Allysia Finley, 13 July 2008
Public schools aren’t helping students compete with foreign counterparts
The Register recently ran a story on HABLA, the Home-based Activities Building Language Acquisition program, which aims to help teach toddlers from low-income, Spanish-speaking families English and Spanish by sending language coaches into their homes.
HABLA is based on the premise that the more children communicate at a young age, the more quickly they develop language skills.
While the program remains controversial because of its bilingual approach, recent studies by the Brookings Institution suggest that improving toddlers’ native linguistic skills helps them more easily learn English.
Regardless of the arguments for or against HABLA, its premise – that children best learn languages when they are young and that frequent communication is necessary for language acquisition – should be considered in constructing foreign-language education in America.
Most public school students do not begin studying foreign languages until high school, and then it is usually to fulfill a graduation requirement. After all, it is difficult to see any reason to study a foreign language since much of the rest of the world is becoming fluent in English. Read more
Reprinted from Languages Education in Australia newsletter 21 August 2008