What Your Homeschool Foreign Language Curriculum Absolutely Cannot Do

I’m not going to bury the lede here. In lieu of an introduction, I’ll just come out and say it:

If you are homeschooling a foreign language, you should know this: not even the best homeschool foreign language curriculum can make your child fluent in another language.

Is that bad news?

I don’t think so! In fact, simply knowing that fact can help us, as homeschoolers, study foreign languages better.

In order to be successful at learning languages, we need to understand what the process of language learning itself looks like. This helps us to have appropriate expectations for ourselves and our kids and set learning goals accordingly. It helps us pick the right resources and schedule our day to use them well. It spares us the frustration of feeling like we have no realistic pathway to proficiency.

Yet for a long time, this information has been missing in the homeschooling community. And that’s led us to use the wrong tools and methods for language learning, leaving many of discouraged and feeling like we’re spinning our wheels.

A Basic Formula for Successful Homeschool Language Learning

So what will get a child to proficiency (or even fluency) in another language?

Well, based on my own experience as a language learner and a language teacher, I think it pretty much boils down to this:

A good curriculum + LOTS of real-life practice + consistency + time + motivation = language proficiency

This is as close to a “formula” to language learning as I can get, based on best practices. I’ve written about each of these five elements on the blog before, but I think its really helpful to look at them together. The quality or intensity of each can vary, but each is essential.

Let’s consider why:

Take a child who has the first four elements, but lacks motivation. Maybe he can’t see how he could ever use a foreign language in real life, or he lacks confidence in his ability to learn another language. Even with the best curriculum available, if this student can’t find a real reason to apply himself, it will be immensely difficult for him to gain proficiency in another language. After all, what is the point?

For another example, let’s think about the child who is trying to learn a language on her own. She’s not using a curriculum—or maybe she’s using a tool like Duolingo that she thinks is a curriculum, but really isn’t—but she is “practicing” a lot, even consistently. She has a lot of motivation to learn, so it should be easy, right? But without well-designed curriculum, she’s going to have a lot of gaps in her learning and struggle to use the language in real-life situations, wasting a lot of time and effort on her own part.

So, if I can just repeat that formula once more, we’re aiming for:

A good curriculum + LOTS of real-life practice + consistency + time + motivation = language proficiency

Where to Learn More — Future Reading

If you want to read up more on any of those areas, here are the most popular posts that I have on each of these subjects:

Choosing a homeschool foreign language curriculum:

Ten Questions to Ask When Choosing a Foreign Language Curriculum
Why Duolingo is Not a Homeschool Foreign Language Curriculum
Complete Homeschool Spanish Curriculum Round-Up
Complete Homeschool French Curriculum Round-Up
Complete Homeschool Latin Curriculum Round-Up

Fitting in foreign language practice:

Ideas for Scheduling Foreign Language Practice
39 Ways to Practice a Foreign Language in 5 Minutes or Less
Free Resources for Homeschool Spanish Practice
Free Resources for Homeschool French Practice

Studying foreign languages consistently:

Creating an Immersive Environment for Homeschool Language Learning
How to Homeschool Multiple Languages

Scheduling foreign language study:

Adding Foreign Language to Your Morning Basket
How to Outsource Foreign Language Study

Motivating your children to study foreign languages:

Cultural Learning for Homeschoolers
Motiving Kids (and Ourselves!) to Study Foreign Languages
Seven Advantages Homeschoolers Have for Learning Foreign Languages
Why I Want My Kids to Learn Foreign Languages

I hope that these will be helpful to you!

What If Proficiency Isn’t My Goal?

If language proficiency is not your family’s homeschool language learning goal, then you have a lot more flexibility on this. If you just want your children to be exposed to another language—which is a perfectly fine and realistic goal for many families—then you don’t need to worry about getting all five of these elements.

If that were my objective, I would personally focus on following a well-written curriculum and adding in lots of cultural education, so that if your children want to pursue the language in the future, they would have the basics down, as well as a sense of why they might want to learn the target language.