Hispanic Entrepreneurs Press.- A new Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (Cmcss) program will give kindergarten children the opportunity to learn Spanish as their second language, just as they learn English. It is a language immersion plan where students will feel that they are in a Spanish-speaking country from the moment they cross the door of the classroom.
Emily Vaughn, director of curriculum instruction for the Clarksville-Montgomery County School System from preschool through fifth grade, told www.theleafchronicle.com that the classes will be exclusively in Spanish despite the fact that the students are American.
The classroom will be set with posters written in Spanish so that the student becomes familiar with reading and vocabulary, making the process didactic and entertaining.
The program will begin next school year in two kindergarten classes with 40 students. It is not mandatory for all children, since parents can choose if they want their children to participate. However, until now the response has been quite positive and it is estimated that there is a demand greater than the 40 available vacancies; if so, the participants will be chosen randomly.
The program is designed for preschool children because they are able to distinguish sounds with great agility, being able to relate new concepts learned to what they already know.
At the end of the 2018-2019 school year, two similar classes will be created for first grade students, in order to give continuity in learning to children who have advanced in level. This scheme will be repeated until middle and high school, with the vision that by the time students enter college they can train as bilingual professionals. “It is not about the language, it is about learning to use the language. It's about using the language to get ready for college or a career, ”said Vaughn.
This immersion program is not a novelty in the United States, no matter how contradictory the issue may seem, especially when there has been a strong fight for the deportation of Hispanics. This initiative has been replicated in counties such as Oklahoma, Michigan, Iowa and North Carolina given the importance that Spanish represents in the global dynamic.
A lot of advantages
It is proven that learning a foreign language is more effective when the student is immersed in an environment where only the language is spoken. Also, learning Spanish is much easier than English.
“Studies show that students acquire reading in Spanish five times faster than they do reading in English because the language is much simpler (…) The difference is that the Spanish language is less complex than English (…) Their vowels , his lyrics usually have one sound, where some of ours have multiple sounds, and it's a very complex language to learn, "said Vaughn.
Not only is ease the only advantage of speaking Spanish; remember that this is the second most used language in the world. Learning it makes you the most competent person in the professional area as well as opens doors for you when it comes to doing business with important companies in Latin America.
Other studies ensure that having a command of a second language increases the individual's ability to solve problems, while tending to have divergent thinking and recognize patterns.
Nor can we forget that in the United States more than 50 million people speak Spanish as their mother tongue or second language, so the opportunities to improve it are ample.
According to Cmcss data “in the United States, 1 in 7 people is Hispanic. By 2020 Hispanics are expected to account for half the growth of the US workforce. UU ”.
Sources:
