.

18 Strategies For Enhancing Language Skills

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The following strategies are offered for enhancing language skills and managing language challenges. This listing is by no means exhaustive, but rather is meant as a place to begin.

Alice Thomas and Glenda Thorne

1. Take the mystery away.

The first and perhaps most important strategy is to teach students about the components of language, common language challenges and language strategies, and to help students understand their own language strengths and challenges. This process is sometimes called demystification – taking the mystery away.

2. Simplify directions.

Students with receptive language challenges may need directions broken down into their simplest form. They may also benefit from a comic book-type illustration of steps to take for the completion of a task.

3. Give written copies of directions and examples.

Students with receptive language challenges may need directions given to them at a relatively slow pace. They may need directions repeated to them. They most often benefit from having a written copy of directions that are given orally. Examples of what needs to be done are also useful.

4. Provide frequent breaks.

Students who have receptive language challenges may use up a lot of energy listening, and, therefore, tire easily. Consequently, short, highly structured work times with frequent breaks or quiet periods may be helpful.

5. Give additional time.

Students with receptive and expressive language challenges are likely to have a slower processing speed and should be allowed additional time for written work and tests.

6. Sit Close.

A student may want to sit close to the teacher so he can watch the facial expression of the teacher when s/he is talking. This may also help to diminish interference from other auditory distractions.

7. Allow voluntary participation.

Students with language processing challenges should not be put on the spot by being required to answer questions during class discussions, especially without being forewarned. Rather, their participation should be on a voluntary basis.

8. Teach summarizing and paraphrasing.

Reading comprehension is often enhanced by summarizing and paraphrasing. This helps students to identify the main idea and supporting details. It may be helpful to provide key words such as who, what, when, where and why to orient attention to the appropriate details.

9. Teach a staging procedure.

Most students find a staging procedure beneficial when writing paragraphs, essays, poems, reports and research papers. First they should generate ideas, and then they should organize them. Next, they should attend to spelling and grammatical rules. They may also list their most frequently occurring errors in a notebook and refer to this list when self correcting.

10. Encourage renewed investment of energy in older students.

Older students who have experienced reading failure from an early age must become convinced that a renewed investment of energy will be worthwhile. According to Louisa Moats, an expert in the field of reading, older students who are very poor readers must have their phonological skills strengthened because the inability to identify speech sounds erodes spelling, word recognition, and vocabulary development. Phonological awareness, spelling, decoding, grammar, and other language skills can be taught as a linguistics course in which instructors use more adult terminology such as phoneme deletion and morphemic structure. Phonemic drills may include games such as reverse-a-word (Say teach; then say it with the sounds backwards – cheat.)

11. Give Foreign Language Waivers

Students who have experienced problems with their primary language are more likely to have difficulty with a foreign language. Foreign language requirements may need to be waived for these students.

12. Use echo reading for fluency development.

For fluency development, it is helpful to have a student in the lower grades echo read and also read simultaneously with an adult. The adult and the student may also take turns reading every other sentence or paragraph. Additionally, the adult may model a sentence and then have the student read that same sentence.

13. Amplify auditory input.

Multisensory techniques can be used to increase phonetic skills and to memorize sight words. For example, a student may sound out a word or write sight words on a dry erase board using different colored markers, all while using Hearfones, a Phonics Phone or a Toobaloo device to enhance auditory input. These devices amplify and direct the student’s own voice straight back to his ears, causing increased auditory stimulation to the brain. These devices can be purchased from CDL’s A+ WebStore at www.cdl.org.

14. See, say, hear and touch.

Multisensory strategies are helpful for learning letter names. Examples include: 1) spreading shaving cream on a table top and having the child write letters in the shaving cream while saying the letter name out loud; and 2) cutting out letters from sandpaper and having the child “trace” the sandpaper letter with his or her finger while saying the name of the letter.

15. A picture is worth a thousand words.

The expression, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” may become especially important for the visual person who has difficulty expressing himself verbally. For example, a student may make diagrams, charts, or drawings to help him remember what he has read. If he is good at art, the student may draw or paint pictures to explain his ideas.

16. Teach active reading.

To help with comprehension, it may be helpful to underline key words and phrases with a pencil or highlighter and to paraphrase them in the margins, thereby making reading more active. If the student is not allowed to write in the book, he can write the main words or ideas on Post-It notes.

17. Guide students to read between the lines.

When first teaching students to infer while reading, the teacher should first guide the thinking by using a whole class activity. After the class as a whole has identified a logical inference, the teacher should facilitate the examination of the process by which they arrived at their inference. Leading questions may be, “What is the author saying to us? How do we know the author meant this?” Remind students that authors provide clues (imply) so readers can infer.

18. Provide individual evaluation and intervention.

Many students with language challenges benefit from individual evaluation and remediation by highly qualified professionals. It is critical to use assessment tools designed to pinpoint specific skill deficits and to provide individual or small group remediation/intervention using explicit, evidence-based strategies and methods that directly address each student’s individual needs.

When learning a new language, it is always useful to be familiar with its main grammatical units. This constitutes the first necessary step in order to understand and create meaningful speech.

Here are the main grammatical elements in Spanish and some useful information about them:

Nouns:
A noun is a word which is mostly used to refer to a person or thing. All nouns in Spanish have a gender, meaning that they are either masculine or feminine. For example, “niño” (boy) is masculine and “niña” (girl) is feminine. The best way to identify gender is undoubtedly experience, although here are some general guidelines which may be useful at the beginning: usually nouns ending in –o are masculine and nouns ending in –a are feminine. Of course there are always exceptions.

For example, “mano” (hand) and “radio” (radio) are feminine. On the other hand, words of Greek origin ending in –ma, such as “dilema” (dilemma) or “problema” (problem) are masculine. When you are learning new vocabulary, it is recommendable that you learn a noun together with its corresponding article. That will help you to remember their gender. For example “la niña”, “la mano” or “el problema” and “el niño”.

Adjectives:
Adjectives are used to qualify a particular noun, to say something about it. It is important to remember that in Spanish they are usually placed after the noun. Since adjectives are always related to a noun, they have to agree with them in gender and number.

This means that if you want to say something about the noun “niño”, which is masculine and singular, the adjective that you use will also have to be masculine and singular. Thus, you can say “niño alto” (tall boy), “niño pequeño” (small boy), etc. If, on the other hand, if you were talking about a girl, you would have to say “niña alta” and “niña pequeña”.

Pronouns:
Pronouns substitute for nouns. For example, you can say “la niña está aquí” (the girl is here) or “ella está aquí” (she is here). In this case “ella” is substituting for “la niña”. The subject pronouns in Spanish are “yo” (I), “tú/usted/vos” (singular you), él (he), ella (she), nosotros (we), vosotros/ustedes (plural you), ellos (they).

The singular and plural “you” are used differently depending on the dialect of Spanish that you are using. It is important to remember that subject pronouns are frequently omitted in Spanish, since the ending of the verb already indicates this. Thus, native spears would say “estoy aquí” (I’m here) rather than “yo estoy aquí”.

Verbs:
Verbs indicate actions. Usually when you enumerate a verb, you use what is called the infinitive, for example “hablar” (to speak). In Spanish there are three different types of verbs, depending of how their infinitive ends. These different categories are called conjugations.

Thus, there are verbs ending in –ar, such as “hablar”, in -er “comer” (to eat) and in –ir “dormir” (to sleep). As mentioned before, verbs in Spanish have different endings depending on who the subject of the action is. These endings will vary from one conjugation to the other. For example, with the verb “hablar”, the singular “you” is “(tú) hablas”, whereas with “comer” it is “(tú) comes”. This can obviously be complicated for learners at the beginning, but once you get used to it, you will have no problem communicating effectively.

Don’t Forget A Spanish Dictionary!

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On a recent tour through Mexico and Central America, I realized that I had forgotten many things for my journey. For some reason I made it out of my house without my toothbrush and toothpaste, but fortunately I was able to replace them as soon as I realized my mistake. I also forgot film for my camera but was able to purchase some once I got to Mexico as well. Far worse than forgetting those things, however, was the realization that I had forgotten my Spanish dictionary that I had received and practiced with just for this trip.

My best friend gave me the Spanish dictionary a few months before I headed out on my trip because she remembered what a difficult time I had in high school Spanish class. She assumed rightly that my Spanish skills were even more poor fifteen years after my last Spanish class. She handed me the Spanish dictionary and wisely advised me to practice the basic words and phrases found in the front of the dictionary every day until I left on my trip. I’ve never been good at following any advice that included the phrase “every day,” so naturally I only picked up my Spanish dictionary a few times before I headed out on my journey.

Many people warned me that having a Spanish dictionary would be one of the best tools for me as I traveled alone throughout several Spanish speaking and foreign countries. I certainly believed the warnings of friends and family, but I had no real idea until I landed in Mexico how true their warnings had been. I was like a lost puppy or a child without her mother. I couldn’t talk with locals or even begin to make out the words on signs or billboards.

I made it through the three week tour, but not without much stress and too many miscommunications. I learned quickly that gestures and pointing can go a long way when no words can be communicated. I made it to every city on my itinerary, so I did not miss out on anything in that sense, but I realized quite quickly that forgetting my Spanish dictionary made me miss out on what would have perhaps been the biggest blessing of the trip. Without a tool to help me communicate with the locals, I missed out on a lot of potentially amazing conversations and on getting to know the ins and outs of Spanish cultures from locals.

I will always regret forgetting my Spanish dictionary when I went on that trip, and not just because I couldn’t get around with ease. I’ll regret it even more because of the lovely Spanish people that I didn’t have the privilege of conversing with during my journey.

Getting Ready To Home School

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When it comes to your children, you want the best.  Home schooling is your chance to shine, as not only a parent, but as a teacher.  By keeping your child at home, you are able to conduct their lessons in a timely and efficient manner and help you child to stay on track with their education.  To make sure your child’s home schooled education is successful, there are several things you can do.

The first, while it may be obvious to some, is the most important.  You want to make sure that you and your child are on the same page.  You’ll need to sit down with your child and explain the steps that will be taken to ensure their education is successful.

Setting up a scheduled time for their education is important.  Just because they are receiving their education at home does not mean they do not have a schedule.  In fact, with home schooling, it is very important that your child does have a schedule and it is up to both you and your child to stick to the allotted time.  Before you start, talk with your child and discuss what is the best time of day to start.  Some children are best right after breakfast and others do better at learning after they’ve been awake for a couple of hours.  The wonderful thing about home schooling is that you know your child and how their personality and disposition will work throughout the day.

Once you have planned out a schedule for your child, you’ll also want to get organized.  Make sure you involve your child in this, as well.  If you have an area of your home or a room that is relatively quiet and relaxed atmosphere, this will work best for your child.  Setting up a designated area for your child’s schooling will help your child to understand the difference between school time and play time.  When you have picked out the area, you and your child should make sure it is furnished properly.  Your child should have a comfortable desk and chair, as well as all the items necessary to complete their home schooling, such as paper, pens, pencils, and anything else you may need.

By knowing when and where their home school will be, your child will be more successful in taking care of business when it is time.  Having all the necessary items your child will need can take the edge off, as well and the more you involve your child in the planning and organizing of their school day, your child will be more apt to participate in their learning.

Getting Started with Home Schooling

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As a mother of a two year old, the thought of “school” crosses my mind more than occasionally. I have to admit, I don’t like what I see. Schools these days have many problems. Violence is growing. The standards aren’t high enough to make sure our children are learning. Many parents are not taking their child’s education seriously enough or just aren’t getting involved. And unfortunately there are teachers and school administrators out there that are more interested in numbers, politics, and money than they are in the welfare of their students.

All of these things and other considerations are making more and more parents look into home schooling as an option. This allows parents to spend more time with their children. It also allows them to be actively involved in their child’s education to make sure their child is succeeding.

But, where do I get started? I’m not a teacher. Where do I get the materials? What do I teach them? Is there some guideline to home schooling that has been successful for other parents? Where can I find more information about Home Schooling? In this article I will do my best to help you find all of the information and resources available for get started with Home Schooling.

First of all, home schooling is not free. There are a lot of materials you will need. Depending on the age of your child, there are specific requirements and specific subjects they must learn as well as standardized tests they must take. This is all set up to be sure parents who take their children out of school are actually home schooling them.

The first thing you will have to do is find out what the home schooling laws are in your state. Open a new browser window so you can keep this articles open and copy this link and put it into the address bar of your new window. http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp There you will find out what the laws are in your state. Some states do not require you notify them and others do, so make sure you study up on your state’s requirements.

The next thing you want to do is talk with people you know that are already doing home schooling. They will be able to offer you valuable home schooling advice. Try your local church or social group if you do not know anyone doing home schooling. You can also search at Ask.com for “Home Schooling Support Groups.” These are groups of parents that share their information and experiences with home schooling.

You can buy complete home school curriculums for children of any age by searching for “Home School Curriculum.” Many come on CD-ROM with workbooks and everything you need. You can buy everything at once or you can pick and choose the subjects you want to teach first. You can also find curriculums that incorporate your religious beliefs. There are many options!

There is also the theme method of home schooling where you teach your child everything at once by using a theme. You pick a theme your child likes like “The Old West” or “Outer Space”. Then you combine teaching them math, geography, history, language skills, etc. based on using their favorite theme.

Children learn very fast when things are interesting to them. Theme-based home schooling is one way to keep your child interested and also a great way for both of you to have fun learning. If you combine this theme-based method of home schooling with field trips or vacations that go along with it, you will find your child really interested in learning more. For instance, a field trip to the space museum or observatory if you are using the space theme. A vacation to a ghost town on the western theme would work as well.

If you are considering home schooling, you will also want to make sure your child has ample opportunity for social activities. You may be able to provide them with the highest standards of academics, but children also need to socialize with their peers. This can be done through organized sports, music classes, and many areas actually have home school “community groups” that get together. Once you are able to connect with other home school parents in your area, you will be sure to find an abundance of activities for your child to participate in.

The bottom line is this. Do not be intimidated by home schooling your child even if you did not do well in school yourself. You can learn together. The benefits of home schooling can far outweigh the disadvantages. If there is a day where it is just not going to work out, don’t worry. Don’t force it. Be creative and make learning fun for your child. If you are committed, you will succeed. Best of luck!

How to Learn German Fast

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The following tips to learn German are personal recommendations that you probably won’t get from a teacher. But it is worth giving them a try.

Picture Dictionaries
Picture Dictionaries are books that differ significantly from what you would expect from a regular dictionary. They are made up of different themes – such as “At the airport” or “in the supermarket”. They will show many pictures – mostly things and situations that fit this specific theme and mention the words below the picture in English and German – and maybe many other languages. You might think this is just for kids. But any adult can get such a great deal of information out of a picture dictionary. It makes learning fun, visual and context sensitive. Most people learn better in a visual way. So these mostly 2-sided themes will help you tremendously because they summarize the most relevant vocabulary for a theme clustered together with pictures that are fun to look at and to browse through. I use them myself regularly and it just doesn’t feel like you are learning – it’s as relaxing as going through a magazine. But the amount of content you pick up this way is amazing. Think of it: It resembles much more reality than learning pairs of printed words. A word is just an abstraction of something real. So when you are learning pairs of words you are dealing with two abstractions tied together. However, we tend to think in pictures. Your mind has to do two things: Translate the picture in your mind to an English word, translate the English word into the German word by looking up that word pair you memorized. So when you look in picture dictionaries you get the words associated directly with pictures in your mind.
Sometimes a picture dictionary is the only way to explain a certain thing to a non-native speaker, because in many situations we cannot explain what we mean even in our own language – particularly certain types of food or special technical terminology.

Advertisements
Another unusual way to learn German – as well as any language is through advertisements. Why ads? Because ads are made by professional marketing experts for just one thing: Transport a message clearly and quickly and get in your memory and make you remember it. That’s exactly what you want when you learn a language. A teacher or a textbook author does not come close to the effectiveness of the communication professionals in the agencies. So while you may not like to be bothered by ads in your own language you should take a look at them in the language you want to learn. Certain phrases will store themselves in your brain instantly remain in your memory for a long time. Most of them are short, funny and easy to remember. Eh, it’s advertisement isn’t it?

Picture Associations
When you hear a word in German that does not resemble anything you know in English try to think if this word reminds you of anything funny or strange that your know. The more unusual the association the better. Consider the German word ‘Kissen’ which means ‘pillow’. Just think of yourself kissing your girlfriend/boyfriend on a pillow. This association makes sense and is easy to memorize. The best thing: It involves emotions. Emotions are a great accelerator for memorizing and remembering things. It doesn’t even have to be positive emotions. Negative feelings work as well. Anything that is not boring will make you remember the words you wanted to remember.

What You Should NOT Do
Although it might seem tempting DO NOT use music and song lyrics to learn German or any other foreign language. Most songs contain either a form of dialect, inappropriate slang or rude language. Many songs play with language by falsifying it and twisting it around. Some use very old-fashioned and poetry-style language. So don’t use it.
Don’t read German newspapers. Most of them are very political and use a terminology which is extremely hard to understand. The sentences are extremely long, so usually when you get to the end you cannot remember how it started. Newspapers are clearly for the advanced language learner. So please stay away from them in the beginning.

This article was first published in our <A href=”http://www.learn-german-links.net/German_Language_Knowledge_Base.html”>German Language Knowledge Base</A>.

All About French- Speaking Countries

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The French Language

Roughly around 200 million people around the world speak French. This number includes people who speak French as a native language, as a second language and students of all ages who do not live in a francophone (French-speaking) country but have learned French. In fact French as a foreign language is the second most commonly taught language worldwide after English. It is also the only foreign language that can be useful throughout the world as well as in the United States. French comes in second after English on the list of the world’s 10 most influential languages. Proof of this is the pivotal role French holds. It is one of the official working languages in dozens of powerful international organisations such as the European Union (EU), United Nations (UN), World Health Organisation (WHO), World Trade Organisation (WTO), and a host of other worldwide institutions.

The French language of today is a direct result of long periods of evolution. France, throughout its long history, had been invaded by different ethnic tribal groups. The most distinguished of these are the Franks. They adopted the Latin being spoken at that time. Thus, the French language is a descendant from Latin. It is also known as one of the Romance languages which include Catalan, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. They are called such because their parent tongue Latin was the language of the Romans. Over the years, the early French language has undergone changes in words and grammatical structures. It has evolved into today’s global French.

Frenchspeak – Here, There and Everywhere

The French-speaking world spans the entire globe with its language heard in all the continents. Aside from English, French is the only language spoken as a native or first language on 5 continents.

In Europe, French is the official language of France, Luxembourg, Monaco, Belgium and Switzerland. France with a population of more than 60 million is one of the most modern countries in the world. It is one of the predominant leaders in the European Union. French is a co-official language in Switzerland. This picturesque country is one of the world’s richest countries. It is the centre of many international associations. Belgium, in the half past century, has emerged as a progressive European state. Brussels, the capital of Belgium, is home to the headquarters of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

In Africa, the French-speaking countries include Algeria, Burundi, Benin, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Comoros. Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Guinea, Madagascar, Morocco, Rwanda, Togo, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Tunisia, Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles.

In the Americas and the Caribbean, French is spoken in Canada, Haiti, French Guiana, Martinique and Guadeloupe (these last three are French territories).

In Australia and the Pacifics, Vanuatu and the overseas French territories French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Wallis and Fortuna are French-speaking.

In many other countries, French plays a significant role either as an administrative, commercial or international language. Some of these countries are Andorra, Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Egypt, Greece, India, Italy, Laos, Lebanon, Mauritania, Poland, Syria, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom (Channel Islands), United States particularly Louisiana and New England, the Vatican City and Vietnam. Clearly, the French language is spoken everywhere.

Convinced now to learn global French? It is quite easy. Browse through this site’s French Language Program and master French in the best place – the comfort of your own home.

Bonne chance! Good Luck!