MOUNT VERNON — In response to increasing globalization and a shrinking world due to instant communications and the Internet, the Ohio Legislature, through Substitute Senate Bill 311, charged the State Board of Education to establish a Foreign Language Advisory Council to develop a statewide foreign language implementation plan.
That plan was submitted to the legislators and policymakers on Dec. 31, 2007, with the following rationale: “Ohio needs citizens who are proficient in other languages and who are knowledgeable about other cultures in order to expand Ohio businesses in foreign markets, address the challenges of an increasingly diverse state population, and contribute to international understanding and security. Whether they go on to higher education or into the workforce, it is clear that all citizens benefit from knowing a second language.”
The council’s vision is that every student will graduate from high school with at least a basic level of proficiency in a language in addition to English. Crystal Tuel, Spanish instructor at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, concurs with the council’s vision.
“Nearly all other citizens of the world have the advantage of being at least bilingual, if not trilingual or knowing several languages,” she said. “In many other countries the study of another language is required in elementary school and fluency in another language is required to graduate. If others have the knowledge of other languages and United States students do not, we are at a disadvantage.”
One of the Foreign Language Advisory Council’s recommendations is to provide world language instruction as early as kindergarten, because it takes a long time to develop proficiency in a language — at least 720 hours to reach an advanced level of speaking proficiency in languages such as French, Italian and Spanish, and more than 2,400 hours to reach proficiency in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
High school and college level world language instructors also believe that starting language instruction in elementary school is a good idea. Most children learn their first language by the age of 5, and, Tuel said, anyone who speaks one language or writes one language can learn another, if instruction was started in early elementary and given priority.
“The earlier the better, as long as the sequence of language instruction is uninterrupted and carefully planned,” said Diane Birckbichler, chairwoman of the Department of French and Italian at The Ohio State University.
Jianhua Bai, professor of Chinese and chairperson of the Department of Modern Languages and Literature at Kenyon College, agreed.
“The earlier the students start,” Bai said, “the more likely they will be successful in learning a foreign language.”
Brain research cited by the Foreign Language Advisory Council shows children are better equipped to learn world languages in their early years because “their brains are wired for it.” From birth to puberty, the report continued, neural networks are formed as the brain formats itself, and if a world language is part of the input the young brain receives, networks for understanding it and using it will continue to grow. That gives younger children the ability to more easily develop native-like pronunciation. Younger children also, according to sociological research, more readily develop cultural understanding and global awareness.
Currently only about 3 percent of Ohio students in kindergarten through grade five study a world language.
St. Vincent de Paul School is one of the local schools that offers a foreign language in the early years. Spanish was introduced three years ago to kindergarten through fourth grade, and expanded to include all grades this school year. Grades kindergarten through fourth receive two 40-minute class periods of Spanish per week. Grades five through eight receive one 40-minute class per week.
“Our primary focus in the Spanish classes is conversational Spanish, but they do work on culture and grammar as well,” said principal Julie Kenney-Smith. “All of our students seem to be responding well to the language. Our younger students especially love it. Kindergarten students seem to take to it easily and enjoy it very much. They like to share what they learn each day.
“We’ve had an excellent response from our parents about teaching the students Spanish. I think we would all agree that any edge we can give to our students, the more competitive they will be later in the learning process.”
Christian Star Academy students have reacted positively to learning Latin, according to Sue Feasel, lead teacher.
“Latin is the foundation of all the other romance languages,” she said, “and the students are always excited to discover the English words that have their roots in Latin.”
At Wiggin Street Elementary, students have the chance to participate in Spanish Club once a week during their lunch period. Volunteers from Kenyon College conduct the informal learning sessions; both groups of students seem to enjoy the activities.
Anna Anderson, from Washington, D.C., is president of the Foreign Languages in Elementary Schools Club at Kenyon. Now a senior, she has been volunteering with Wiggin Street’s Spanish Club since her freshman year. She and her fellow volunteers, all of whom have some background in Spanish, view the club as a fun way to take advantage of the younger students’ facility in learning a second language, while performing a valuable community service.
“I started learning Spanish when I was a little younger than these pupils,” Anderson said, “and in our country today, Spanish is a very popular language, so we started the Spanish club. It is a different way to interact with the youngsters. Instead of being like a formal tutor, we play games and things to teach basic Spanish words and phrases.”
Principal Lynn Riggenbach said she views the club as a sort of cultural bridge between children with different heritages.
“Our world is such a global world today,” she said. “One of the reasons we chose Spanish is because we thought it would be good for those students who wanted to learn more about the traditional culture of other children in our school, but Spanish is also the second most commonly spoken language in our country. ... It’s so much easier to learn a second language at a young age.”
With a French Club being recently inaugurated, both study groups will also look at the word derivatives from those languages and see how they relate to English.
