Ask:
My oldest son( 9yr) has a goal of learning a foreign language, German, for the last quarter of school. I don't want to discourage this as learning another language is a good thing and am proud that he picked a challenging goal. I am at a loss for finding a quality beginning German book that explains the prounciations etc. He has gotten a couple of vocabulary books but they don't go into too much detail about prounications etc.
Any ideas or titles would be appreciated. Or would a CD/cassette/DVD be better???
Thanks a million
Answer:
I know Rosetta Stone is said to be the BEST language program, but I don't know if it's appropriate for 9. You would have to check on that. If he was younger some of the Usborne Language books are great, like 1000 Words in German etc, but those are geared for younger kids, well at least I have them for my preschoolers.
Answer:
I second Rosetta Stone, it's really a great program...you can listen to the pronunciations. German can be a hard language to learn, my kids took German at their school when we lived in Switzerland...to learn it well, you need more than just looking at a vocabulary book, but I imagine that's true of almost any language. I think a lot of learning a second language is hearing it. Maybe find a summer language program for him? I don't know how old he is, but maybe your local school system offers summer language, or local university. Or if you have a university near you, you could possibly post on a board about needing a German speaker to come to the house and work with him.
Friends of ours wanting to learn Spanish, hired someone to come to their house every Saturday for three hours. She comes and speaks Spanish to the kids, plays games with them etc They also use workbooks and other tools and it's working out really well for them. I don't know how you find out about something like that, maybe just put some feelers out and see what you can find out.
Good luck!
Answer:
Thanks for the suggestions. I know that German isn't a choice for public school Summer classes, but will have to check the local universities. I know only a little Spanish so I am not a whole lot of help, but am thinking that this would be a good family project