The decision to teach a foreign language is one that most home educators ponder with great deliberation. There are many schools of thought, but few with much concrete information. I searched for which language and when to teach that language, and my journey took me on some unexpected turns.

I knew that I wanted to teach French, as it is my mother tongue. Spanish and Latin were also to be taught at some point in my children’s school career. I needed to know how best to teach them and in what order. This road led me to consider frequency bands, the Great Commission, help with grammar, and ease of learning.

As I pursued my Entry Level in becoming a SAMONAS therapist, I discovered some amazing facts about how people learn languages. Frequency bands are the oscillations that the human ear can theoretically capture. These range from frequencies of 16 to 16,000 Hz and include an infinite number of rhythms. As we get older, our ears tend to settle into a habit and remain efficient only in those frequencies and rhythms we use for our mother tongue. This habit is difficult to break. The French mainly use the frequencies from 1,000 to 2,000 Hz, while the English use frequencies ranging from 2,000 to 12,000 Hz. We can see why each has problems learning the other’s language.

Each language therefore has a preferential use of certain ranges of sound frequencies, called basic frequency bands, as is demonstrated by the table at the top of the next column.

This is the reason it is so important to learn a foreign language early in life. The child will have an easier time keeping his frequency bands open and therefore will be able to make the sounds more easily. As Dr. Alfred Tomatis’s research showed us, we cannot make sounds that we cannot hear.

If I chose to teach Latin as the first foreign language, I felt I would miss an important opportunity for my children to use this natural ability that is reserved for younger people. Since Latin is a dead language and can be spoken only by people who have another mother tongue, those are the frequencies that would be passed on. An English person speaking Latin will speak the language in the 2,000-12,000 Hz range. I decided that Latin would be best taught at the high school level so as to not waste the valuable younger years when the ear can more easily learn to hear new frequency bands.

Since my mother tongue is French and I took Spanish in university, these two languages were a must for my children. I also reasoned that for missionary work French and Spanish were the top languages they would need. I had taught French as a Second Language in the public system but had never found a curriculum that I liked. At that time, I had started to develop a better method that laid down basic knowledge and built from there. Life being busy, I kept my ideas, discoveries, and assumptions for a later date.

I must have bought every possible French curriculum out there. You name it, we tried it. It was getting frustrating. My oldest daughter was now 10, and she still did not have much formal French under her belt. Since we use and love The Writing Road to Reading (the Spalding Method) for our English program, and I earned a psychology degree with a concentration on how people learn to read, I decided to draw from my own knowledge. I first created the French phonograms and put language and spelling rules with them. I taught a group of non-Francophone homeschooled children for a year to see how my method would work. They did quite well. The foundational way that I had taught in the public system worked, but only to a degree. This program was dry.

At the same time, my desire to start our ministry was getting stronger. I was praying Deuteronomy 28:18, specifically that the Lord would provide us a way to fund Shalom Ranch Ministries. Please see www.ShalomRanch.org for more information. This is now a reality. Great Commission Languages makes it possible to run Shalom Ranch Ministries.

My next decision had to be what my goals were with this curriculum. Did I want a conversational medium? Did I want grammar? Did I want stories? Did I want clear pronunciation as a goal? I wanted all of these and more. I also wanted this curriculum to follow international requirements for second language training. Fulfilling the mandates of the Charlotte Mason method was important, especially the research and discoveries laid out by François Gouin in his book The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages. I also wanted to consider the Principle Method, Bloom’s taxonomy, and research done by Dr. Jeanne Chall. Above all else, I wanted this curriculum to be easy for the student and for the parent to teach. How in the world was I going to fulfill such a large number of requirements? The research began and continued for quite a while. Developing the skeleton of the lessons took time, prayer, and hard work. How I did it was with the amazing grace of Jesus Christ. I certainly could not have done it without Him! There were times when all the requirements swirled around in my head. I would check and recheck to make sure that all was in order.

As I began to write the storylines, one more requirement was laid on my heart. We have four beautiful children. We have one very gifted, one with a learning disability, and great aspirations for all. Each of our children has great potential, as does each of yours. In examining this potential I started to ask myself, “Potential for what?” I wasn’t quite sure at first. I knew that as a home educating mother I needed to teach them the basic three Rs. What other subjects did I need? And where were we going with all these subjects? Was my ultimate goal to create very intelligent children who could wow anyone in any subject? Lofty goals, attainable maybe—but again, for what purpose?

I began to realize that there was more than teaching our children their school subjects. There must be more than teaching how to concentrate on their intellect. If we examine Jesus’ final instruction to us, we find His Great Commission. Here is the Scripture passage:

I realized that my curriculum must aid parents in preparing their children for the Great Commission. Now I had to determine how I was going to go about this. The teaching of culture, foreign-language Scripture, a strong Christian worldview, and good moral stories filled with character and humor were the beginning. Why humor, you ask? One of the best ways to witness to the French and Spanish is through humor. Many of the French idioms and customs, for instance, show how much we have a joie de vivre (joy of living).

My journey was almost over; I had one more important task. I decided that I needed to test this curriculum on some real live families. The way in which I teach French might be very different from the way an Anglophone teaches it. I contacted numerous families all over North America (from California to Nova Scotia) and ended up with over 40 families who were willing to try out the curriculum. Their comments, suggestions, and ideas led to the further development and refinement of Le Français Facile! I am very thankful to my beta testers and know that they share in my success.

As Le Français Facile! grew, people started asking me if I was going to develop a Spanish program. I was greatly encouraged in this area by David and Laurie Callaghan (see www.davidandlaurie.com and www.thechristianinstitute.com). With much prayer and preparation, I started my journey in Spanish. The Lord blessed me by sending me a Spanish homeschooling mom. Erika Vogel Pasquel de Riley was a great source of information and encouragement. I prayed for more Spanish people, and the Lord sent a couple, Xavier and Escarlett Fonseca. This couple is also very talented musically, and they sing the wonderful Spanish songs that go with the program. Thus ¡El Español Fácil! was born. The Lord blessed us with close to 150 sold in the first month. We are excited to see how many churches and co-ops are now using this program to prepare to go on shortterm mission trips. We are also thankful for the funding those sales brought to our ministry, Shalom Ranch Ministries. Thank you to all who have supported us, encouraged us, and bought our curricula. May each of you receive every blessing that our Lord intends for you.

Please visit www.TheEasyFrench.com and/or www.TheEasySpanish.com for sample lessons (print and audio), more information, or to order your curriculum.

Read The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s online review of Le Français Facile! at www.TheHomeschoolMagazine.com/Homeschool_Reviews/reviews.php?rid=1052.

You can also follow along with how the ministry is doing by reading my blog at www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/ShalomRanch.