Total Physical Response (TPR) and Foreign Language SUCCESS

What is Total Physical Response and how can it help you with foreign language acquisition? Total Physical Response offers tremendous advantages to language learners.  TPR is known to: Motivate students Improve retention Reduce anxiety and stress Help academically weaker students Teach students to determine meaning from context Increase student confidence Offer a refreshingly different style of…

What’s Different about Excelerate SPANISH?

“What’s different about Excelerate SPANISH?”  This is the question I hear most often at homeschool conferences.  I love answering it, and I think you’ll love the answer, too! It’s really no exaggeration to say, “What’s different is everything.”  Excelerate SPANISH is truly unique from the other choices available to homeschoolers today!  Read the reviews and…

The Best Way to Learn a Foreign Language

I taught Spanish in the public school classroom for 10 years, mostly at the high school level, then to homeschooled students (mine and others) for about 8 years. I am not a fan of traditional, formal curricula for foreign language learning. Some students will learn in spite of them… but many more inevitably wind up…

Better SPANISH Practice for Your Homeschool

The key to becoming really proficient in Spanish is practice, practice, practice…but how is a homeschool family to accomplish this goal most advantageously? Obviously, choosing an effective curriculum is important.  Make sure that your program’s approach is based on sound principles.  Many common practices are not best practices, and they will waste your valuable time…

Grab Comprehensible Input Resources for ANY Language!

As young children, we acquired our native language via relevant, personalized, compelling comprehensible input.  Unfortunately, this is lacking with most foreign language programs.  Fortunately, finding solutions is easier than ever, once we know what to look for. Appropriate input might include videos, music, television, news articles, podcasts, books, conversations, sports narrations, and more.  You’ll be…

FREE Spanish Lesson and Foreign Language Workshop!

Contact us today to arrange a FREE Spanish lesson and foreign language workshop for your co-op, support group, or school! You will learn: 1. How and why so many students fail to achieve proficiency with ordinary methods 2. What brain researchers and language acquisition experts are saying 3. Simple techniques that improve retention 4. How…

Homeschool Moms’ Feedback on Excelerate SPANISH!

Now that the very first users of the Excelerate SPANISH program are wrapping up their school year, the feedback is beginning to come in!  I’m excited to share it with you, and I hope that the comments of these moms will help to answer some of your own questions. “We have loved the program.  My…

Part 1: Can Excelerate SPANISH be used for Spanish I? Homeschool Moms Want to Know

As the author of Excelerate SPANISH, I’d like to say, first of all, that teaching high school Spanish is what I did professionally for ten years.  I’ve seen what works… and I’ve seen what doesn’t.  When I started homeschooling my own children in 2003, it was fun trying out several foreign language curricula that were…

Need Help Finding a Homeschool Spanish Curriculum?

I spent a weekend at the Southeast Homeschool Expo in Atlanta this past summer, and it wasn’t long before I noticed that the number of curriculum choices for Spanish is, in a word, puzzling. How is a homeschool mom to narrow down her search? Among the hundreds of exhibitors at the Expo, there were representatives…

The Power of STORY: Charlotte Mason, Living Books, and a Lifetime of Learning

Stories allure and compel us.  The themes and struggles and victories of stories captivate our imaginations whether they are packaged in books or plays or movies or even gossip.  Good stories appeal to every generation and to every culture.  They speak to the deepest part of each of us.  They are universal! Of course, the…