Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments French over the summer?

My DD13 had her first full year of French this year (after a 1 quarter French course the year before as part of a sort of middle school sampler structure).

She's bright and has done well in French, but is obviously not super-experienced in it.

Neither my wife nor I speak French (beyond the smattering of phrases and such one picks up throughout life).

Does anyone have suggestions for possible summer French learning?

A visit to Quebec or France is not likely at this time, nor a local in-person class. But beyond that, there might be many possibilities, including internet-related things, movies from the library, etc.

DD has needed enrichment in German to supplement the very light live instruction that she has had from school.

We've used:

German subtitling on children's programming
Conversation with others who are somewhat fluent in the language-- you might see if there is a local 'conversation' group.
Television programming with subtitles
German language children's books...

this can be a LOT of fun for kids with a snarky side. "Hilfe mir, Regenbogenfisch" has gotten a LOT of mileage recently at our house, let's just say. Regenbogenfisch has his own 'bat-signal' apparently, but the evil in the world is determined to "essen der Regenbogenfisch" so that he is unable to provide aid to those who call upon him. DD says that she can't quite believe that this is a children's story... and that it is clear that Germans have a dark sense of what's appropriate for children. LOL. Anyway-- just using sentences IN the foreign language and playing with the meaning like this is really, really good practice on a level that is appropriate for a first year student.


Here's another GERMAN learning resource--

Deutsche Welle-- they have free resources to improve comprehension in reading and listening.

Have you read any Grimm's? Dark barely begins to cover it.

Indeed.

My two are in French Immersion, and I speak a bit of it, so I'm mulling over what I'm going to do for DS8 over the summer who is weaker than DD10. I know this won't help you, but DD10 suggested we have an hour a day of ONLY French speaking in the house (since they're in early immersion, one hour is less that what they'd normally have during the school year). DD10 is close to fluent and DS and I can squeak by.

I find Babylon translation handy:

http://translation.babylon.com/english/to-french/

I also try and expose my two to French media (tv & radio) but I'm not sure what you have in your area (although you could search YouTube).

Gotta run... but I may be back, as I am figuring out summer stuff for my DS and will be trying to generate my own ideas...

Maybe she is beyond this, but she could go through the UT first year French online site:

http://www.laits.utexas.edu/fi/home

You can also order books off of amazon.fr Don't order DVDs as they are in a different format than in the US. Also, there seems to be some sort of shipping restriction on video games (my youngest saw that the summer workbook was also sold as a DS game - but then I found out video games cannot be shipped from France to the US).

If you don't get French TV stations you can play a lot of DVDs in French (since the same DVDs are sold both in the US and Canada).

Check out yabla.com. It is great for practicing comprehension.

Our ds took a Rosetta Stone course in French (discounted through Duke Tip) and really liked it.

My 13yo twins are in 1st year French, and recently watched "The Hobbit" in French. It was a downloaded copy (in the U.S.) from iTunes and had several language options. They had the English subtitles on, but that may be optional. I imagine many recent movies, including DVDs as well as downloads, would have a French language option.

I think at this level French TV and films may be a bit difficult to understand - usually the actors speak rather fast and use a lot of colloquial language, but you can certainly try it. You can also try Les Debrouillards http://www.lesdebrouillards.qc.ca/. There's a French cartoon series called "Il etait une fois ... les Explorateurs" - you can find it on Youtube, it's pretty good. Rosetta Stone is also great. I would also recommend Les Enfantastiques for French songs, the lyrics are good (and should not be too difficult to understand) and the songs are very cool and dynamic, my children (who are in a French school) sing them a lot.