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The Struggle For Spanish Proficiency: Westport Schools Believe 13 Years is Better than Eight

It’s been more than a decade.

Ever since 2008, freshmen entering Staples have not just become high school students. Those who have chosen to continue Spanish have also entered their 10th year of the language.

As the story goes, the Foreign Language in Elementary Schools (FLES) program came about in the late 1990s. Today, the junior class marks its 12th year anniversary as guinea pigs of the FLES experiment. The senior class of 2012 will be the last class out the Staples doors with a Spanish education that began in the 5th grade, putting only eight years of Spanish under their belt as compared to the 13 years that future classes will graduate with.

“People who learn languages when they’re younger are more able to learn it than if someone started later in life,” said Caitlyn Rand ‘13, a Spanish student in her 12th year.  “So even though I’m not fluent now, I think starting to learn early has made me more comfortable with the language in general right now,” said Rand.

In the classroom 

            From the “Bogota, Columbia, Bolivia” song to learning the South American cities to the role-play activity where fifth graders became market owners who sold print-outs of Latin American sausage, the FLES program has always focused on an interactive approach to teaching Spanish.

Noah Bender ‘13 recalls these activities fondly, citing celebrations for El Día de Muertos (the Day of the Dead) as his favorite Spanish pastime. During this holiday, third grade students bake Mexican sugar skulls and are responsible for writing a recipe for them in Spanish, using their acquired numeric vocabulary.

“We did a lot o activities that were hands on to help us connect objects with  words for  fruits and places. I learned generic, basic words for Spanish and I still remember a lot of it today,” said Bender.

The goal of these hands-on activities is to instill the basics of Spanish in the children. For example, first grade students make medallions as they learn basics about Puerto Rican culture.

Another memory many students share from elementary school Spanish class is of the music.

Each month came with a different Spanish song that described it’s weather.  “The songs were really catchy and we learned dances to them too. I still remember some of the songs,”  Colby Kranz ‘15 said.

Matt Hodes ‘13 recalls the “month songs” which marked the beginning of each lesson as well, although he remembers them with less enthusiasm. “It got a little repetitive because we started class by singing a song for a whole month,” said Hodes

But this wasn’t the only way elementary school Spanish teachers got their students engaged. They also began the lessons by asking simple questions such as “How are you?” or “What is the weather like today?”. “This enforced us to keep on practicing and it soon became natural to all of the students,” said Kranz.

Kranz believes this gave her a basic foundation of Spanish. “Now when I go to spanish-speaking countries, it is much easier to keep a conversation going because i have all of the basics down,” she said.

The Science Behind It

            The FLES program was conceived by World Language teachers who felt that the 5th grade Spanish program was effective and should be extended to all elementary school students, according to Candy Rice, World Language Curriculum Coordinator.

“Children who start languages at an early age are very open to learning about new cultures and they tend to be quick to absorb the sounds of a language easily,” said Rice.

Rice and her colleagues examined studies that show children who learn languages at a young age are more able to achieve fluency than those who start learning a second language later. The studies also showed that early exposure gives students a better chance at developing a native-like pronunciation.

The Results Are In

            The Student Oral Proficiency Assessment (SOPA) was performed in 2009 on eighth graders by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL). It was a study done specifically to check up on the FLES program. CAL investigated the difference between eighth graders who started learning Spanish in fifth grade and those who started in kindergarten.

“The test data was extremely strong and in support of the early start of Spanish,” said Rice.

Evidence was especially supportive of the FLES program in the oral fluency and listening comprehension categories. 10.8% of FLES students achieved the highest level of proficiency in oral fluency while 27.5% of FLES students in achieved the highest level of proficiency in listening.

Only students who had began Spanish in kindergarten achieved this level of high proficiency. In other words, students who began Spanish in 5th grade were not able to reach that level, as they had not undergone the FLES program.

The Guinea Pigs and Their Instructors Speak Out

            “Students who have participated in the K-12 FLES program have a much higher general level of comfort with hearing the language and speaking the language, including a a really nice pronunciation,” said Spanish teacher Eamon Griffin. “Over the years, something has sunk in.”

Griffin believes that students have learned enough to be able to travel safely in foreign Spanish-speaking countries. He presses the importance of being able to get to hospitals, airports, and other public areas a tourist frequents.

“Starting in kindergarten helped because I learned the useful fashions of speech,” said Rand.

But besides the general knowledge of language easing her into an understanding of languages, Rand believes that there are minimal benefits to her Spanish vocabulary from FLES. Some students agree, saying that they didn’t learn anything in elementary school that they wouldn’t have learned in middle school Spanish.

But Claire Noyer ‘14, who started French in middle school, regrets how little an amount of time was spent on the basics. “In French we never really took the time to study colors or animals as in depth as we did in [elementary school] Spanish,” she said. However, that is Noyer’s one regret, and besides it, she sees no paramount reason for French to be taught in elementary school.

In fact, she believes that the amount of knowledge students have now, regardless of what language they are taking, has little to do with an elementary school language education. She evidences this with the fact that French and Spanish students can be in the same level of language, even if one student began learning in kindergarten and the other began learning in 6th grade.

Carol Kochefko, a German teacher, does see the benefit of FLES. The fact that Kochefko teaches a language that may seem worlds away from Spanish does not change her feelings.

Each year that Kochefko has taught German, she has had a student place about the 90th percentile on the German National Exam. She owes this, in part, to the fact that “language is language.”

“Those who have a background in language will pick German up faster,” said Kochefko. Kochefko is able to teach the equivalent to the basics learned in elementary school Spanish to her German students when she gets them in 9th grade, and is also able to go on the Advanced Placement level.

Bender, an Italian student since his freshman year, hopes than in an ideal world, Italian could be taught from kindergarten, along with Spanish. Bender feels that learning Spanish helped him learn Italian.

Bender also believes his three years of Italian so far have brought him more language education than ever before. “I think that the amount of Italian I learned in these three years of Italian are far more than the Spanish that I learned from K-8. I think that the amount of work that the teachers are allowed to give, plus the greater effort given by students in high school is why I have learned so much more,” said Bender.

Maria Zachery, Administrator of the World Language Department, believes that the only way to achieve true fluency in regards to speaking is through an immersion program, though Staples does not have a publicized one.

 

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