I'm experimenting in teaching French to DD

[didgeridooda]

DD is in Yr 7. I'm having a go at teaching her French very informally - saying the odd sentence in French, doing occasional CDs in the car (Pimsleur), occasionally watching a French children's DVD or reading a French toddler book with her. She has also started to do a bit of DuoLingo online. She is quite keen on French now.
After a few months of this, she understands a lot of French.
My older DC has been learning French in private and grammar school for 6 years, and is in top set.
The 2 DC found an online French test. Younger DD got a higher score. Her pronunciation is also better.
I'm sold on this informal method now. And what on earth are the modern language teachers doing? Older DC can still say and understand practically nothing. Why have the schools (those I know) got rid of language labs, for instance? Unless my DD is a great linguistic talent, it's not that hard.

They do indeed Bobochic we have lists, posters, reminders etc on every available surface to help DS2 in CE2 (8 years old) DS1's grammar is way ahead of mine so he's on his own...
With French, I really think you need some grammar to make sense of what you're saying iyswim - even simple phrases would be hard without knowing avoir/etre/verb endings for instance. For me anyway.

I have bought a traditional French course book with grammar to start with my 11year old. I haven't yet had the courage to open it!

Duolingo is good but is can only get him so far!

My very modest goal is that he should learn the present tense regular verb forms plus etre and avoir. My older child never even got to grips with that; I recognise the post which mentioned just knowing je and tu forms.

French DC spend years drilling conjugation and then practicing it in exercises, dictation, essay writing etc. It's hard work!

My DD (Year 9) has given up. She's missed a few lessons due to being unwell. The curicullum makes no sense to her, she doesn't want to do the subject for GCSE and says that if she want to learn the language she will do so when she is older. I am learning with an adult group with a native French teacher. Chalk and cheese.

I actually went to a French school for a few years, and I remember all the dictations, having to underline subject, object etc in sentences.
Then returning to the UK, where I don't think we learned any grammar at all.
I think that the amount of grammar that they learn in France is over the top. I think that if you read and write a lot, you pick up grammar without that kind of analysis and rote learning. I'm not a fan of the new Gove grammar curriculum.
However, unless you are surrounded by French speakers, you do need to learn French verb endings. I've started doing a bit of that with DD.
My older DC who has learned German for a good few years looked at me with a complete lack of comprehension when I mentioned the words "dative" and "genitive", so I'm not too hopeful about the accuracy of anything she writes or says in that language. But again, if you listen to and speak German a lot (which she doesn't), I suspect that a lot of the grammar falls into place by itself.

didgeridooda - you may think it over the top but sadly French Is not like English and you cannot hope to pick French grammar up without formal instruction. It is not appropriate to extrapolate from English.

My DH has been using Duolingo to revive his French, and he says it's v good. He did have a throrough grammar grounding to begin with though, so not sure how much of his study has been in that aspect.

Sorry to ask, but bobo perhaps you could assist on a thread over in chat "who was this actress?" Re Parisian funeral corteges?

The trouble is, there is not sufficient lesson time to fit in all the topics you have to teach and still manage to teach grammar properly (which essentially means going back to total basics because the kids don't know any English grammar, so they don't understand how any of it works at all). But it's no good just focussing on the grammar, because then they won't actually have enough vocab or fluency to be able to speak.

Essentially, mfl have never been taught well in this country. They are not regarded as a priority by schools, pupils or parents. They are unlike other subjects, in that they ideally need short lesson every day, rather than an hour twice a week. And, as everyone has already said, the exams/assessments and syllabi are crap.

I've been an mfl teacher for 20 years and I don't know what the answer is. Or rather, I don't know of an answer that governments or schools would actually find acceptable.

I hope at least that one of the upsides of the generally awful new KS2 SATS will be that kids will have a better (if a little skewed and OTT) understanding of English grammar until the SATS get changed yet again .

I worked with a woman who had picked up French by living there with family for 15 years. My colleagues said that although fluent she made far more errors than I did.

I could not understand spoken French when I arrived but after a while the underlying grammar that I had learned kicked in and provided me with a framework. Thank you boring old O and A level!

To learn a language effectively it has to be done continuously, not just for a couple of hours a week, with half of that time spent taking the register and handing out worksheets etc etc. We can't compete on language learning with other countries where they are bombarded with the English language non-stop - pop songs, films etc. Although as I said upthread the Italians seem immune to any influence - perhaps it's because all their foreign (US) tv etc is dubbed instead of being subtitled which is the way in Scandinavia I believe.

How to improve things here is difficult. Languages do not fit into the modular learning way of doing things. If you have little knowledge of English grammar you are on a hiding to nothing. And, like it or not, most people and definitely most kids feel that learning a foreign language is a waste of time. I'm not talking here about middle-class dcs of liberal remainers who just lurrrrve France and cheese and Charles Trenet and wotnot, but the vast swathes of people who do not enjoy learning for learning's sake and see languages as difficult and pointless.

I was just reading about two Danish actors who practised their English as kids learning and repeating sketches from Monty Python.

I wish my kids could learn English as a second language!

DC in other countries who learn English as an MFL mostly have the advantage of already knowing about grammar from study of their own language. It gives them a framework on which to hang English.

Is Duolingo any good for people who don't speak any of a particular language? I can speak fairly fluently in French and German, and also enjoyed and was talented at Latin, but really want to learn Italian - I pick up languages really quickly so am wondering if it would be worth giving it a try?

Yes, it starts off at a very basic level.

AndNone it definitely is worth using Duolingo to learn a new language. I started Italian from scratch a couple of weeks ago and have picked up the (very) basics already. If you enjoy languages it's fun to do.

I do agree with the problems of teaching languages in schools in Britain, however I still believe it is worth trying to improve and encourage it. I don't really think it matters that students won't be fluent at the end of a GCSE course, but it will catch the imagination of some children who have a flair for learning them, and who will want to take it further,

My DS has always loved learning new languages, and is now studying Greek, Latin and Portuguese at A level. He was also studying Russian, but dropped it in the summer. He is lucky to go to a school where language teaching is superb, and where native speaking teaching assistants run extra, compulsory, conversation sessions for every language taught. He has also dabbled in teaching himself some Swedish and Hindi in his own time. His knowledge and understanding of grammar impresses me enormously.

However, his interest is very much in the comparative grammar, philological and linguistic aspects of language. He has found the A level curriculum incredibly boring, as he is having to learn specific vocabulary so he can write essays on various topics that he has no interest in. One was on prisons and another on alternative energy. I believe that this is the main reason that he has opted to apply for Classics and university and not modern languages, which made me sad.

English as a native language is not a language that lends itself to teach a proper grammatical approach from a young age due to its irregularity. That is one advantage that native French or German speakers have, lessons in their own language go hand in hand with learning increasing complex grammatical structures which can then be applied to foreign languages.
One of my DCs' schools taught Latin from an early age using it to also teach parallel basic grammar structures in English. That school also taught a lot of grammar for MFLs. IMO the advantage of starting young is that there is no syllabus to comply with and the grammar rules with continuous practice became second nature. Unfortunately state primary schools don't have access to language teachers so if they do learn French or another MFL at that stage it is usually just phrases or words that are quickly forgotten.

MrsBernardBlack did he not consider doing Classics and a MFL or oriental studies?

Our brains are design to grasp language before the age of 6. Trying to learn a language in two hours a week as a teenager is much more difficult. Learning 1:1 oppose to 30:1 will also have a huge impact.

Languages are compulsory in primary but provision is patchy and piecemeal.
There's a growing number of specialist MFL teachers working in primaries now though, and even teaching grammar alongside the more traditional vocab.

sendsummer

He did think about it at first, yes, but eventually decided that the language would just be an extra distraction.

The dumbing down of MFL syllabi in the U.K. in the past 40 years contributed significantly to the very poor understanding of much of the electorate of the other Member States of the EU and eroded feelings of solidarity with and loyalty to them.

If grammar is so important in learning ones own language (eg French), how did people cope prior to universal education? Most people would have been illiterate and would never have been taught grammar. Did they speak ungrammatically?

MrsBernardBlack that is always the dilemma is n't it, depth in one subject or breadth.

BoboChic you may have a point but to balance the dumbing down far more students have had at least a superficial contact in at least French and loads more have had the opportunity to travel to Europe. Only a relatively small proportion of pupils thirty to fourth years ago took O'levels in a MFL and I suspect that the demographics of those (who were a relative academic elite) would be the same as those who would have mainly voted 'remain'.

didgeridooda I think that speaking does develop grammatical inaccuracies when expressing more complex phrases without an increasing knowledge of grammar but obviously quite a lot may be camouflaged by for example similar sounding. However lack of grammar certainly creates a barrier for reading and writing and IMO
for simplifying the learning of MFLs.

Some grammar is natural, particularly in children . I read quite a lot about it for my dissertation.