Middle School French From Middlebury Interactive Languages - Review
My kids love using these online French lessons! They are fun, interactive, and easy to learn from. Perfect for homeschooling French lessons.
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this product for review, all opinions are 100% my own.
Last year we had the wonderful opportunity to use and review Elementary French 1 (grades 3-5) from Middlebury Interactive Languages. My oldest daughter loved the course so much she had asked to take the next level.
So we were thrilled to have the opportunity to review Middle School French 1!
The class comes in 2 forms one with a teacher and one without. We received a 6-month subscription to the class without a teacher.
Online French Lessons For Kids From Middlebury Interactive Languages
Learning Languages
Middlebury Interactive Languages is an online, interactive foreign language program. They offer foreign language courses for grades K-12 including advanced and AP level courses at the high school level. Language classes are for Spanish, French, German, and Chinese.
French classes offered:
Elementary French 1 - Grades K-2
Elementary French 1 & 2 - Grades 3-5
Middle School French 1 & 2 - Grades 6 – 8
High School French 1, 2 & 3 - Grades 9-12
High School French Fluency 1 & 2 - Grades 9-12
AP French - Grades 11-12
The style of the classes is like a slideshow but interactive. The student listens to audios, reads slides, answers questions using interactive games, writes and records themselves repeating French phrases.
When you first log in to Middlebury Interactive the home page has a section at the top for announcements and under that is a box that says Up Next. This is supposed to show what lesson the student is to work on next. However, I've found it to be out of sync with the lessons my daughter has completed.
There is also a calendar option to find your lessons. This schedules 2 lessons to be done each day. Unfortunately, the schedule seems to be locked and started the week before we had access to the program.
Luckily there is another way to follow along with the lessons!
Middlebury Interactive Table of Contents
There is a table of contents to the program and this is what my daughter has been using to do her lessons.
On the left side of the screen is a list of Units with a file folder symbol next to them. As you click the unit it opens to show a list of lessons under it. You then click the lesson folder you want and it opens a subfolder with a list of activities to complete for that lesson.
Online French Lessons for Kids Middlebury Interactive
The lessons display in a slideshow-type box in the center of the screen. As each lesson is completed a green check mark appears beside the lesson in the table of contents.
Each unit has 10 lessons and each lesson has at least 6 parts to it. They have an introduction or teaching tip, a warm-up exercise, a matching game, and a speaking lab.
Interactive French Lessons for Kids
What Does My Daughter Think?
She has really been enjoying Middlebury Interactive Languages middle school French program. It's more challenging and a different style than the elementary program that largely used videos to teach. However she still really likes the format.
She does wish that there was a definitions page she could print off for each lesson. She has to write out her own terms to help her with the exercises later and since handwriting is harder for her it slows the lessons down.
What Do I Think?
I really like the Middlebury Interactive French program! This is the type of program that as a parent if you’re not strong in the language your child is learning it's not a problem. Even if you don't know it at all, they can still use this program well!
Middlebury Interactive Languages breaks the learning down into small manageable chunks. Each lesson takes about 15 minutes to complete. As your child works through the lessons the activities are graded.
You can easily see these grades and view the lesson as well from your grade book. Our version of middle school French didn't have the teacher add on so her audio recordings are not marked with feedback. So I listen to the original and her recording to see if she is pronouncing it correctly.
The only things I wish I could change about the setup is I would like to be able to use the calendar view but select the start date of the course myself. It would also be helpful if there was a pop-up keyboard with French language characters on it.
There was no way that our daughter was going to remember what alt key codes to press to get them to show up. So I was able to find an app that would let her select the French letter that she need and just copy it for her use.
Other than these little things I think it is a wonderful language program! This is the program we are planning to use again next year when our oldest reaches the high school level.
