My daughter, who tends to prefer video programs for such things, and I took a look at the website and introductory video and thought it would be worth giving a try.
Because my own Spanish is super-limited, I liked the idea of the video streaming service with a teacher who speaks more fluently than I do. I also liked that all of us could use the service together or individually as we wished and that the physical books for the program were said to be optional (since I have at least one child who is not a "book person". )
Further, I was interested in seeing the benefits of TPR (Total Physical Response) unfold and loved the idea that the program aims to delight, is based on solid brain science, and is different than other Spanish programs with a purposeful design. I truly think the research and theory behind the program and how it approaches language acquisition is sound.
So, as I thought about Excelerate SPANISH Streaming, I had visions of my children and I learning, enjoying, and retaining Spanish together and individually using the program and some related Quizlets found online.
When we began our lessons, I got my children excited about the program by chatting with them about how the program will help us learn much like one of our baby friends learn to speak our native language, but at a level more suited for our older selves - starting with listening, then understanding and gesture, then verbal communications as they are ready.
I talked a bit about how the learning would not be a word and its translation and a stilted skit using limited phrases, but that it would:
- present scenes that mimic real-life situations
- avoid rote drills
- give meaningful context
- tap into movement
- and, promise long-term retention.
The kids found the sheer amount of vocabulary presented at once in the video lessons overwhelming and, although the corresponding movements definitely helped some with understanding and retention, the fact that the lesson was so long and vocabulary-packed discouraged my children.
Also, all of us wondered why the program is promoted as book-optional one even though the pre-recorded video lessons have significant portions where we, as living room students watching along, were clueless as to what was being taught. We wondered why there were no screenshots of the exercises that the children in the video were doing and no verbal cues that clued us in, either.
However, not to be chagrined, we just worked around those portions of the videos and kept on going.
Then, before our next lesson, I took time to dive more deeply into the excellent tips available on the Excelerate SPANISH website and perused many of the links, including the one for syllabus found at the bottom of the links page.
After doing so, I decided to back up and slow down with our Excelerate SPANISH studies.
With the children's agreement to give the program a fair chance, we enjoyed using Quizlet cards to review vocabulary we had already been presented with by the streaming videos and also clicked over to other websites to do lessons portions suggested in the free Excelerate SPANISH syllabus.
We also began using only 1/2 a video lesson at a time when using the streaming service, pausing often to review words, to have my children catch up on moving along with the video, and to supplement with our own games and improvs using the vocabulary presented.
This improved our experience somewhat, but, still, my children did not favor the program. They wanted to know words like "Hello," and "What's your name?" as it typical in many Spanish programs and just were not getting the program is created to let the language wash over you and that to acquire a language, you need a rich diet of the language. They also were not realizing that within the stories presented, there were many high frequency words, such as "va," meaning "goes" and the words for "looks for," "looks at," (which is a different word in Spanish), "where is," "what time is it," "waits for," and so on. We kept persisting, but, my children just did not favor this program, which can work for children ages 7-17 and even for adults, can offer high school credit, and promises long-term retention and understanding.
Thus, although I can see benefits to the program, I am conceding that now that our review period is completed, the streaming service is not the right fit for Spanish for my children right now.
For, although I did some see some progress in my children's passive understanding of Spanish after a handful of weekly lessons and can see how the Excelerate SPANISH has been successful in classroom teaching as well as other people's homeschools, it just is not working for us at this stage in our homeschool experience.
The theory behind the approach is sound and I do believe that for right-fit students, the program, overtime, would prompt and explosion of understanding and communication, much the way a wee child learns a native language, listening before understanding and speaking, but, finally, exploding with fluency, but my children just are not right-fit students with the program as it now stands.
My youngest child, nine, said:
I don't really like this program, because I don't like the approach. I am more of a simple, first words kind of kid. Instead of telling a whole story about a bus stop, I like to start with things like "hello" and "What's your name?"
I learned "hola" and "gracias" in a different program right away. Here, I learned things like "ay, ay, ay" "autobus", and "estupido". I cannot really remember much after the lessons, because there are too many words each lesson. The program uses exposure and movement first. I like speaking.
This program might work for school students and people not like me.
My oldest son, 13, said:
This program is hard for me to follow because of the teaching style.
The style involves a woman writing on a white board saying a litany of Spanish words and their meanings. Then, she speaks the words and makes you do a motion with each. Then, she tests you by speaking quick sentences and having you make hand motions.
After that, the woman tests the kids in her videod classroom with exercises in a book. This portion of the videos is completely useless if you do not have the book, because the woman does not speak the questions, and the questions are not shown on screen. So, you just hear lots of A's and B's and answers that don't make sense to you. So, we usually skip that part.
Then, you have to perform a weird skit that you don't act out naturally. Instead, you do the hand motions the woman taught.
I am not learning how to speak words and phrases such as "hello", "What is your name?" and other everyday words I might use when conversing with people who speak Spanish. Instead, I am learning about fishing hooks, taxis, and "estupido".
To make this program better, I would suggest using fewer, more common words per lesson and making it more engaging. It would also help to use editing in the videos to show words on the screen, show skits and example photographs and video clips of the words, etc. As it is now, it just seems like I am watching a bunch of kids at school get taught a foreign language.
My daughter, 12, said:
I liked the gestures, but, too often, there were pictures of things that you pointed to and that did not help me, because so many things ere just things you pointed to and that doesn't help ME the way it is supposed to help.
The other gestures did help me, though.
We used it together and I liked that, because we were able to do some game with the words we learned. The games were ones we made up.
I also liked the Quizlets.
I thought the teacher was okay, but I did not understand why the videos were so long and part of the videos we could not even use because it was for the workbook. I don't understand why they put that in the videos. Maybe they could have out that in a separate videos.
I feel like Excelerate SPANISH is a good program to use as a supporting program, maybe, not doing it all the time, because it has A LOT of words to learn for each session Like 26 words in 30'-60' is a lot for me, but I think it would be okay for certain kids.
I would like to use it sometimes, but to use a different program as our main program.
I think my children's assessments of how the program worked and didn't work for them and suggestions for improvements are fair given our experience.
However, I would like to add that these assessments are just our own. Other people are finding success with the program, and, I believe Excelerate SPANISH does have merit and could work well for the right students.
There is sound research behind the program's approach, obvious passion in the creator's delivery, and true demonstrated success in the videoed students. So, just because the streaming service was not the right fit for right now for my crew of kids does not mean it would not be for yours.
Every student and home is different. So, if you would like to hear from those who are finding success with Excelerate SPANISH, do be sure to click through to read other reviews from Homeschool Review Crew families.
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| Rad all the reviews! |
Excelerate SPANISH has the potential to work as a way to help your whole family learn Spanish, with younger students gaining fluency, high school students earning credits with the completion of some additional work as suggested in the free syllabus, and parents gaining retention, too. That potential is not being realized in my home, but it may be in yours.
You can also connect with Excelerate SPANISH via social media:
Excellent information share about spanish learning
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