to wonder if he will be too advanced when his class starts learning French?

[GoingLoopyLou]

DS is 4 and has been having French lessons for the last six months through La Jolie Ronde, once a week for half an hour. He loves it and is doing really well.

He starts primary school in September and his school don't start teaching French until he is in Year 3.

I'm just a bit concerned that they will be being taught to say Bonjour and count to ten in French etc and he will have done that 4 years previously. Has anyone else had this problem and what did you do?

I love the combination of fecklessness and bloody minded perversity.

Can I see a way of making a family motto out of it?

DH spoke no french until GCSEs. He scraped a pass in GCSE and A level, then spent a gap year in France and came back fluent. I don't think being slightly ahead in year 3 will do any long term harm.

Only read the first post.
I don't think 6 months of French , 30 mins per week will have given him that much of a head start on the others. He will be happy counting to 10 and saying Bonjour! At that age he doesn't need to be conjugating the pluperfect subjunctive and deconstructing Proust!
At any age, learning languages is partly about consolidating, ie practising what you have learnt and gaining confidence. The lessons will have given him an opportunity to do this It's not a race!
Bonne chance!

Thanks Sausage, it will be 4 yrs of lessons by the time he starts doing it at school though but I understand what you're saying.

I managed to fail german O level despite having a german father. The teacher was appalling and very creepy and used to show us his insect collection. Yuck
Given i havent been to germany for 25 years and am unlikely ever to go, i have forgotten most of it.

Doh! Must read threads properly.... Thought he was starting French in reception?! So there are 3 years till he starts French at school? Why are you worried about this now? In 3 years anything could happen - the classes could stop running, your son could get bored of French or do another hobby that clashes, or we could all be abducted by aliens!

Yeah I did say further down thread that it is one of my "things" to have to have everything mapped out and plan ahead and that of course DS may decide he doesn't even like French in 6 months time.

I am a MFL teacher. I have taught with La Jolie Ronde, as well as primary and secondary schools.

Every time I've had a new class of year 3s, I've had the same conversation with those parents who have sent their kids to La Jolie Ronde / Le Club Francais classes. The fact is, neither has a curriculum that is advanced enough to be a problem, no matter how many years they have had lessons. After about three weeks, the brighter children in the class will mostly have 'caught up', although usually when starting a new topic they will know a couple of pieces of vocabulary.

Honestly, don't think twice about it. Early language learning is an excellent idea, but in the case of La Jolie Ronde, it is more to get them exposed to the concept of language learning than actually learning much of the language. It will help with confident, and possibly accent (having said that, 'teachers with LJR or LCF don't have to even have a language degree or any teaching qualifications, I have known 'teachers' of both who can barely speak the language and have awful accents, so might cause more harm than good. The same goes for primary teachers who are expected to teach a language that isn't their specialism).

I am spanish and my son is learning spanish at the school, he get really bored because de level is to easy for him, plus sometimes he is better than the teacher. I wish he could do another thing when the rest of the children are learning spanish.

To be fair to the OP, I had French lessons in Reception as I was apparently ready for them (according to my parents) and when we started learning in year 5, I wasn't too far advanced. The problem came in secondary when in year 7/8, they were going over work from year 5/6 and weren't differentiating, we were just told to "bear with it".

I don't hate my parents, granted it's done me no good as I can barely remember any GCSE French 5 years later!

OP, if he enjoys it, don't worry :)

Bubblymummy - of course parroting is good - what I meant was that to learn a language at that kind of age especially, you need to converse with others to truly learn! I find it amusing when parents buy kids French tapes etc and think they will learn French that way (an example). You have to interact at that age to learn surely?
My children understand what I say in Greek because I talk to them in this language as well as English - interaction and conversaton is needed In my opinion