In an August 27 article, the West Windsor-Plainsboro News pointed out that the quality of foreign language education in our public schools has been called to question over the past year.
Recognizing the need for reform is hardly new. For many years, education experts and business and political leaders have lamented the dearth of U.S. high school graduates who are proficient in languages of economic and strategic importance in the 21st century. Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned, “An issue that affects our ability to compete and collaborate on the world stage [is] the need to increase the foreign-language fluency and cultural awareness of all our students.” The chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government, Senator Daniel Akaka, observes that American companies lose an estimated $2 billion a year due to inadequate cultural understanding. “Globalization means that Americans must compete for jobs in a marketplace no longer confined to the boundaries of the United States.”
According to the Committee for Economic Development, many small and medium-sized businesses are now finding it necessary to do business in the languages and cultural environments of the world’s emerging markets. The same report cited a study showing that 30 percent of large U.S. corporations believed they failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities due to insufficient personnel with “international skills,” most notably proficiency in foreign languages.
To business and political leaders, possessing foreign language proficiency goes far beyond basic conversation skills that may enable one to get to the airport or order from a menu. True language proficiency means the ability to read, write, and speak in the target language at a level that enables effective communication and collaboration in a social or professional environment. This skill is not easy to achieve. Representative Rush Holt points out that “achieving fluency takes hard work, individual commitment, and the proper institutional support.”
For this reason, many school districts across the country, from California to Massachusetts, are committing resources to create full language immersion programs in their schools. Full language immersion programs have been proven to be the most effective method of getting the results our children need in the 21st century. The WW-P News article asserts that the district schools are “the best bet for achieving functional fluency.” True immersion programs are clearly defined by the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL):
“In foreign language immersion, the regular school curriculum is taught in the immersion language for at least half of the school day. In partial immersion, instructional time is divided equally between English and the immersion language throughout the elementary grades. In full immersion, teachers use no English at all in the early grades. In grade 2, 3, or 4, teachers introduce English language arts and reading for one period per day and gradually move toward an even distribution of English and the immersion language by grade 5 or 6. In the secondary school grades, immersion students typically have access to at least two course offerings in the immersion language, most often in social studies and language arts.”
Simply put, effective immersion programs last at least 20 percent of a student’s waking hours and are most effective when started in kindergarten. “There are no short cuts to achieving fluency,” says Rep. Holt. In his recently introduced Excellence and Innovation in Language Learning Act, Holt writes that it is necessary to “provide every student access to quality language instruction as part of articulated kindergarten through grade 12 language sequences in order to give every student the opportunity to become proficient in other languages in addition to English by high school graduation.”
Moreover, Rep. Holt references research that shows “children derive cognitive, academic, and social benefits from the opportunity to learn another language at an early age.” Full immersion programs have a proven track record, nationally and internationally, of being the “best bet” for producing students who, by high school graduation, are truly proficient in both their native language as well as a foreign language. Public access to full-immersion programs, starting in kindergarten, may not have been necessary a generation ago. In the 21st century however, foreign language fluency has grown in value. Parents need good information to make the best choices for their children.
We feel very encouraged to see that New Jersey is beginning to replicate the success of other states by making full immersion programs available in New Jersey public schools. This month two new public schools with language immersion programs opened, one in East Brunswick and the other in Hoboken.
In 2011 foreign language education in our community will also achieve a milestone by opening its first public school with a language immersion program. We hope the Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS) will be the first of many such programs available to our children in the public system. If so, our schools will keep pace with top schools nationally and will close the achievement gap internationally.
Glenn Schiltz
Princeton
Dr. Rajan Ravikumar
West Windsor
