Monthly Archives: January 2012

How Speekee TV watchers leave feedback

Posted by Jim on January 31, 2012 Comments Off

Subscribers to Speekee TV receive an email from us when they unsubscribe, asking for their comments on the Speekee TV experience.

About 30% of users kindly reply with their opinon, which helps us improve the product and plan for the future.

Here are some comments we received today:

1. What made you cancel your Speekee TV subscription? For example: too expensive, not suitable, too young/old for my child, we came to the end of the course.

The videos were great! The songs worked, helping them learn some Spanish. The lessons, however, required more attention from me than the time I have to give them because they require higher reading skills than my 5 and 6 year old have at this time. I was using this as an independent project they can do, when I really should have been sitting down with them, the video, and the accompanying lessons.
They watched the videos twice, then they were “done.”  I didn’t do a good job convincing them they didn’t really KNOW Spanish yet! Basically: my fault.  If I spent more time with them on the Spanish it would work.  I just haven’t figured out how to fit it into my homeschool day yet with me involved as well.

2. How could we improve Speekee TV?

Maybe more videos? (The kids got through the videos and thought they were “done” because I hadn’t utilized the lessons included.  More formats for emergent readers? But you can’t please everyone. I think it’s really a neat program, actually.

3. Have you any other comments?

I hope to come back to Speekee next year if that’s okay.  I am so thankful for the monthly pay ability.  It enabled me to try Speekee for 6 weeks at a reasonable cost.

2011 – Spain’s hottest year

Posted by Jim on January 31, 2012 Comments Off

Here’s the table which shows that 2011 was the hottest year in Spain since, well… since they started recording these things!
Serie histórica de temperaturas
From the Spanish government’s own meteorological website: El año 2011 ha sido extremadamente cálido, con una temperatura media estimada de 16,0 ºC, que supera en 1,4 ºC al valor medio normal (período de referencia 1961-2000). Se confirma como el más cálido de la serie histórica, con una temperatura media algo superior a la del año 2006 que con 15,9 ºC había sido el más cálido hasta el presente.

Here’s the translation: The year 2011 has been extremely warm, with an estimated average temperature of 16.0 º C, exceeding by 1.4 ° C the normal mean value (reference period 1961-2000). It is confirmed as the warmest of the series, with an average temperature slightly above that of 2006, which with 15.9 ° C had been the warmest so far.

2011 was also a very dry year…
Precipitación climático 2011

We shall see what 2012 brings. So far it has been exceptionally dry.

Teaching languages to young children. Keep it simple!

Posted by Jim on January 26, 2012 Comments Off

Did you know that you won’t find a single verb form uttered by Speekee which is in any other ‘time’ than the present?

Let me explain why…

As the development stages for Speekee got underway, we began looking at other Spanish learning products on the market, and it quickly became clear that while the accuracy of the Spanish could rarely be faulted there were two aspects which should trigger alarm bells for the well informed customer*:

1. APPROPRIACY. In other words, what Spanish words and phrases are contained in the program… are they suitable for children to learn? Is the Spanish ‘everyday’? Is it truly useful? For example, I wouldn’t want my child learning how to distinguish between different types of rock mineral in Spanish, when he could be learning the really practical stuff instead, like how to ask for an ice cream.

And yet, there are Spanish programs out there which remain stuck in the Dark Ages when it comes to appropriacy of language.

2) LEVEL. A Spanish program for young children starts from the very beginning, right? It presents its new language in a gentle and methodical way, doesn’t it? And it won’t try to complicate things too quickly either, surely!

For reasons which may have to do with oversight, there are Spanish programs on the market which do not see all this as blindingly obvious.

from http://www.clivir.com

And it’s particularly the verbs which they single out for ‘treatment’.

Now, you probably know, even with only a smattering of knowledge of foreign language learning, that learning verbs is tricky. They are always changing, and the process of transitioning to the past tense from the present tense is akin to getting a headache. Yes – for kids too (sponges though they may be, the new language needs to make sense).

So here’s a message to inexperienced language teachers: Go slowly… take your time – and treat your students with the respect they deserve!

* The fact is that most buyers of language learning products, through no fault of their own, don’t know what marks of quality they should be looking out for.

Spanish pronunciation vs English pronunciation

Posted by Jim on January 17, 2012 Comments Off

Which is easier for the learner who doesn’t yet know the target language?

(As a native English speaker learning Spanish, Spanish would be my target language).

Well, there is no doubt about it in my mind: learning how to pronounce Spanish words is MUCH EASIER than learning to pronounce English words.

Why?

Because Spanish is spoken as it is read. Therefore, once you know how the sounds are made the rest is a cinch. Take a look at this freebie from Speekee – it’s one of the activity ideas for schools which purchase our product.

You can see there is a list of words and their pronunciations. You can also listen to how they are said by a Spanish native speaker (Speekee in this case):

Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco
One, two, three, four, five
/oono/ /doss/ /tress/ /kwatro/ /thinko/

Once you know how the letters are put together in spoken form you can simply repeat them for any word and you can guarantee you are saying it correctly.

If what I am saying is not entirely clear, then perhaps this comparison with English will help…

Through
Tough
Ought
Bough
Cough
Thorough

Just a few examples there of how -ough in English is pronounced in so many different ways.

So in English you have to know both the spelling and the pronunciation of the word, wherease in Spanish with just the spelling you can deduce the pronunciation.

Spanish wins for learning simplicity!

The Homeschooler’s Speekee Adventure – 11

Posted by Jim on January 16, 2012 Comments Off

Week 11

This week we continued on with the lesson about the home.  We spent time learning the names for immediate family members.  My 9 year old enjoyed introducing each of us. We also worked on the days of the week.  It was interesting to learn that in the Spanish culture, the days of the week start with Monday.  We had some trouble getting the hang of the days’ names.  So we decided to put it into the same song that we used to learn the days of the week when my children were younger.  This helped a lot.  Speaking of songs, my 3 year old really enjoys the Speekee intro song.  When she hears it start, she comes running from the other room.

Kimberly
http://welovetohomeschool.blogspot.com/

A look inside the Speekee Parent Guide

Posted by Jim on January 14, 2012 Comments Off

With so much talk these days about Speekee TV, our online service, it would be easy to ignore the DVD set and its accompanying 68-page Parent Guide. So here are some of the features of that helpful guide:

The front cover:

Meet the cast – real Spanish kids, fun puppets and more

Episode Guide – there are 10 episodes in all

Song lyrics – for all the episodes, each of which contains an original Spanish learning song

Mini Dictionary – all the words from Speekee (English to Spanish and Spanish to English)

When Speekee worked… for Spanish kids!

Posted by Jim on January 12, 2012 Comments Off

Don’t be fooled by the glum looking expression; this guy is Andrés Bautista and he is a very nice chap! Andrés worked for the now-defunct SierraVision TV service in Arcos de la Frontera, the beautiful town in which Speekee was filmed (and where I remain fortunate to be living!). He was one of the people I used to deal with when the filming of the Speekee episodes was taking place. What fun that period was!

Much of Speekee was filmed not just outside in the town’s streets, parks etc., but also inside the SierraVision studio (the image of Andrés is, as you can probably tell, taken from inside the control room).

You can easily imagine, then, why SierraVision – not a TV station blessed with a surfeit of quality programming – asked me one day if they could ‘borrow’ the DVDs of episodes and put them on local TV. And so… they did.

To put this into some context, we are not talking about Speekee beinig beamed around the world, but rather shown on a local TV station plus a few others nearby.

Anyway, the point of this story is to tell you about the warm reaction it received from parents and, more importantly perhaps, to point out that the youngest TV-watching Spanish kids here in Arcos were captivated!

Well, when we designed Speekee it was with non Spanish speakers in mind. I was not expecting Spanish kids to love it too! But they did.

And it was a chat with my new hairdresser yesterday which prompted this blog entry today, because he had recognised me from the program his daughter (now six years old) so loved.

Cool! Speekee works for Spanish speakers and non Spanish speakers. A double whammy!

Spanish for kids

Posted by Jim on January 12, 2012 Comments Off

Spanish for kids is becoming more and more important, much as we at Speekee would expect as the world gets ever ‘smaller’; travel between countries increases, jobs are sought abroad, and the internet’s growth goes on and on. In short, language learning, and specifically Spanish for kids (our field of expertise) is a major advantage these days.

What is a suitable age for beginning the learning of Spanish for kids? At Speekee we reckon on 2 years old and upwards… Speekee’s Spanish works for a wide range of kids: those who are very young and just like to watch the moving images (while soaking in the Spanish without even knowing it – that’s the trick!); those who are a little older and are beginning to gets to grips with both their native language and – why not indeed! – another one (of course, with the child’s mouth still getting used to verbalising thoughts, and not having yet ‘got stuck’ in one language, its flexibility allows for other languages to be learned – and not just learned, but learned properly); and then the older children, for whom the sight of their peers (the Speekee program deliberately features Spanish children of up to 12 years old) maintains a high level of interest in the video content.

“Spanish for kids” is a popular search term with Google. But is the searcher sufficiently discerning to make a wise choice for their child? Choosing wisely can be so tricky! Fortunately, at Speekee we don’t just provide a great Spansh learning product for kids; we also back up that quality with customer service to die for (-; (-;

So if you have searched today for “Spanish for kids” it’s time to give Speekee a try.

Visit www.speekee.co.uk – oh, and check out our new Speekee TV annual subscription package at just $60. Is there a better offer out there when it comes to Spanish for kids?

Speekee with Jim, showing how easy spanish for kids can be

 

Will the English language die out?

Posted by Aaron on January 10, 2012 Comments Off

Apparently there are almost 7000 languages in the world, half of which have fewer than ten thousand speakers. I heard this in an interview with Nicholas Ostler of the Foundation for Endangered Languages on BBC Radio 4′s “Saturday Live” programme. If you have access to BBC iPlayer then you can hear the interview here. The interview with Nicholas starts at around 09:55 into the programme.

Nicholas talks about why languages die out. One reason is that they go out of business. That is to say the trade that caused the language to be used dies out, and the language goes with it. Another reason is that elite that kept them prominent cease to be the elite. An example of this would be the decline of Latin.

English might be the world’s dominant language now, but it hasn’t always been the case – in fact maybe it has only been so for the last hundred years. Prior to that it was perhaps French, for 1500 years before that it would have been Latin, and for the preceding three millennia it was Egyptian.

So will English remain the (or at least one of the) dominant world languages? Or will it die out? When?

Hola Speekee, Dino and Lupi

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