Foreign languages are elementary
By JENNIFER KELLEY
Cherry Hill Sun
8/20/2007

Learning the basics at an early age prepares students for their future in the world community

Students as young as 6 and 7 walk the halls of Cherry Hill’s elementary schools greeting one another and teachers with, “Hola!” and, “Buenos días!” Many of them could also rattle off the Spanish words for various colors, food items, animals and places, if asked.

Children have been learning to speak world languages at the first-grade level in New Jersey schools since a statewide mandate was passed in 1996, and, based on the exuberance the youngsters exude over retaining new words and learning about new cultures, they seem to think it’s a muy bueno (very good) initiative, many area school officials told The Sun.

The N.J. Core Curriculum Content Standards for World Languages and the World languages Curriculum Framework provide local school districts with the guideline for instructional programs and extended sequences of world languages instruction, said John Zlock, a public information official within the state’s Department of Education.

The department has placed particular emphasis on early language learning and the creation of well-articulated K-8 world language programs, he noted, adding that the relatively new world-language standards were handed down in order to prepare New Jersey students for the demands of an interdependent world. In implementing the mandates, Zlock said, elementary schools will ensure that their pint-size pupils can better communicate and gain a heightened and cultural awareness of their local, state and world community. In addition, he added, early language-learning results in improved literacy skills as reading and writing processes are similar for first and second languages and the strategies for learning both are transferable.

School districts have flexibility in how they choose to implement a world language program in their elementary school, including what language they choose to teach. Spanish is the language taught in Cherry Hill’s schools, as it is in more than 90 percent of districts throughout the state, the DOE reports.

But all world language programs in New Jersey elementary schools share three qualities, Zlock said: Flexibility in the face of fluctuating financial support; close teamwork among language professionals, administrators, classroom teachers and parents; and a strong commitment to the program and to the goals passed on by the state for elementary language education.

In Cherry Hill’s Clara Barton Elementary School, students in grades one and two meet with a world language instructor once a week for 30 minutes and those in grades three through five meet for 30 minutes with an instructor twice a week.

Principal Farrah Koonce said the district is fortunate to have 10 certified Spanish-language instructors dispersed between its 12 elementary schools – due to a lack of funding and foreign-language teachers themselves, many districts have multimedia language programs instead, using classroom teachers to guide students along.

“The language teachers give the kids someone to connect with,” she told The Sun. “These people are fluent and engage them in conversation in Spanish, as opposed to a teacher unfamiliar with the language who is left to interpret a video program.

“Our programs totally immerse the students into the language.”

Koonce noted that she thinks kids appreciate learning a language more at a young age, even though they may not realize how much being bilingual will help them later in life.

“When I pop by a world language class, it seems that the kids are always engaged in the lesson, and they seem to just love and look forward to the class. I often hear the kids using the words they learned in the halls or in the lunchroom. And they know that if they want to talk to a passing language teacher that they must address the instructor mostly in Spanish.”

For Koonce, it makes perfect sense that her students begin learning a foreign language in the earliest grades.

“The very basic Spanish concepts that used to be taught in middle school or high school are now taught in the first through fifth grades. By the time today’s students get to the upper grades, they are ready to understand more complex verb usage and are able to write more intricate sentences or paragraphs – it’s on par with their grade level now as opposed to in the past when high school students were learning first-grade concepts in their Spanish I class,” she said.

And it makes sense on a cognitive level as well, many researchers agree.

Rutgers University Professor Bill Whitlow, in the psychology department, told The Sun there is plenty of evidence pointing to the fact that it’s easier for children to acquire language at a young age.

“Children are still making remarkable strides with their vocabulary at that point,” he said. “Learning another language actually aids their intellectual development.”