Re: Trouble learning foreign language?

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 3/17/2006 6:00:36 PM Eastern Standard Time,

jackie@... writes:

My 6th grade middle schooler is having a dickens of a time in German.

He has to take a language and could choose from Spanish, French, German,

Japanese, or Latin. I told him it had to be Spanish or German, as

we can sorta

help him with those.

He doesn't work in class, he draws. He doesn't bring anything

home. He doesn't seem

to be learning anything (surprise, surprise.) He only has the class

every other day.

Last year they had a fun weekly Spanish class at the elementary and

he said that was even

hard. They learned stuff like colors, months, days of the week, just

little vocab, and

it wasn't graded.

He tends to not try anything that's hard, and I am wondering if there

is anything inherent

about ASD that make it hard to learn a foreign language. He does

have poor auditory

sound discrimination, as tested by TAPS a few years ago. He got a

4th percentile.

The rest of TAPS was okay, if I remember correctly.

Anyone?

Jackie

He should really try Latin. My ds (17 yo, HFA) is really good in latin and

I can't remember why but a psychologist who eval'd him last time said that it

made sense to her that he did well in it but I can't remember why that is.

Another idea is to have him take sign language at a local college - some

schools will take sign language as a language credit.

Roxanna ô¿ö

Autism Happens

[Guest guest]

Hi Jackie,

I'm a 27 yrs old woman recently diagnosed with Asperger's. I find I have an

easy time learning foriegn languages although it does take even adults with

AS sometime to grasp fluentcy (sp?). I've been trying for years to become

fluent in Spanish. Hope that helped some.

Nikki Lynn

( ) Trouble learning foreign language?

My 6th grade middle schooler is having a dickens of a time in German.

He has to take a language and could choose from Spanish, French, German,

Japanese, or Latin. I told him it had to be Spanish or German, as

we can sorta

help him with those.

He doesn't work in class, he draws. He doesn't bring anything

home. He doesn't seem

to be learning anything (surprise, surprise.) He only has the class

every other day.

Last year they had a fun weekly Spanish class at the elementary and

he said that was even

hard. They learned stuff like colors, months, days of the week, just

little vocab, and

it wasn't graded.

He tends to not try anything that's hard, and I am wondering if there

is anything inherent

about ASD that make it hard to learn a foreign language. He does

have poor auditory

sound discrimination, as tested by TAPS a few years ago. He got a

4th percentile.

The rest of TAPS was okay, if I remember correctly.

Anyone?

Jackie

[Guest guest]

My 16 yo doesn't have to take a language class, but he's learning one anyway...

We can't afford cable right now, and the TV channels that come in the best

around here are all in Spanish. He started watching them out of boredom, and

now he's learning it just from watching the shows. If there's a word he wants

to know and I don't know it (my 8th grade Spanish class was a LONG time ago!!)

he looks it up on the internet. He goes on altavista.com and gets on to

babelfish. You can get translations for a lot of the more common languages

there. He's even using it to learn words in Japanese and Korean that he finds

on his online gaming sites.

Maybe you can come up with a way to make it more like fun and less like

learning. My son wouldn't know half the words he does now if he had been forced

to learn them. How about putting signs up on various things in the house with

their names in German? Maybe he would sub-consciously absorb some of it from

seeing it all the time. Hope this helps some! Pat

Jackie Geipel <jackie@...> wrote:

My 6th grade middle schooler is having a dickens of a time in German.

He has to take a language and could choose from Spanish, French, German,

Japanese, or Latin. I told him it had to be Spanish or German, as

we can sorta

help him with those.

He doesn't work in class, he draws. He doesn't bring anything

home. He doesn't seem

to be learning anything (surprise, surprise.) He only has the class

every other day.

Last year they had a fun weekly Spanish class at the elementary and

he said that was even

hard. They learned stuff like colors, months, days of the week, just

little vocab, and

it wasn't graded.

He tends to not try anything that's hard, and I am wondering if there

is anything inherent

about ASD that make it hard to learn a foreign language. He does

have poor auditory

sound discrimination, as tested by TAPS a few years ago. He got a

4th percentile.

The rest of TAPS was okay, if I remember correctly.

Anyone?

Jackie

[Guest guest]

On Mar 17, 2006, at 10:39 PM, kneeleee@... wrote:

>

>

> He should really try Latin.

They take the same language all through middle school in general.

Then they

can continue that same language in high school. The 3 years of

middle school

count as the first high school year. Or they can change languages in

hs. They

also have ASL and Hebrew at the high school, and are thinking of

adding Mandarin.

I am pretty sure he IEP'd out of music, since he's not taking it.

Can I IEP him out of everything else. LOL

> My ds (17 yo, HFA) is really good in latin and

> I can't remember why but a psychologist who eval'd him last time

> said that it

> made sense to her that he did well in it but I can't remember why

> that is.

He isn't doing so hot in English, either. He can speak fine, but he

can't decode a

written sentence into parts of speech to save his life.

German is one class he doesn't have an aide, although he won't ask

for help from

the aide in the classes he does have one available. He got a D last

grading period

and is failing at this moment, half-way through another grading

period. Sigh.

Jackie

[Guest guest]

I am pretty sure he IEP'd out of music, since he's not taking it.

Can I IEP him out of everything else. LOL

Probably yes.

My ds has dyslexia in addition to HFA and gets C's in 2nd year Latin. I am

really surprised by this but it is great for him.

Roxanna

[Guest guest]

>

>

>

> I am wondering if there

> is anything inherent

> about ASD that make it hard to learn a foreign language. >

As an upper level high school Spanish teacher, I receive at least one

AS kid a year and they are great. The ones I have taught have had an

easier with the rote memory element and usually do better where the NT

kids stuggle and worse where the NT kids excell. Pair work is always

interesting. My 6 year old with AS had an after school Spanish class

and he hated it, but loves to speak Spanish and learn it with me at

home. All kids are different and all teachers are different. IMHO I do

recommend Spanish as its phonetic nature can lead to less frustrations.

[Guest guest]

takes sign language (when he goes to school, that is). He is

quite good at it, and has taken it for 2-1/2 years. He went to school

for one period on Friday, and took the dog to class with him.

Liz

On Mar 17, 2006, at 7:39 PM, kneeleee@... wrote:

>

> He should really try Latin. My ds (17 yo, HFA) is really good in

> latin and

> I can't remember why but a psychologist who eval'd him last time said

> that it

> made sense to her that he did well in it but I can't remember why that

> is.

> Another idea is to have him take sign language at a local college -

> some

> schools will take sign language as a language credit.

>

>

> Roxanna ô¿ö

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 3/19/2006 7:10:36 AM Pacific Standard Time,

madideas@... writes:

My ds has dyslexia in addition to HFA and gets C's in 2nd year Latin. I am

really surprised by this but it is great for him.

Roxanna

wow thats amazing Roxanne

Joanne

[Guest guest]

> IMHO I do

> recommend Spanish as its phonetic nature can lead to less frustrations.

I can tell you now that I am really regretting letting him take

German. He should have done Spanish. I certainly remember enough so

that I could help him. Come to find out DH really doesn't speak

German all that well.

I think it might be a cursive problem, too, in that he can't read it.

I am going to ask to observe if she has another 6th grade German to

see if there is anything I can suggest to get him working. He said it

is very hard for him, and boring. But he says everything hard is

boring. It's not like they are working at a brisk pace. They didn't

even have textbooks until last month. They are still on basic My name

is...How old are you...I like to....type sentences. Yet he doesn't

seem to remember even those.

Jackie

[Guest guest]

My highschooler has been taking Japanese and found it easy. I think

Latin is a good suggestion too.

>

>

>

> My 6th grade middle schooler is having a dickens of a time in German.

> He has to take a language and could choose from Spanish, French,

German,

[Guest guest]

supposedly Japanese is the easiest. I don't know how. LOL

We are barreling through the German. The assignments really are not

hard.

I am figuring them out and I speak about 4 words of German. Just

have no idea

why he didn't do they long ago. This teacher is very flexible, though.

Jackie

On Mar 21, 2006, at 4:40 PM, wrote:

> My highschooler has been taking Japanese and found it easy. I think

> Latin is a good suggestion too.

>

>

>

>

> >

> >

> >

> > My 6th grade middle schooler is having a dickens of a time in

> German.

> > He has to take a language and could choose from Spanish, French,

> German,

>

>

>

>

>

>

>