Languages on a Budget--or, The Thoughtful Use of Technology, Old and New

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I am teaching my children three languages (French, Chinese, and Spanish) in addition to English, and I am doing it on a tight budget, so I am learning to take better advantage of the resources that I have available to me--especially the free and very inexpensive ones.  I am also always working to strike the best possible balance, considering our particular circumstances, between new- and old-fashioned ways of doing things.  Whenever I can, I try to keep things connected.  The kids love to meet familiar themes and characters in different contexts; it makes learning new things safer and even more fun.

Television

Those who have read my previous blog entries know that I am not impressed with television watching as a default mode of existence.  Since our family's no-television experiment last summer, we've managed to keep the TV in our language-learning toolbox without letting it take the place of other, more important, things.  The children watch about twice a week, nearly always in French (sometimes in Chinese).  The TV is one of our more expensive tools, since I have to order most of the DVDs from France, but with only a few hours a week of viewing, I don't have to order new ones very often.  The more repetition they get, the more they understand the French dialogues, anyway, and the more I remember to incorporate the vocabulary and phrases used in the DVDs in our everyday conversations.  I have just posted, separately, a list of the DVDs that our kids have been watching recently.

YouTube

YouTube contains an incredible wealth of language-learning material.  The problem is that there are practically no filters or sorting, which means that the user has to wade through all the junk herself—a major problem when you have a determine four-year-old who knows how to point and click.  I will occasionally get on YouTube with the kids and look for educational or otherwise interesting videos in French, Chinese, or Spanish, but it usually becomes a struggle when Sebastian decides, after a few minutes, that he wants to click on the suggested videos at the side of the screen by himself.  Within three or four clicks, inevitably, he’s watching car commercials or clips from actions movies—in English—I take away the computer, and he’s screaming.  Thank goodness we don’t have cable TV!

Computer Games/Online Courses

I’m hoping that there will be more available in this area when my children are a bit older.  So far, the pickings online seem to be slim.  The best online course that I’ve found so far is a Spanish course called Foreign Language Friends, which has a minimal registration fee and has really helped to motivate Sebastian to learn some Spanish.  It’s well organized so he can navigate independently, and it’s immersion-based, although they do cheat and give some of the instructions in English.  It is rather limited in the number of different topics you can explore, but it is supposed to be growing.  They plan to add Chinese and French versions in the future.  My only real problem with Foreign Language Friends is that the servers are often overloaded, so that I sometimes have trouble logging in, which is frustrating for both me and Sebastian.  The other online games that I’ve found seem to involve mainly mindless, repetitive tasks and very little language, although Sebastian’s favourite, Poissonrouge.com, does seem to have some educational merit.

JumpStart has a "Languages" program that includes French, Spanish, and Japanese "Pavilions" that a child can "visit," and Sebastian has actually learned some things from playing this game.  Even the English Pavilion has some very good content, but, unfortunately, he seems to spend most of his time there, so it hasn't been a very effective way of increasing his exposure to French or Spanish.

I recently bought Sebastian a CdRom game, Adibou joue avec les mots et les nombres, based on the Adibou television series (this plays on my regular DVD player as well as my region-free media player, by the way), which focuses on science concepts in a short, quick, rather hyperactive way.  It looks promising, but I haven't been able to get him to play it yet.  He and the other kids do like the television show, although it's a little too jumpy for my taste.  (By the way, I was unable to order the CdRom from Amazon.fr; it couldn't be shipped to the U.S., for some reason, even though the seller offered international shipping.  I was lucky enough to find a brand new copy on eBay.)

Tapes--Audio and Video

Don't throw out that old VHS or audiotape player yet!  If you are trying to teach your children to speak another language on a budget, you may want to take advantage of resources in so-called "obsolete" formats.  Our VHS player recently stopped working, and I already miss it; I think we have another one in storage somewhere.  I am happy that we also have several audiotape players in the house and even one in the minivan.  This means that I can take advantage of cheaper, older versions of French and Spanish music albums that I see on Amazon or on eBay (I just make sure to read the "condition" notes before I order), used language-learning courses that I see at garage sales or library sales and that I wouldn't never be able to afford brand-new CD versions of, and rare thrift-store finds such as the "Fonetica Funky" tape that I found at the Salvation Army store last week and that contains songs teaching the alphabet, vowels, consonants, the days of the week, the months of the year, and much more, all in Spanish.

Going Way Back--Vinyl Records

I never thought I'd go as far back as vinyl records in my quest to find good and inexpensive materials for my children's language-learning endeavors, but earlier this winter I suddenly received about a hundred albums weeded from my father's large record collection, and my husband Steve dug his old turntable out of storage.  I have to say that the record player is now my most essential piece of technology for the kids.  My father took care of his records, and they play as well as they did when I was a girl.  Since he was a professor of sociology and occasionally taught sociology of music courses as well as discussing music in his introductory courses, he had an incredible collection of albums from all over the world, so my children are now getting some exposure to many languages other than English, French, Spanish, and Chinese, as well as a rich world-music appreciation course!  I've got my daughter Serena dancing to the folk songs of Papua New Guinea, my son Sebastian trying to play Bolivian panpipes, and my baby, Kai, imitating a Turkish call to prayer from his highchair.  We can connect nearly everything we read, see, or experience to some of these musical adventures.  

Of course we're listening to some of the albums more than others. One of our favourites has been a children's album called Une Girafe à l'école, by Suzanne Pinel, which my parents must have bought for me and my sisters when we were little.  The kids have nearly memorized the songs on that one, and this inspired me to look for other records at our local thrift stores; since our community in Maine was heavily French-speaking a generation or two ago, I hope to find some treasures this way.  So far I've found one: an album by Quebec pop singer Nathalie Simard titled Nathalie au pays des merveilles, which also has very memorable songs.

Microfiche?

I am actually contemplating the possibility of buying a portable microfiche reader for our house.  This seemingly insane idea arose while I was looking for French-language books in our state library catalogue online and noticed that a huge proportion of the collections were old books on microfiche.  While looking through a lens in a box is never going to beat the experience of sitting on the sofa reading a picture book to the kids, it will give me access to information in French that I wouldn't have otherwise--perhaps even some local history and other primary sources--and the children might even get excited about having another new machine to play with.