... I know that for some people, (this is from experience) seeing the spelling can actually make them start mispronouncing words,
It may be better to do as I accidentally ended up doing, not even showing them anything until well into Lesson 4 - nearly eight weeks in. 🙂
It did work out fine, even though they had some misconceptions early on. But pronunciation was great, especially for one kid, lol.
I'm talking about the verbs in sentences that are not introduced individually in the lesson. (You can look in the second book, Basic Structures, if you are having trouble catching all the words.)
The main vocabulary words are spoken alone and should present no trouble for students, but verbs and connecting words are added into the sentences and sometimes consist of more than one word, and are run together, just like we do in the English language.
A real-life example is how I learned this little rhyme as a teenager, and did not know until well into adulthood when I decided to google it one day, that I had some things wrong, lol.
► Watch here
Por aquí pasó un caballo, (A horse passed by here)
con las patas al revés. (with his feet backwards)
Si me dices cuántos tiene, (If you ask me how many he has)
te diré que diez y seis. (I will say 16)
uno, dos, tres, cuatro, (1, 2, 3, 4)
cinco, seis, siete, ocho, (5, 6, 7, 8)
nueve, diez, once, doce, (9, 10, 11, 12)
trese, catorce, quince, diez y seis! (13, 14, 15, 16!)
This is a hand-clapping game I learned as a young teenager from my best friend and her sisters. Their dad, a native Spanish speaker, was my Spanish teacher in high school.
I learned this rhyme by sound, not knowing how anything was spelled, or even what most of the individual words were. I did know what the rhyme was about, but it was like one long string of sounds with pauses at the ends of each phrase.
The other day I was around two cute little Spanish girls that knew no English, and I wanted to teach this to them! (It would also have been fun if they already knew it!) But because it had been well over 20 years since I had learned it, I was unsure whether I had it right, and didn't want to accidentally say something bad!
So I called my best friend, and
YES! I did know it! Mostly. I had an
e and
i reversed (saying
ti dere instead of
te diré), and left off the
s from
dices in the third line.
I also didn't realize
al revés was not
arre bes, and that
Por aquí pasó un caballo was not
pora kipa sun caballo. Which is how I had been thinking of it all this time. (I have no idea if those are even real words!)
Pasó un is run together so that the
o is barely or not even heard.
Even though having learned it well, I am now having a hard time wrapping my mind around the individual words I see written! But other than about four words, I already knew what each word meant (although I didn't realize it until I saw them all written out). But in my mind, I
still see the "old" words I had formed in my head long ago.
If I had been told each individual word, that would have helped greatly.
Which brings me to
The Learnables.
(Click ↑ to see my review, and video of a partial lesson.)
About three days into the first lesson (usually a lesson can take about 2 weeks to learn), my son came through the door spouting an entire sentence in Spanish with a perfect accent!
La señora está comiendo la manzana. Sounded perfect to me! 😊
So I was pretty pleased.
But recently, my daughter wanted to know how to say a phrase in Spanish that had words we hadn't yet learned. We talked about how to say several other things as well, and I discovered that she had
really misunderstood some of the words from the native Spanish speaker on
The Learnables CD. 😯
(Similar to when my oldest daughter was small and wrote "cow" as "cal." LOL! Okay, sounds the same! But actually not even close.)
This was a little dismaying to me since we are already in Lesson 4! Nearly eight weeks!
With
The Learnables, you learn one word at a time, then put them together in phrases, then sentences.
But I discovered that my son thought of "está comiendo" (is eating) as "estaco miendo." Hmph.
But even if the purpose of not seeing the words is so that you won't mispronounce them, your mind still will think of how they are spelled. Maybe not actually spelling them out in your head, but it hears the sounds and interprets this as letters. Cow and cal. 😄
So I let them look at the first couple of pages in the Basic Structures book (2nd book in the series), which has pictures and sentences that use words from the lessons in The Learnables. My daughter was amazed at how the words were spelled.
We also went over vowel sounds, and I gave them English words to help them remember how the vowel can sound in Spanish: a in father; e in bed; i in pita (pita bread); u in nuke. The Spanish o is tricky. With our Southern accent, I can tell them it sounds like the beginning of oil, but I have no idea how to get that across in written instructions. lol.
I told them how a rolled r sounds kind of like t or d. Otto and aro sound very similar, except for slight difference in the ending o's.
Since they knew how to pronounce the numbers 1-10, I then went over the spelling of those and we sounded them out according to what we had learned about vowel pronunciation. I also wrote down several made up words to see if they could read them according to what we had learned about vowels.
We then went over orally come (com-eh) and comiendo (eats, eating) and bebe and bebiendo (drinks, drinking) since they had learned both of those forms separately, and may not have connected them.
And that trae (trah-eh) is brings, and pone (po-neh) is puts. My daughter had said she was having a hard time catching whatever it was the waiter did, which was trae. El camarero trae más café. (The waiter brings more coffee.)
The sentences are getting longer now in Lesson 4. El camarero pone la taza de café sobre la mesa del hombre. (The waiter puts the cup of coffee on the table of the man, i.e, the man's table. De and el are joined as del.)
The kids do fine at listening and knowing what is being said, but still were not quite catching all the words, and sometimes were making 2 words in their head where there should be one, and vice versa.
So I'm making some changes, but first we will be going back over all the words they've learned in the previous lessons.
We will have actual objects (when possible), and they will be doing things I say. Drink, drinking; eat, eating; bring, put, etc, different objects. We'll spend a few days reading some things aloud, like the numbers 1-10 and some short words I make up, working on vowel pronunciation.
I'll spend as much time as needed before jumping back into Lesson 4, and then we will start my new plan.
After letting the kids listen to a new lesson for a couple of days, we will take a day to go over aloud the individual words, such as action words, etc, that are in the sentences but are not pronounced alone in the lesson.
After a week (or more?), I may let them see the written words... I will just read aloud from the Basic Structures book while they read along silently, and they can try it when they're ready. I will also make up some of my own sentences with those words.
►►If this creates a problem, we may just only do orally, no reading, with me pronouncing individual verbs or other words that are not introduced individually in the lesson.
If things go well, we will review briefly for a couple more days (with them continuing the CD) just to head off any misconceptions.
We will keep reviewing letter sounds so that eventually they will actually be able to read even unfamiliar Spanish words. This is my "starter" idea. I'll know more how to proceed as we get into it, since as usual, homeschool moms tweak as they go, adjusting to fit the needs of each child.
Some things I added:The spelling of the words in each lesson is listed in the back of the Basic Structures book, but I wrote a few verbs (see at the bottom of this post) on my small dry erase board and let them copy them in their notebook. This helped them notice the endings of the verbs.
If you are having trouble with the verbs, for conjugation, I use
SpanishDict.com/conjugate. (currently have to scroll way down to see it) I just use the first row down, which is
present tense.
If I don't know what a verb means, I use the
translate section of SpanishDict.com, find the "to ____" verb, then go back and type the Spanish word into the conjugate section of the website.
We aren't memorizing the conjugation, but after a few regular (not irregular) verbs, they saw the pattern. So each time a new verb is introduced, we go over the differences orally, and they will be able to hear the difference of
se ríe and
se ríen. (he laughs, they laugh)
Learn to hear the difference.
Sometimes the I, you, he, they, part of the sentence will have different forms. For example, one sentence may say, The man is eating. (El hombre está comiendo). The next sentence with the same picture may say, He is eating. (El está comiendo) The verb form will be the same in both sentences.
Hearing the endings of the verb will help you understand who/how many is laughing, eating, etc.
Note the word endings below:
ríer - to laugh
I laugh --
yo río (REE-yo)
you laugh -- tú ríes (REE-es)
he/she laughs -- él/ella ríe (REE-eh)
we laugh -- nosotros reímos (re-EE-mos)
they laugh -- ellos/ellas ríen (REE-en)
poner - to put
I put -- yo pongo
you put -- tú pones
he/she put -- él/ella pone
we put -- nosotros ponemos
they put -- ellos/ellas ponen
traer - to bring
I bring -- yo traigo
you bring -- tú traes
he/she brings -- él/ella trae
we bring -- nosotros traemos
they bring -- ellos/ellas traen
Again, if seeing the spelling starts to cause a problem, just orally explain the differences in conjugating a few verbs as you come to them (
and only in the forms learned so far), and practice them so that they can get the pattern.
The verb forms introduced first - is eating (está comiendo) and is drinking (está bebiendo).
Next is eats, drinks, puts, brings. (come, bebe, pone, trae).
At this time, point out the difference between está comeindo and come, and está bebiendo and bebe.
The next verb form introduced is plural. The verbs usually end in the letter n.
The man and the boy are eating. La señora y el nino están comeindo. (not está)
The firefighters come. Los bomberos vienen. (Also notice the plural form of el = los)
There are "feminine" and "masculine" words that have either la or el (the) in front of them, and when plural, are las or los. See the two sentences above.
Words ending in o are usually masculine, and words ending in a are usually feminine. (One exception is la mano.) Words ending in letters other than a or o will need to be learned as you go.
Students really do not need to know the spelling at this point. They just need to listen for the differences, and will begin to catch them more easily as they repeat the lessons. 🙂
sMiLeS,
