We had the opportunity to review the Middle School Spanish 1 online course (without a teacher), which is one of a number of Spanish Courses offered by Middlebury Interactive Languages.
We have been doing a better job this school year with including foreign language study in our school. One of the reasons we have improved in our effort is due to the homeschool foreign language program Middlebury Interactive Languages. I believe language (foreign or domestic) is something that can and should be taught to children at an early age. Believe it or not, their little minds really can handle it. Of course, you should begin with your native tongue, but adding a foreign language to the learning they experience may do them some good.
Lily, seventh grade, had the opportunity to review the Middle School Spanish 1 course and now I have a Spanish speaking child. She is not fluent, but she sounds pretty good and other Spanish speakers are able to understand what she is saying.
Middlebury Interactive Languages courses are geared towards children in kindergarten through twelfth grade. Courses include Chinese, French and Spanish (kindergarten – twelfth grade), German and Latin (third – twelfth grade) and AP courses for French and Spanish.
It is typical to find a foreign language program for older students (fourth grade and above), but often finding a language program for younger children results in lessons that are extremely elementary or one with lessons for an older student that have been tweaked to appeal to a younger child. Having had the opportunity to use Middlebury in the past, I know they do good job with lessons for younger students. That is something to remember if you have a younger child who would like to learn a foreign language.
Middlebury Languages is an immersion program with unit lessons that are scheduled for completing over a six-month (one semester) period or one-year study (two semesters). There are nine units, one mid-term and one final in both semesters. Each unit has 10 lessons. There is a lot of material to cover, so you will need either the six or full year to complete the semester or full course, respectively.
Lily wanted to study Spanish and has been learning a lot over the past few months. I wanted her to learn a different language, but am glad we decided on Spanish, because she has been very diligent with completing the lessons. She has been working through one lesson each day, Monday through Friday.
An example of a day in the life of her studies includes being introduced to new vocabulary words. Along with the Spanish version of the words, she is also shown the English translation. She took notes on the Spanish words she learned and used them throughout the day in conversation. We may not have understood everything she said, but the practice helped her. She was able to get some good practice when we went to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant.
Everything is completed on the computer, so there is no additional writing required of the student. There are comprehension questions for true or false responses, and some fill-in-the-blank responses. The program keeps the student in Spanish thinking mode where they must respond in Spanish; there are no English prompts. There are also no reviews from lesson to lesson or unit to unit, which Lily thinks would have been helpful. Once the student reaches the mid-term, there is some review and a section for written responses. We have not yet made it to the mid-term. I would imagine if more review were included in the lessons, the semester study would obviously become longer. Using her notes, she was able to review content from previous lessons.
Overall, Lily really enjoyed using Middlebury Interactive Languages. She will continue using Middlebury Interactive Languages through the second semester of the Middle School Spanish 1 course. The course is thorough without being rigorous and she is learning a lot.
Price and Availability
Middlebury Interactive Languages Middle School Spanish 1 course is available for $119 without a teacher or $294 with a teacher.
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