<p>Helps for Language Learners </p>
<p><a href="http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html%5B/url%5D">http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html</a> </p>
<p>Following that advice worked very well for me.</p>
<p>I struggled with French all through high school. And scraped by with Bs thanks to lots of help from a French speaking friend. I spent a gap year in France and did eventually learn to speak French fluently. I took German in college - a completely different experience. Partly I felt like something had been switched on in my brain, but partly I think I was just more disciplined about studying. I did tapes in the language lab every single day. I don't think anyone is truly unable to learn a foreign language - after all you learned your native one - but I do think for many it takes a lot of work.</p>
<p>As a Spanish teacher, I find students like this all the time. The fact that he is getting B's and C's is a major accomplishment. This is tantamount to someone learning the notes in music, but not being able to "make" music. Nothing to worry about. However, the best things to do are to watch Spanish soaps and try to get what is happening from the action along with the sound, and listen to Spanish talk radio. And the advice about not trying to translate every word is perfect - kids need to try to find the key words that they can recognize and try to get the gist from that. This is m,uch like reading something in English and not knowing the meaning of one or 2 words, and figuring it out from the context. And praise him for his grades - many of my students don't get the grammatical concepts let alone the sounds. So more power to him! It sounds as though he is trying, and that should be rewarded.</p>
<p>Your son's mastery of the grammar and vocabulary shows he <em>can</em> learn spanish. He just has one problem area. The good news is he can fix it. The bad news is it takes practice. If you think about it, he has hours of practice each week looking at words on a page and manipulating the symbols he sees. I gather he has almost zilch practice with spoken conversation except when the test comes around and everything is by ear. </p>
<p>I agree with what many of the earlier posters have said about getting more exposure to the spoken language, but there is a resource that hasn't been mentioned yet. There are audio magazines (<a href="http://www.slpublish.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.slpublish.com/</a> and <a href="http://www.champs-elysees.com/%5B/url%5D">http://www.champs-elysees.com/</a> for example) that send a monthly CD along with a complete transcript. </p>
<p>The way to use them is not just to listen to an article once, but to listen while reading along with the transcript. Several times in fact. Then listen to the article without the transcript (maybe just a portion of it at first) and repeat this until it becomes easy to understand. By hearing familiar content you're training your ear for the cadence, sounds, and so on; and the more common words will really become ingrained. This isn't a one-day or one-week fix; but someone who practices for 15-20 minutes every day will make remarkable progress. Having the source and be able to repeat it at will until is is easy to hear is different from soaps and the like where the content comes but then is gone forever.</p>
<p>One other link you might want to show your son is at <a href="http://www4.ncsu.edu/%7Edfstephe/secrets.html%5B/url%5D">http://www4.ncsu.edu/~dfstephe/secrets.html</a> The author presents some interesting ideas that can help any language learner.</p>
<p>In addition to all the good advice, espec the one just above mine about listening to tapes with repeated transcripts (and not just the soap operas that come and go!)...I picked up OP's complaint that tests are not returned. That is disgusting. Talk to the Principal.</p>
<p>Our S has language issues as well and dropped Spanish after 10th grade with great relief. He worked very hard at it to make Bs and even the occasional C, and this is a kid who started Spanish in kindergarten. If he had been required to take more Spanish, we'd have had to get him a tutor. Good luck OP...I feel your pain.</p>
<p>"He never gets his tests back either so I can't see what he's missing or how to help him."</p>
<p>We are having the same problem with the math and science departments at my daughter's school. They will not return any algebra, geometry, or physics tests, although they do return her Spanish tests. Complaints at the school level have gotten us nowhere; we are told it is district policy, that they are trying to "standardize" the math and science programs across all schools. I guess they think the only way to standardize the curriculum is to reuse tests year after year. I think it is a bunch of BS and I get a throbbing headache just typing about it. So much for "getting parents involved in their child's education" when we aren't even allowed to help them address problems. </p>
<p>Complain about this nonsense. If no one speaks up, they think no one cares.</p>
<p>Getting back to learning Spanish--my daughter finds that studying with a couple of her friends helps a lot. When they study together, they are speaking out loud, and hearing themselves as well as others. It seems to help her.</p>
<p>one more thought about listening & speaking practice. There is a series of tapes called Pimsleur that is available for more than a dozen languages, including spanish. There are 90 30-minute lessons for most languages, aimed at the true beginner and teaching about what the 1st year of a language does. This is far below the level the OP's son is at, but the usefulness is that the program is entirely audio. So its a chance to get 45 hours of practice starting with the very simple and going from there. The programs are ridiculously expensive, but many libraries have copies of the program for a few languages. So the OP's son could copy the CD's onto his MP3 player and listen to them while jogging or in some otherwise idle time. Another way to get used to hearing the spoken language ...</p>
<p>BTW as a personal testimonial I used the italian series (just thru lesson 40 or so) prior to a trip and (while I couldn't hold a conversation by any means) I was able to make reservations, ask simple directions, conduct simple transactions, order meals, etc. all speaking and listening in italian.</p>
<p>There is a lot of good advice here. As a former language teacher, I encountered students who had similar difficulties. Before the tape/cd even begins, the student is tense. The tape/cd begins and by the fourth or fifth word, instead of listening, the student's mind is spinning with thoughts like, "Oh no, I don't know that word." The tape continues to play and the student is sunk. So, practice with cds/tapes is essential. Although television, movies and other tapes will work, it might be best to find the cds/tapes that go with the textbook for the course. The vocabulary of these tapes will be the same as the text. Perhaps they are available from the school. </p>
<p>I agree with previous posts. Not giving back tests in a language class is absurd.</p>
<p>My son bought a couple inexpensive elanguage tapes/learning programs at Barnes and Nobel (spanish and french). They are great. You read and hear at the same time and with a mike on the computer say it back and the program will move you on when you get it. It's kinda fun and painless!!! Should be enough to get him through the year.</p>
<p>My other thought is to meet with the teacher and tape her/his questions and the appropriate answers in order for him to study(hear) at home. The teacher should not have a problem with this if she/he truely wants him to learn. Or he could ask to tape a review class if she gives them.</p>
<p>been there. DS -8th, 9th, 10th then stopped. DD1 8-11th grade Pacesetter program then stopped. DD2-repeat of DS. All three have good ears depite my lack of any ear at all. However our school is 1/3 native spanish speakers and upper level Spanish tended to be 60% or more native speakers.
things we have done, or considered with different classes..
Email the teacher and get in writing that she will not return the tests. Then check with the dept. chair to be sure this is policy. Even if policy see if a tutor would be allowed to see the test results. (going through this in Calc at the moment-teacher is being lovely,just need to coordinate with tutor)
Ask the teacher if any student in class might be qualified to tutor in addition to an adult tutor, and/or see if there is a local tutor who is a retired district teacher. This way the tutor(s) know the curriculum.
In our district the national honor society kids offer free tutoring, and the spanish tutors are getting high grades (or did) in the same class your DS is taking now.
This part needs clarification from the school and from people here, but I'd find out what dialect is being taught in school, and what dialect the teacher speaks. One of my children had a native speaker/teacher who could not be understood in English (!) but also was teaching his native dialect rather than Castelian or whatever dialect was used in the class tapes.</p>
<p>I'd echo what two posters suggested - playing movies your s. is familiar with in Spanish - he will already know what's happening and start to develop a feel for the language and if it's possible, try a Concordia program. My d. went last summer and really enjoyed it - it's well run, safe, fun and the focus is on using the language (although there is some instruction at an appropriate level). It was basically a summer camp experience in another language. (<a href="http://www.concordialanguagevillages.com%5B/url%5D">www.concordialanguagevillages.com</a>)</p>
<p>Re: Not returning tests to students. </p>
<p>I've run into that too. See if it's possible to make an appointment after school with the teacher, not to talk about the problem, but to allow your S to review the tests and pinpoint what trips him up. We had to do this with S2 in 8th grade for algebra and what's interesting is that looking over several tests and what he got wrong helped us see certain patterns in his mistakes. He was able to make adjustments and change some study habits and it made a difference.
Teachers are required to have conference periods and many will meet with a student either before or after school or maybe at lunch.</p>
<p>Both my sons were always on the edge in Spanish class. They could take the tests, do decent, but their mouths were totally frozen when it came to speaking Spanish. We sent both, 15 and 17, along with a friend, to a Spanish immersion school in Antigua where they each lived with a different family. They took classes every morning between 9 and 12 - fun classes in which the 1 on 1 instructor walked around the town, went in and out of stores etc. In the afternoon the school organized little excursions, or the kids "hung out." Antigua is a lovely town, has 90 schools, 1000's of kids from all over the world during the summer all studying Spanish, and incredibly inexpensive. Living with a family including 3 meals a day was $125/week. Private lessons 5 days/week for 3 hours/day was approximately the same. Each boy came back after three weeks speaking impeccable Spanish. They were no longer self-conscious, but boasting about the complicated conversations they had with their host families. Their grades in Spanish went up to "A".</p>
<p>The problem may not be whether there is an ear for a language or not. I know a girl who was extremely fluent in French, yet got a terrible grade in an advanced French class. As you get up into a level like Spanish 3, you get less and less conversational and more and more into complex grammar. In a sense, who cares about the formality if you can speak it well, but these courses make you learn conjugations and tenses most people have never heard of.</p>
<p>I found out (later in my career) that I had a fondness for formal grammars, but I hated parsing sentences in high school.</p>
<p>I taught introductory Spanish in a community college about 10 years ago. One of the best things in our language lab at that time was a PBS Annenberg series called Destinos. It was 50 1/2 hour episodes, somewhat modeled on the Mexican telenovela format, but for general audiences (not so racy) and not so mindless (I grew up watching the novelas, so I can say that!). </p>
<p>The story revolves around a young Mexican-American female attorney who is hired by a Spanish expat living in Mexico to try to track down a family member who was lost in the Spanish Civil War. I don't remember all of the details, but the search takes the attorney to Spain, Puerto Rico, and Argentina, among other places; these journeys allow regional pronunciation and language variations to be highlighted (also nice imbedded cultural content to help build a frame of reference that will aid aural comprehension). The vocabulary is only slightly sheltered, grammar structures are systematically reinforced, and it really is designed on the foundation of a functional syllabus emphasizing communicative competence. At the end of each episode there is a little review of plot, vocab, and grammar. </p>
<p>A very important aspect of the program is that the rate of speech is comprehensible for learners, gradually increasing as listening skills develop. I'm all for well-done language immersion, and regular Spanish-language programming intended for Spanish speakers is great once skills are developed to a certain level of proficiency. But it should go without saying that students will never learn that which they do not understand, and I will never get why some teachers think they might.</p>
<p>I will say that this is not high-action entertainment, but it is relatively painless, almost certain to be helpful, and.........available as FREE video on demand if I'm reading the Annenberg website correctly (didn't try it, just did a search to see if the program was even still available--back when I used it, it was very expensive laserdiscs). I found it to be most helpful for students who had fluency as a goal. The ones who just wanted to get that 1-year language requirement out of the way and didn't care what they knew after that were pretty irregular in lab time. I had a friend who used it in high school classes at the time, and he said the girls in the class seemed to like it much better than the boys. But this man played it for a half hour a day while he graded papers; I think it is more appropriate as a supplement to directed classroom instruction than as the main event.</p>
<p>If you want to check it out, this will take you to individual episodes:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.learner.org/resources/series75.html</a> </p>
<p>and this is a review of the series:</p>
<p>Annenberg CPB (not PBS)</p>
<p>You mention your son's teacher uses tapes, which may be part of the problem. When I'm watching tv or having a conversasion with someone in a foreign language, my comprehension is pretty decent (not prefect but any means, but I can usually catch a strong geist of it). I, however, HATE audio tapes (and I'm a fairly auditory learner!). I don't know what it is, but it's always been that way. How are your son's speaking and non-tape comprehension?</p>
<p>Audio tapes provide no context - except the room you happen to be sitting in. An actual conversation provides many clues in the environment that can help you understand what's being said. I never liked answering the phone when we lived in another country because I had no clue - other than the words - as to what was coming.</p>
<p>I would agree that audiotapes are crucial. I reached the level in Chinese such that I could get paying work as a consecutive interpreter. Way back when I started, I asked my college teaching assistant if it was required to listen to tapes in the language lab. She said, "It's not required, but you can always tell who does." That was all that she needed to say to ensure that I listened to every inch of tape in the language lab. Once I went overseas, I listened to the radio constantly (as recommended in one of the books I already recommended in a link above). Listening is crucial, and it helps reading too. Here in the United States, most major radio markets now offer opportunities to hear Spanish every day, and that is an opportunity that shouldn't be wasted by a student of Spanish.</p>