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Thoughts on Individualized Learning for the Gifted or Nongifted
Friday, February 29, 2008 - by CFertig - 232 Views - 0 Comments - Category: Foreign Language, Music, Parents and Educators, Technology, Free Activities and Lessons, General Education, Gifted and Talented Children, Gifted Education, Parenting Gifted Children, Teaching Gifted Children, Homeschooling
Individualized learning can help a person of any age move through a subject at his or her own pace. Neither kids nor parents need to wait for their schools to figure out how to arrange for individualized learning. There are other choices, including private lessons, technology (much of it costing no more than an Internet connection), and mentors.
I am personally rediscovering how individualized learning works. For quite a few years I’ve been thinking about becoming proficient in several languages and also studying piano. A couple of months ago I took the plunge.
For a foreign language, I decided to start with French. The last time I studied a language was in college. Technology has totally changed the way I can now learn. Rather than spend a lot of money on a class that has a set time schedule and curriculum, I’ve subscribed to a couple of French podcasts over iTunes (free). The podcasts include pdf files on vocabulary and grammar, which I download and print out to accompany the audio podcasts. That way, I can both see and hear the language. I’ve also signed up for an online class at LiveMocha. I learned about this Web site from an article in The New York Times, titled Learning from a Native Speaker, without Leaving Home. I can progress through the LiveMocha course at my own pace with both visuals and audio. I also have the opportunity to communicate with real native speakers by writing, talking together, and even using a Webcam. Once I feel that I have a reasonable understanding of the language, I will join a group in my community that gets together with the sole purpose of speaking the language.
The second thing I’m doing is studying piano. (I had taken lessons as a child, under duress, and had never done very well.) I knew that I needed formal, private instruction for this. I interviewed four different piano teachers. Each had a very different style. I am very pleased with the person I chose. He is explaining techniques to me that no one had ever explained before. My teacher does not write lesson plans before working with me; instead, he listens to what I have practiced and watches the way I am using my hands, and then teaches me according to my performance on lesson day. While there is a general plan for the areas we will cover, the real value is in discovering where I am with my studies at a particular time and figuring out what needs to be taught. I can’t think of a better way to learn.
Before starting on either of these learning pursuits, I made a commitment to myself to work hard and enjoy each. The coupling of motivation, plus the individualized learning seems to be the perfect match. When hearing my enthusiasm for French and piano, some of my friends have used the words “obsessive” or “highly focused.” Sometimes, in gifted education, we more kindly say a person has a real passion.
We hear so much about the benefits of individualized instruction, but it isn’t easy to accomplish in a school setting. At least for some subjects, individualized instruction is the best way to learn. Remember that there are options outside the school setting to learn at one’s own pace.
Language Immersion Programs for the Gifted
I was at a wedding reception this last week, talking to one of the guests and asking how her kids were enjoying the summer.
“Our son had the most incredible experience this summer,” she told me. He’s a bright kid, but hadn’t done well in his French class the last year. “We decided to enroll him at a language immersion camp at Concordia College in MN. The entire time he was there, nothing was spoken except French. All possible ways of communicating in any other fashion were taken away, including cell phones and computers.” She said he absolutely loved the experience.
The Concordia Language Villages are located in Moorhead, Minnesota. They teach 14 languages (including Chinese, Finnish, Arabic, Korean, and Russian) and have sessions ranging from one weekend to 4 weeks for students 7-18 years of age. All levels from beginner through advanced are welcome.
Day camps are available at several locations for children 4-8 years of age to learn languages such as Norwegian, German, and Spanish.
Concordia also has an immersion program for children from countries around the world who want to learn English.
Scholarships and financial aid are available. Nearly 15% of the villagers receive scholarships.
I found out they also have immersion programs for adults and am going to look into that for myself. Wouldn’t it be fun to learn a different language every year?
Foreign Languages for Gifted Children--Begin Early
Some time ago, I had an opportunity to visit an American family who was living and working in a remote area of Ecuador. I was very impressed with their five-year-old daughter who spoke three languages fluently: English, Spanish, and Quechua. No one had made an effort to teach her these languages, but because she was exposed to each on a daily basis, she picked them up on her own. She moved with ease between the languages, quickly ascertaining who would understand which. She was more fluent than her parents in Quechua, the indigenous language of the Andean region.
In Foreign Languages No Longer Just for Big Kids, Susan Curtiss, a UCLA professor of linguistics, states, "There's something very special about the brain and mind during early life that makes it exactly ripe for developing language." Studies have shown that children who begin learning a second language early in life gain a more native-sounding pronunciation, better overall grammar skills, and other benefits.
Spanish remains the dominant foreign language in schools, reflecting in part a trend in U.S. demographics. Hispanics are now the country's largest minority, and the number of children who speak a language other than English at home has more than doubled since 2003.
- It enables students to develop a greater proficiency in foreign language as they have more years to develop skills.
- Children develop global attitudes through intercultural awareness.
- Foreign language study becomes the catalyst for cognitive and psychological development.
- Exposure to two languages at an early age helps children to be more flexible and creative.
- There is evidence that foreign languages have positive effects on memory and listening skills.
- Language learning skills transfer from one language learning experience to another. Knowledge of one foreign language facilitates the study of a second foreign language.
If education is a means by which to prepare children for the complicated world that they inhabit, to give them tools with which to understand new challenges, then the educational system should offer an expansive foreign language curriculum as early as possible.
If parents and teachers wish to start a foreign language program in their school, they will benefit from consulting Guidelines for Starting an Elementary School Foreign Language Program, by Marcia Rosenbusch, National K-12 Foreign Language Resource Center. In this article, the author lists reasons why some foreign language programs failed in the 1950s and 1960s and what should be done to assure that a newly started school program will succeed.
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