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=Ian lernt Deutsch: The Ian German Project=

This project was done to fulfill the requirements for the Advanced Individual Project course in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Arts in Foreign Language Education from New York University. It was completed by AdriAnne Curtis and supervised by Prof. Miriam Ebsworth in the Summer semester 2011.

The Project
Beginning June 7, Ian and I worked together for approximately 1 hour each weekday for 5 weeks (with 3 exceptions). The goal for me was to teach Ian as much German as possible in the time we spent together. Because Ian lives in North Carolina and I live in New York, we worked together using Skype. Ian chose the time of day for our lessons and decided to lengthen our lessons from the 45 minutes I had suggested to a full hour because "we would get more done and [he] would understand it better." I bought high school textbooks for us to use, but we rarely used them as we both preferred materials I designed specifically for Ian. I kept journal entries to track our progress and had Ian keep a blog.

Ian and I will be continuing this project in the coming months, though we will work only once a week.

About Ian


Ian is my younger brother. He was born 6 weeks before my 6th birthday. He has Asperger's Syndrome (AS) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Like many children with learning disabilities, Ian had a difficult time in school. He was held back in Kindergarten and again in 2nd grade. By the end of elementary school, he was in a classroom with severely disabled students, despite being very high-functioning. Our mother made the decision that Ian should be homeschooled, and since the beginning of middle school, Ian has been homeschooled by our grandmother (a retired librarian). She told me that he was reading at a third-grade level when she started homeschooling him, and he has made progress by leaps and bounds in the years they have worked together. Just days before we began working together, Ian completed the 10th grade. At the beginning of the project he was aged 18 years and 8 months.

Asperger's Syndrome, ADD and Difficulties in Foreign Language
One of my main interests in this project was finding out how AS and ADD affect Ian's ability to learn German. I knew from experience with Ian that keeping him focused would be difficult. Tony Attwood compares the differences in attention span in AS and ADD: “As regards attention span, children with ADD demonstrate a consistently limited concentration span. This can vary according to the activity, motivation and circumstances, but almost by definition, there is a deficit in sustained attention. With Apserger’s Syndrome there can be a wide range of attention span that is short when involved with social activities but remarkably long when the child is interested in the topic. Here the problem is more one of motivation than a low and fixed upper limit of sustained attention." As one would expect with the co-morbidity of the two disorders, Ian's attention span is drastically lowered by the ADD, and combined with AS, he is almost completely unable to focus when involved in activities he does not find interesting.

Attwood compares the two disorders further, explaining that “The child with ADD has a propensity to have problems with organization skills, i.e. has difficulty getting started, switches from one uncompleted activity to another and is forgetful. With Asperger’s Syndrome, the profile includes unusual aspects of organizational skills such as unconventional means of solving problems and inflexibility, but in general they are very logical, determined to complete the activity and have good recall of information" . Ian has a combination of these symptoms as well. He solves problems in an unconventional way and is not very flexible in the way that he does things (though this has gotten better with age), but he has the organization problems typical of ADD and has, as our mother explained, "a very poor short-term memory, but if he can get it into long-term memory, it will stick forever." But Ian is nothing if not determined. At times when we worked together, and especially in reviewing the recordings of some of our sessions, it was heartbreaking to hear the determination in his voice even when he was just not getting the material. Non-learning disabled students are rarely as determined.

Anecdotal evidence shows that individuals affected with AS may do very well in foreign languages. As Lise Pyles explains, “Some of our kids can do surprisingly well in foreign languages, their difficulties with speech pragmatics or other communication issues in their own native tongue notwithstanding. Many kids, including my own son, have done fine in junior high or high school language courses. This seems especially true in the first two years of learning a language, where emphasis is on memorization of vocabulary, short canned phrases, recited scripts, and regular verb conjugation. None of these present hidden landmines for our Asperger-affected kids and, indeed, some of our kids genuinely enjoy their language work and excel at it.” She emphasizes that the way foreign language is done in schools seems to work for AS kids, but points out that the problem for homeschoolers is that it’s “difficult and expensive to find good thorough materials if one is very serious. The most readily available and least expensive programs that you find in bookstores are generally for travelers and are unsuitable. My son and I naively launched into such a course in Danish, but I lost enthusiasm when I heard my son dutifully repeating the phrase for ‘May I have more ice in my Martini, please?” I love this phrase because it shows how AS-affected individuals can get "stuck" repeating one word or phrase, and because it shows a preference for an "interesting" phrase over one that would be more practical socially and communicatively, something that is consistent with AS and something I experienced with Ian (see journal entry for June 28). In addition, I have included some advice for homeschooling at the end of this page.

I was also very interested in how Ian would do with pronunciation. Our mother has told me on more than one occasion that she is amazed at Ian's ability to mimic accents. This is apparently one of the funny quirks related to AS. Tony Attwood writes that, “Once the child has learned a particular word or phrase, the original enunciation will be continued in such a way that the experienced listener may be able to identify whose accent is being echoed." I expected Ian to be excellent at pronunciation with very little effort (and he was; see journal entry from June 7), and I would expect most AS-affected individuals to have the same natural talent for learning pronunciation in a foreign language.

However, it is important to note that AS-affected individuals acquire and use their first language differently from individuals not affected by the disorder. "One of the diagnostic criteria of Carina and Christopher Gillberg (1989) is //unusual speech and language characteristics// with at least three of the following: (a) delayed development (b) superficially perfect expressive language (c) formal pedantic language (d) odd prosody, peculiar voice characteristics (e) impairments in comprehension, including misinterpretations of literal/implied meanings"

Ian exhibits all 5 of these characteristics.

He had a very difficult time acquiring language. While I spoke my first word remarkably early, Ian didn’t say much for a long time. He was still pointing and grunting more often than not at more than 2 years old, and his language development didn’t really progress much until after our younger brother Corey was born when Ian was almost 3. I always suspected that it was because Ian finally needed language, no longer being the center of attention as the youngest child. Being about 9 at the time, I just thought he was lazy. I also had a hard time understanding why he had so many problems with syntax. He would repeat verbs within a question, particularly the verb //to be//, often with different conjugations. Between the ages of 4 and 6, he would say things like, "Is that is my truck?" and "Are those is your books?"

My concern was that these problems would cause problems in German as well. In a study investigating college foreign language learners classified as learning disabled, Ganschow et al. suggest that "the presence of difficulties with phonological and syntactic skills in one's native language may be an indicator of potential foreign language difficulties." I definitely found this to be the case with Ian with the verb //sein (to be)//. Because he had noticeable problems with the verb //to be// when acquiring English, I expected there to be a similar problem in German. In fact, Ian struggled with the verb //sein// the entire 5 weeks.

He also struggled with grammar and the ability to recognize parts of speech. When presented with flashcards of German words with English translations underneath, Ian was unable to sort them by parts of speech and just guessed for many of them. Our grandmother reported that Ian was very good at grammar in English, but they have not covered any grammar topics recently. This goes back to the problem with retention and memory. While I have observed Ian's ability to diagram an English sentence and identify parts of speech in English, it was in 2006 or 2007, leading me to believe that he had forgotten most of this information.

Ian had a habit of forgetting information. Almost the first half of every lesson was spent reviewing (in a sense, //relearning//) the work from the previous day. He even struggled to remember information during our lessons. In an activity about people going home (June 17), we conjugated the verb //gehen (to go)// and 5 minutes later, Ian said “I don’t think we did //go// before…” 15 minutes later, he had forgotten again. As previously mentioned, forgetfulness is a symptom of ADD, but I knew there was more at work since Ian's ability to retain information was so limited.

It may have to do with Ian's working memory. Research has found that students with limited working memory struggle with foreign languages. In fact, Komos and Sáfár argue that "working memory is a better predictor of language learning success than the traditional construct of language aptitude." Miyake and Friedman explain that, "Because a resource shortage leads to inefficient processing and faster memory decay, individuals with smaller [working memory] capacities are often in a more disadvantaged position than those with larger capacities when the task demand exceeds capacity limits." I realized that for Ian to be able to successfully acquire the language, he needed tasks that did not exceed this limit. He explained to me that "the thing that confuses [him] about German is the meaning of the word and how to put it in a sentence," and I realized that once Ian got the word, its pronunciation, its spelling, and if applicable, its conjugation, there was no room left in his working memory for the meaning of the word or how it should go into a sentence. So I changed how we were learning. The activity that I designed that finally worked for Ian incorporated flashcards that had the German words with English translation and the part of speech and used a worksheet that showed different possible constructions for sentences. I also gave Ian conjugation charts to reference in this activity. This changed everything; Ian was able to construct sentences with ease and started making creative sentences that //he// found interesting. In the coming weeks, I expect him to make significant progress.

Daily Journal Entries
These are my journal entries for all but two of the days Ian and I worked together. I did not write entries for June 29 or July 1, but our activities on these days were a continuation of our lesson on June 28. These entries have not been edited. I have also included homework assignments for each day as well as Ian's blog entries, when applicable.

I had my first session with Ian today. It was a great learning experience! There are a lot of things that are consistent with the research I’ve done so far as well as some discrepancies. For example, just as I’d seen in research, Ian is GREAT at mimicking accents. His pronunciation was very good the first or second try and remained consistently good throughout the lesson. He was, even in the first attempt at a word, able to produce phonemes that Americans sometimes never master after years of study. I also read that the first two years of learning a foreign language lend themselves to the strengths of students with Asperger’s (memorization, repetition, etc.), but there are some things that involve **social** understanding that are and will continue to be problematic. He was great at the portion of the lesson where we repeated the greetings, but he was terrible at switching pronouns around to go with who was speaking. I would say “ich heiße AdriAnne, du heißt Ian“ and he would repeat it exactly without switching the pronouns or the names, even though he understood that //ich// was the word for //I// and //du// was the word for //you//. We see this in very young children acquiring their first language, and it makes sense to me that it would be difficult for someone with Asperger’s when learning a second or foreign language. Another issue with pronouns is the formal vs. informal form of //you//. Since AS-affected individuals sometimes have unusually formal speech in their first language (or other problems with register) and problems understanding social relationships, Ian may never master this concept.
 * 6/7**

Things that were difficult for Ian to acquire in English were also difficult for him to grasp right away. He has a very difficult time reading short 3 to 4 letter words in English but can read longer words without difficulty. I saw this in German when he was confusing the words //wir// (we) and //wie// (how) but had no trouble with the longer word //heißen// and its different conjugations or the longer words involved in greetings and goodbyes (he could read //Auf Wiedersehen// immediately without issue, though he may have already been familiar with this word).

From a technological standpoint, today was again a great learning experience for me. Skype works well overall, but I don’t know how important it is for someone with Asperger’s to see me when I’m speaking, since AS-affected individuals cannot read facial cues and are uncomfortable with eye contact. The gestures are still helpful, however.

Skype is also great because you can share your desktop. I had Ian share his screen so I could walk him through the process of creating a blog. I also helped him to be able to add a keyboard to input German characters.

However, I had some problems with the homework assignment I had created. The pictures were not loading correctly, and because I had created the forms using Hot Potatoes software and not written all the code, it would have taken a long time to go through and fix the code to fix the pictures. I will have to create homework assignments in a different way, but I think I will go for something more practical if less technologically impressive.

Homework Assignment 1

Today Ian said he would rather work for an hour because “we would get more done and [he] would understand it better.” He really has a positive attitude toward learning and is trying very hard to master the material. In fact, I was blown away by how much progress he had made through just doing his homework. Yesterday, he was having difficulty switching pronouns for differences in meaning. Today, he was able to explain many of the pronouns as soon as we started and picked up the rest of them with comparatively little effort, though he had problems with //sie, sie// and //Sie// (she, they, and you formal), just like every other native English speaker. I think that doing the homework exercises really helped him to understand what we were working on. I will continue to have him do similar homework assignments every day.
 * 6/8**

I was also told by my grandmother that Ian is very visual. Today I made pictures asking and showing the names of different people, and it worked REALLY well. He was explaining it to //me// after the first picture.

After reading his first blog post, though, I realized that I need to give him VERY specific instructions. I told him to write about two questions: 1. How do you feel about learning German? and 2.What have you learned so far? He wrote, “I think German is quite Interesting so far and numbers are dandy and that is what i feel about it.” The word “dandy” made me laugh, because it’s so typical Asperger’s.



Homework Assignment 2: the verb heißen Homework Assignment 2: math practice

Ian is doing SO well! He is able to pick up patterns in the languge already in the form of numbers. He told me rules for making the numbers 13-19 and how different numbers are similar to each other after just glancing at them in the book. We also worked on the verb //sein// to tell how old people are. When I showed him the conjugation chart for //sein//, he said “oh, we were just using that.” When trying to say “we are nice” he added the verb //sein// twice, like he would do when he spoke English as a young child. He said “wir sind ist nett.”
 * 6/9**

We also worked on the letters today, and he picked up spelling fairly quickly.



Homework Assignment 3: the verb sein
Ian wasn’t on Skype like he was supposed to be for our session at 12. I didn’t get an answer when I called his cell phone. I didn’t get an answer from our mom, either. My guess is that even though I told Ian we would work today, he forgot because we didn’t work last Monday. Routine is very important to people with Asperger’s, and the fact that we didn’t start on Monday last week could have messed up our schedule.
 * 6/13**

I had to text my brother Corey (he’s 15), and ask him to tell Ian to get on Skype around 6. I went over some other assignments for Ian to do on his own since I was really tired and not feeling well. I didn’t want to work with Ian when I wasn’t feeling well because I knew I wouldn’t be able to be patient enough with him. I don’t want to make this a negative experience for him in any way. I told Ian to interview our stepfather (a native speaker of German) to ask him his name, how to spell it, and how old he was.



Ian is agitated today. It took us 12 minutes to establish that he didn’t understand last night’s homework, find the page in the book, and read the example. This is the first time I’ve tried to have Ian do exercises out of the book as homework. I think I’ll keep making him homework assignments from now on, since it was so frustrating and put him in a bad mood for the beginning of our lesson.
 * 6/14**

He remembered the letters and numbers surprisingly well. His ability to memorize lists of things is really impressive to me. It’s the communicative functions that are more difficult for him.

I’ve been incorporating techniques from the Audio-lingual method. Ian has problems spontaneously creating language, so we have to do lots of drills and fairly contrived activities in which he knows exactly what is expected of him. When he’s given the chance to give me more creative information, he asks me what he should say. I have to work in a question-answer format, asking very specific questions to which there is only one possible answer.

We also spend a lot of time talking //about// the language. He does much better with explicit information about how German works than by listening or speaking.

Homework Assignment 4

I feel like we’re going backwards a little. I gave Ian a homework assignment that was just review, and he told me he was “too tired” to do it. Then he asked me what every word meant, even though he had been doing very well with these basic questions last week. He relies a lot more on translation than I would like, but I think it’s part of how he has to think about language. He asked a good question, “how do you tell when an //h// is silent in German?” He asks questions like this all the time, and it shows a great amount of thought about the language, but he has to translate everything, even if it’s a question we have done 3 or 4 times already in the exercise.
 * 6/15**

I think another issue with homework is that Ian likes to have guidance while he works on an activity. I think I may start to designate a time for homework help every day or turn homework assignments into activities to do together.

I’ve learned that long pauses are key. It takes Ian much longer to process a question and formulate an answer than I usually expect from students.

[|Homework Assignment 5: verb conjugation]

Skype makes this quite frustrating. I know if we were working in person, I would be able to point to things and make it clearer. It’s hard to say things like, “above that, no above that… yeah, next to that. Read it; what does it say?” over and over again where if we were in person, I could just point.
 * 6/16**

Ian does really well with grammar, though. He understands and EXPLAINS everything back to me, even when I know he’s got it and it’s not necessary from my end. He explains the rule every time he conjugates for each pronoun for each verb. He also explained to me every time why he would use //meine// for female family members and //mein// for male family members.

If nothing else, Ian will understand German grammar very well by the end of this.

Homework Assignment 6: family members Homework Assignment 6: nach Hause oder zu Hause

Everything is direct translation. Ian needs to ask what every word means every time. We have to translate things that he already knows back into English word by word for him to feel confident. At the end of yesterday’s lesson, he was saying sentences like “Du bist meine Schwester” and “Er ist mein Bruder” with ease. Today, it took almost 20 minutes to get to “Du bist meine Schwester” again.
 * 6/17**

I feel like he’s just learning the patterns and not really understanding the meanings. Then when we work on a pattern for a while, if I switch back to something else, he can’t do it anymore. It seems like he’s really getting it, but he can’t retain it long enough for us to come back to it later.

It’s a “one step forward two steps back” kind of thing. We’re making progress, but it’s slow, and he forgets a lot in between sessions. He’s also getting tired of meeting every day. It was fun and exciting for him at first, but he’s starting to view it more as work. He wants to be able to enjoy his summer between now and September, and I don’t blame him. I may have us work less frequently after next week. I asked him if he’d prefer to work once a week after I’m done with my classes on July 1, and he said he would, but I got the impression that he’d rather not work at all after that. He’s asked me a few times when I’m done with school, and I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s about. I’ve also started recording parts of our lessons to show what he’s doing. I missed some really interesting exchanges earlier, so I think I’ll start recording the entire lesson next week to be able to analyze it better and to have examples of some of his learning habits.

He called me back to ask me again what a question meant. We had worked for a long time on the question once we’d switched from another activity back to that one, and I think he was calling just to feel secure about knowing what it meant. I’m going to try to get him to write about this process more in his blog.



Ian is so dedicated. He’s ready to work every day, even though this is summer vacation for him. Most students without learning disabilities aren’t half this dedicated.
 * 6/20**

He told me earlier that he has a hard time remembering what the words mean. This kind of confirms my hunch that he can get the form but not necessarily the meaning. I’m going to have him practice writing out the different pronouns tonight to see if that helps. I made him 5 charts, each with the pronouns to be written once in English and three times in German. That helped me with vocabulary, and I think it will help him, too. He does better with drills than from picking things up in conversation, so this should be a big help.



Homework Assignment 7: pronoun charts

I wish I could work with Ian in person. I could make him cards of verbs and nouns and have him build sentences in a much more hands-on way. I may try to do that anyway, but it is much more difficult without me being there to help him manipulate them.
 * 6/21**

I had really hoped he would pick up vocabulary through repetition, but he says he’s having trouble with the meaning of words. I realize now that it’s not just a matter of “getting over the hump,” but it’s a legitimate problem of transferring the vocabulary from short-term to long-term memory. It takes a while for a student without learning disabilities to get acclimated to learning a foreign language, so it took me longer than it should have to realize it’s not just this normal stage.

Ian and I brainstormed about how he could learn the meanings of the words. Writing the pronouns out once in English and three times in German helped a lot (though it took him a long time to be able to produce them when I asked him), so he and I decided that he should do that with all the vocabulary. He also said that pictures help, so I’m encouraging him to draw pictures for the words.

I’m going to do some research on more ways to transfer things from short-term to long-term memory. Hopefully we can find something that works for him. I think this project is becoming less about teaching Ian to speak German and more about helping Ian learn how to learn.

Homework Assignment 8: vocabulary practice

I’ve been doing research today. I read an article about ADHD and learning a foreign language in college, in which a study found that individuals with ADD/ADHD do not have significant problems with foreign language, but that individuals with another learning disability combined with ADHD showed less success. This leads me to believe that it’s not necessarily the ADD making it difficult for Ian to focus on the word meanings and be able to communicate; it’s more likely a problem related to AS. We’re about to start our lesson in about 5 minutes, so I’ll do a short informal assessment to see whether he’s learned the vocabulary words from last night and go from there modifying the structure of our lessons and his assignments.
 * 6/22**

Ian didn’t want to work today. As soon as he called me, I could tell he’d just woken up and he wasn’t in the best mood. He said he didn’t do his homework this morning because he overslept and that he didn’t feel good, so I told him we could take the day off. We had a frustrating day yesterday trying to do some review work, and I didn’t want it to be more frustrating today.

I just made some flashcards for him to manipulate to make sentences out of. I think that should help tremendously.

Breakthrough! After practicing a few words (wo, alt, gehen, wohnen, heißen) 5 times each for homework, Ian was able to easily write a sentence for each one. I also sent him flashcards and asked him to cut them out and group them into categories, which he didn’t do until during our lesson. But it was good to go over some parts of speech and help him think about what nouns, pronouns and verbs are. He was able to group words pretty easily, and I think he will easily be able to make sentences tomorrow.
 * 6/23**

Most students do well with chunking, but Ian will have to build the language from the ground up. We have to start with individual words and categories and put things together piece by piece for him to really understand it. I think this says a lot about how he thinks and how he learns. I’ve read (and observed) that AS individuals cannot see the forest for the trees, and foreign language learning is no exception.

The flashcards helped, but Ian was still having trouble with discerning parts of speech. He was able to easily make some sentences and it really helped his confidence with the language. He really tries very hard, and I think he’s starting to feel like he can figure some of this out. We just need to work together more. I modified the flashcards to include the part of speech at the top and made him a worksheet that shows how to put sentences together. His homework assignment for the weekend is to make 5 sentences of each type using the worksheet.
 * 6/24**

Homework Assignment 9: flashcards Homework Assignment 9: building sentences Homework Assignment 9: conjugation charts for reference

Ian did not get on Skype today at our usual time. I am concerned that he may be overwhelmed with the assignment to create his own sentences over the weekend. I sent him a new set of cards with the part of speech label in the top left corner and a sheet helping him to put them in the correct order for sentences. He was doing well with this on Friday, and I didn’t expect it to be a problem. It’s equally likely that he overslept, but as I don’t have extra time scheduled to work with him today, I’ll call him to find out a little later and just pick up the lessons where we left off tomorrow.
 * 6/27**

A phone call to my mom confirmed that Ian had just overslept.

The flashcards and instructions for sentence building worked SO well! Ian is now much more involved in how the language works and can put sentences together all on his own. All he needed were the pieces broken down by grammatical function and he was able to do it. It seems really grammar-translationy to me, but it’s working!
 * 6/28**

Today we did questions. He wasn’t sure about how to construct questions, so he left it until we worked today. He picked it up VERY quickly and was able to come up with unique questions that he would want to ask and answer. They’re not the typical “what’s your name?” and “how old are you?” kinds of things you do at the beginning of a language—the questions he made today were:
 * 1) How many people live in your house?
 * 2) How many people do you know?
 * 3) How much junk is in my garage?
 * 4) How often are you in prison?

While it doesn’t seem like these questions would be good for building communicative competence, they really are for someone like Ian. AS-affected individuals have a hard time doing things they aren’t interested in. Ian doesn’t care about asking and telling how old people are; he wants to talk about what he wants to talk about. When I asked him how many people he knew, his answer was 8. When I asked him how much junk was in his garage, he asked me how to say “too much” and “not enough.” It’s really fascinating how he thinks and what he’s interested in, and I think the key to teaching a foreign language to an individual with AS to keep it within the realm of what they’re interested in. Sure, Ian may never be able to speak German fluently (or at least not without a lot of work), but he can definitely ask you how often you’ve been in prison or how much junk is in your garage, which are things I could imagine any AS-individual using as a greeting.

I told him to use the last two questions and to make two comics using the site makebeliefscomix.com, and he called me back on Skype to ask what my e-mail address was. Then he e-mailed me the two comics. That was less than 10 minutes after our lesson (while I was still writing my comments here), and he was already done with his homework.

I think this new approach is really working.

The comics:



**Summary**
I have done a lot of research into the effects of working memory and learning disabilities on learning a foreign language. I wanted to use this research to identify why Ian was initially struggling and to gain some insight on methods that work for students like him. After hours of reading, I am now aware that these problems impact Ian's ability to learn German, but at the end of the day, there is still no one-size-fits-all solution, even when only looking at students with learning disabilities. Every person is different, and every AS-affected individual is even more different: there is no one way to teach them. Working with these individuals involves trial and error, persistence, and above all, patience. What works for Ian will not work for other people with Asperger's, and what works for them will not work for Ian. I think the biggest lesson to take away from my project with Ian is that as a teacher, you have to be flexible. Lise Pyles suggests "not [to] overplan" and to "let your child's level of interest dictate how long you stick with a topic". I think those are by far the most important things when working with students with AS. Here is some additional advice for working with AS-affected individuals in foreign language:
 * 1) Don't set a schedule or rigid goals; you never know what they can do or how fast until you start working.
 * 2) Ask if things are working, why, and what you can do differently. Don't expect these students to tell you! Many of them are so eager to please their teachers (even, or maybe especially, if their teachers are their parents!) that they will not always speak up if something is confusing or just doesn't work for their learning style.
 * 3) Don't assume you have to master things in a specific order. Students with Asperger's learn better if what they are learning is interesting to them. The AS-typical non-sequiturs can't be eliminated in the second language, so teach them the off-the-wall phrases they want to learn! This will increase motivation and help to eventually learn the basics of communication that are more relevant to the rest of us.
 * 4) Make the experience as positive as possible. Take breaks, talk out frustrations, and go back to number 3 if the subject is boring to your student(s).

Advice on Options for Homeschooling
Ian is lucky to have someone who is qualified to teach a foreign language as an immediate family member. However, if foreign languages aren't your thing, research your options! A phone call to a local university or high school would be a great first step. If the high school or university offers the foreign language your child is interested in learning, find out if it would be an option for him or her to audit a class or if there is anyone available to give lessons privately and what their rates are. College students love to earn extra cash, and they typically charge fairly low rates for their services. Another option is a privately-owned language school. Many of these schools offer one-on-one instruction, though the rates can be very high in some cases.

If finding a local instructor is not an option, language learning programs are another solution. Products like Rosetta Stone look appealing and have great advertising, but my feelings for the product in general notwithstanding (after all, I am getting a MA in Foreign Language Education), a product like this would be absolutely awful for Ian and anyone who learns like he does. Rosetta Stone and other language-learning software teach language via a method known as "chunking." Using this method, students learn meaningful "chunks" of language, and though this method is helpful for some, students like Ian thrive on explicit grammar and rote memorization and would be unable to learn a language without it. A free trial of such a software (available on the company's website) is good for gauging how well it would work for your child without paying for anything. A better option for learners like Ian would be a program consisting of books and CD's. These are available at your local bookstores, and again, it pays to do some research before buying anything.

Contact
Please do not hesitate to contact me at acolecurtis@gmail.com with any questions or comments related to this project or this page.