Reply to Options for Language Instruction after DCPS Cuts?

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Reply to "Options for Language Instruction after DCPS Cuts?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that any one who thinks that middle and high school language programs are going to get your kid a job or fluency are misjudging.

I think a good MS/HS language program introduces kids to a foreign language and gets them hooked on language learning, but you can seriously learn as much Spanish or French in a year on Duolingo as you can in four years of high school. Even AP Spanish is nowwhere near fluency.

The people I know who became bi or tri-lingual through education (as opposed to having cultural or family backgrounds) did it through college and grad school, and almost exclusively through immersion study abroad experiences. Long ago I attended a high school that sent sophomores to France and Spain for a year—almost all of the people who did the program live overseas and speak at least three languages. But that's not a systemic way.

As long as a school HAS a language program and as long as the teachers are encouraging and engaging, I don't think it really matters the extent of the language taught or the actual language being taught. I'd rather my kid pick up a smattering but go off to college with an interest in taking serious language courses, doing study abroad, etc. than go to a MS because it has the most elaborate set of foreign languages on offer.[/quote]

I disagree.  Of course it matters the language being taught.  Spanish and Mandarin are the top 2 most spoken language in the world followed by English.

You are not going to be pretty good conversationally by starting a language in college and frankly lots of kids don’t have the time in college and beyond to supplement outside of school, do study abroad,etc…  Starting a language in MS and continuing it to college can get you good enough to speak and read.  My kid isn’t doing mandarin but terribly short sighted of DCPS to cut that over Italian

Lastly as others have mentioned, you don’t need fluency to find the language useful in a practical manner.  I work in the medical field and can’t tell you the hundreds of times I wished I had taken Spanish instead of French.  My colleagues who speak Spanish are not fluent but don’t need to rely on translators to get by with getting the info they need.  Yes, we have to use mandarin translators too.  If you can communicate in Spanish or mandarin, you have a huge advantage if you are in any service industry such as medicine, law, business, etc…[/quote]

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