What Language Should Our School Offer?

Question asked by an administrator at a new charter school: We are interested in starting a foreign language program in our elementary school, what language should we offer?

Response: It is wonderful that you are going to offer a foreign language to your students. Here are some considerations in making this decision:

1. Do your students have a preference? Depending on their ages, students can be asked to research language preferences and come up with a rationale about why their favorite language should be offered.
2. Is there a preference in the community?
a. Is there a dominant heritage language background within the community? Heritage language speakers can often be a great source of enrichment for cultural activities, festivals, speakers, etc.
b. Are there international companies in the area that are interested in any specific languages that might provide support (tutorials, funding)?
3. If all the neighboring schools offer the same language - offering a different language may draw new students to your school.
4. Consider current national security needs. At this time there is a great push for non-traditional languages such as Chinese and Arabic. Recent U.S.D.E. Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grants have awarded extra points to proposals that focus on non- traditional languages.
5. Will there be opportunities for your students to continue with the language of choice once students leave your school? Offering a foreign language program represents a huge investment in time and money. It is important that there is a feeder pattern to enable students to reach higher levels of language proficiency.
6. What is the availability of excellent teachers to teach the language of choice? Finding highly qualified teachers for some non-traditional languages at a particular level (such as elementary school) may be a challenge. Check with area colleges and universities.

Learning any foreign language has been shown to improve academic ability in areas such as problem solving and vocabulary comprehension and has resulted in higher test scores in English and math. Starting early and continuing through high school can lead to useful levels of proficiency.

Thekla Fall
World Language Consultant


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