Posted by CED on 18:03 Mar 10
In Reply to: How many languages at one time? posted by Sarah R.
You end up with a language curriculum that is a mile wide and an inch deep. You sound like you have a very bright, curious, and ambitious student. This is your chance to teach him what discipline can result in. Rather than letting him jump from one subject to the next, show what happens when you stick to one thing for a long time and work really hard at it. If he loves complexity and puzzles then he will really enjoy language.
At the very beginning of learning any language you are filled with a lot of rote work. You memorize a new alphabet, new sounds, new vocabulary. There's not a lot of connections that you make, it's all randomly memorized trivia. It's when you get past that point that you start to learn and apply complext patterns in grammar, meaning, and pronunciation.
In fact, probably the most efficient way to learn multiple languages is to learn a single foreign language first and then you can quickly generalize certain principles to other languages.