Welcome, aspiring polyglot! Currently I am working on finishing up the early childhood Spanish curriculum that I know many of you are awaiting. As I do that, I have been looking deeper at my process and how I teach and I found myself focusing quite a bit of energy on building foundations. From the alphabet to the phonics, pronunciation practice makes up much of the first weeks of classes.
Not because accents are bad or because you need to speak perfectly to be understood, but because the foundations you lay will determine the heights you are able to reach. If you are consistently pronouncing things incorrectly, the likelihood of you pronouncing things incorrectly in the future rises. The subsequent negative feedback loop can cause long-term issues that are increasingly difficult to overcome.
Only recently have schools in the US returned to phonics based education after learning that straying from it leads to widespread drops in literacy. Fortunately, you can teach phonics to both yourself and your children without too much hassle. English is, of course, one of the more phonetically difficult languages. Therefore, if you can master English phonics you can master them in any language.
Guides for you
Since I aim for this curriculum to be comprehensive for anyone who wants to use it with or without experience in both languages, I have been making guides and documentation (yes, to teach Spanish you will actually have to learn Spanish) that will be part of the whole thing when it is finished. Thus the Phonics Guides for English, Spanish, and French were born.
Paid subscribers can access them immediately by going to the Guides page:
Guides
Together, these guides form an integrated system that addresses every stage of the language learning journey, from first words to lifelong fluency, based on cognitive science rather than outdated methodologies. By using them you will progress more efficiently, maintain motivation longer, and achieve deeper linguistic competence than possible through traditional approaches. If there is something you would like to see added, please do not hesitate to reach out.
We are on pace to have our Early Childhood Spanish Curriculum done by the end of the year. With that, there are going to be many, many more documents added to the Guides section in the coming months, so be sure to check back often to see what’s new! Once finished with the early childhood curriculum I will be working on the high school curriculum and CLEP prep for those who intend to send their children on to the university system and higher education.
Conclusion
This curriculum was inspired by the fact that I will be welcoming my own first child to the world later this year. It was brought to life, however, through the help of successful educators around the country and around the world coming together to help me put to paper the methodology and framework I use to teach every single day.
Laying a strong foundation is always the first step. It will define your limits for better or worse. That is why I spend so much time going over the alphabet and phonics with my own adult students. Next up is conjugation. As I’m sure you can imagine, writing down that methodology is incredibly difficult. Pray for me as I embark on this new battle! Many more things to come.
Stay toon’d
-BtOdin