Languages
Learning a second language:
- enhances brain development;
- develops and enhances basic communication and higher order thinking skills;
- develops insight into one's own language and culture;
- develops a greater understanding of first language, increasing skills across the curriculum; and
- promotes awareness, appreciation, and acceptance of other peoples and cultures, as well as of one's own.
Second language learners:
- cross linguistic and cultural boundaries;
- increase understanding of one another, respecting similarities and differences; and
- will be prepared to participate more fully in the global community and marketplace.
WE BELIEVE THAT:
- Second language and culture education is an integral part of the core curriculum.
- Integrated language and culture study prepares students to act with greater awareness of self, other cultures and their relationship to those cultures.
- The ultimate goal of today's world language classroom is meaningful and culturally appropriate communication in another language.
- Language is acquired through extended uninterrupted sequences, beginning in elementary school and continuing through middle and high school.
- A world language program is most successful when it incorporates effective instructional strategies, technologies, and assessment for communicative proficiency.