2010-04-07T19:30:12Ztag:blog.limedaley.com,2018:/isso/thread/post/dominican-republic-meeting-god-in-missionstag:blog.limedaley.com,2018:/isso/601/26382010-04-07T19:30:12ZSursumCorda<p>Yeah, New York and Boston. But you can form your own, unofficial one. :)</p>tag:blog.limedaley.com,2018:/isso/601/26372010-04-07T19:12:57Zjondaley<p>I think the closest HIPPO club is 600 miles away - we did look it up at one point.</p>tag:blog.limedaley.com,2018:/isso/601/26362010-04-07T17:54:10ZSursumCorda<p>Thanks for writing all this up (don't stop!). I know it takes a long time to write, but it's great to read.</p> <p><em>It also might be that I really can't learn from the immersion-type style teaching - we watched Muzzy a couple times, and we've listened to the HIPPO mp3s in the car occasionally, and I never really figured out what they were saying.</em></p> <p>One thing you need to remember about these methods is that it takes <em>lots</em> of input, and also <em>output</em>. The HIPPO tapes (sorry, old technology habits) were not designed to be used outside of the context of the HIPPO Family Clubs, in which families meet together at least once a week to practice the languages. They also listen to the tapes daily, not a couple of times or occasionally. And a most important part of the process is what they call &quot;singing the sounds&quot; -- speaking along with the tape as well as you can, trying to match your voice to theirs, even if you don't understand a word. I, too, found it hard to follow them, and often couldn't even tell where one word ended and another began, especially with the Asian languages. That's still true for the most part. But when I was in the habit of listening and &quot;singing,&quot; it was amazing how things started making sense after a while, and I could distinguish sounds that had previously been all mushed together. The ear really learns.</p> <p>When we were in Japan I was amazed to hear the tiny kids in Janet's HIPPO Club speaking accent-free English, having none of the problems the high school students we met did, even after many years of study. Did the kids understand all they were saying? Maybe, maybe not -- but when they later encounter English classes in school, unlike their classmates they will have no problem with &quot;r&quot; and other difficult sounds.</p> <p>When Jonathan was quite young -- before Noah was born -- we handed him a portable CD player with headphones and a HIPPO CD, and encouraged him to &quot;sing along.&quot; It was amazing to hear how well he pronounced the other languages!</p>