So, this thread over on the Spanish side of things from @neil-pyper:
…has got me thinking.
Well, that and the hundreds of people who’ve asked for a ‘for kids’ course over the years…
And I’ve been wondering what I could do to give something extra to people who are self-isolating - without undermining our existing subscribers…
So, would any of you find it helpful to have a ‘play along with me’ group for parents who are teaching their kids - where I give you a handful of prompts each night, with recordings, based on exactly what I’m doing with my own kids to try and give them some French and Spanish?
No cost - just our gift to other people who are self-isolating, in particular, but anyone with kids is welcome to play along…
I would love this, as would my wife and son. My wife and I are both language teachers (though unfortunately my day job now is teaching business, and the language work is online in the evening). Please let me know if we can help is any way.
My main language is Spanish. I speak fairly fluent but rusty Portuguese, and my French is at about the same level as my Welsh. My wife grew up in Italy and is also a secondary French teacher. Thanks to her, I have picked up enough Italian to be pretty conversational.
Hi Aran, I don’t have children in the right age in my house now, but I’m desperately looking for something new to learn while self-isolating. So if you offer other languages but Welsh or Spain ( like Italian, French) I’d be happy to play this.
It’s going to be very much aimed at kids, so it’ll be a bit slow/easy for you, but still a little something to do…
@neil-pyper - ideal. I’m thinking maybe one volunteer per language/interface language grouping… so it’s just a ‘see sentences, write/record/post, all done in 5 minutes’ kind of thing…
What age were you thinking about Aran? My son is only 2 and a half but I’m keen to do this. I’m attempting to teach him Welsh at home (very slowly) and he is doing French at nursery so sounds a great opportunity to me.
As an experiment I tried a bit of challenge 1 of Say Something in Spanish with Matthew last night. He could only manage about five minutes, but really enjoyed it. For the past year, we have been encouraging him to learn a bit of Spanish and he has been resisting (very youthful rebellion against doing something that he knows I love). The fact that he is asking to do a bit more this evening is a bit of a triumph! I am tempted to keep going unless and until he clearly can’t manage it.
My own Cymraeg is still pretty basic but I’d love to try and get my two 7 year old’s more involved. Anything you could put out would be much appreciated
Hi Aran, very interested for my 10 year old son Jack. He’s been doing French and Welsh on duolingo. V happy to do French and/or Spanish with him. My French is fairly good already but I don’t know any spanish. It would be fun to do this with him though.
Okay folks, so, we’re live with this - Day 1 just been published - if you’re not in the Slack already, you can sign yourself up at www.saysomethingin.com/bedtime - we’ve also got people doing Spanish, French, Italian, Slovene, Esperanto and German, so it’s a language addict’s worst nightmare…
And if you could spread the word as far and as fast as possible - because it’ll be much tougher for people coming late to the party, who’ll need to go back through the previous days, hunting them down either on Slack or on YouTube…
