Towards a new language . . . and beyond . . .

In this sound bite we become fully aware of how much German has been tied to the United States since the late 1600s. After listening to this piece I feel that it is a pity and in some way a great disregard for the American heritage to have neglected the study of this wonderful language. Definitely a language of the Academia, German still belongs in a college prep school's curriculum. More than Mandarin? Arabic? Italian? Greek? Let me know . . .

Listen to the sound bite . And give us some feedback. Could our students handle this? In a three year program in High School?

As I mentioned before there could be some philosophical opposition to the inception of a Chinese program that is sponsored by the communist Chinese government. Someone may have a problem with a China sponsored program but be totally fine with the teaching of Chinese though different means. This AP article reports such a debate going on not far from here, in Hacienda Heights.

Now look who is down the street!

Norman Matloff makes a case for the study of Chinese . According to him, the interest for Chinese is not a fad. But in his article he points out the challenges that can be encountered when teaching Mandarin. That brings me to start thinking about 1) the teaching part itself (the practical, nitty gritty part of wondering of how a Chinese classroom would be like) as well as 2) the search for Chinese teachers. About 1), it seems Dr. Matloff has developed his own technological solution to teaching Mandarin. If this type of teaching were to be implemented at our school, it would go well with our emphasis on integrating technology in the classroom. However, do we want to go in the direction of the YouTube video posted with his article?? Regarding 2) it seems like the Chinese Government is going out of its way to provide teachers to the U.S. in order to promote the study of Chinese. Would we go in this direction? What is our stance on collaborating with governments that are in...

In the second piece of this New York Times article, Ingrid Pufhal points out the fact that the United States has had a utilitarian approach of teaching languages. This means that the languages learned in schools were driven by world events: during the Cold War, Russian was being pushed, two decades ago, Japanese was in the forefront of people's minds, now since China is such a great economic (and military) presence, Mandarin seems to have everyone's attention. This contrast with a very different approach of learning of languages that deviates from this superficial approach. Pufhal puts it in these words: Finally, European policy makers, educators and the general public realize that the benefits of language study extend well beyond the ability to communicate in another language. A recent E.U. meta-study presented scientific evidence that multilingualism contributes to creativity by enhancing mental flexibility, problem solving capability, language awareness, learning capacit...

The link below takes you to the chart that shows the classification of languages by degree of difficulty to learn (taken from Wikipedia .) This list was put together by the U.S. Department of State. There is no category 4 as the previous post referred to. Still, Mandarin and Arabic are in Category 3. It is also fascinating to visit the Department of State's language course offerings . A multitude of them!!

In this article the focus is on Chinese and Arabic studies. The challenges and the help that is available to implement these languages is covered in this piece. I noted that the department of state ranks languages by their level of difficulty to learn. Both Arabic and Mandarin are level 4 (the highest) languages. At a school like ours where we depend very little on previous knowledge of the language at the elementary and junior high level, is it reasonable to aim at implementing such high demand tongues?

Dave placed a copy of an article summarizing the results of a survey conducted by the Center for Applied Linguistics. The section of their website that pertain to Foreign Languages has interesting information that you may want to look at. The Executive Summary of their survey has been published in a sleek brochure .

Hello foreign language lovers, amateurs, teachers, students, and the like . . . The following posts are all based on the following premise: Let's say you teach at a top notch California High School whose Foreign Language curriculum is not as top notch as can be. You offer four years of Spanish, Latin and French (including Honors and AP level classes) and your students are required to take three years of a language in order to graduate. The administration has given you free reins to implement a new language. I hope to post links to articles, research as well as report on discussions, interviews and news that pertain to this topic. I am looking for comments, opinions and any feedback that would help come to a confident decision in the implementation of a fourth language in our curriculum. Merci, Danke, Gracias, Gratias