Thursday, January 26, 2006

School System Adds Arabic and Chinese

Click on the title of this post to go to an interesting article from connectionnewspapers.com about Arabic for middle and high schoolers. This is one of the keys to freeing the US from its monolingualism: get the kids to start learning foreign languages when they are younger so that when they grow up - the foreign languages aren't quite so foreign and seemingly unlearnable. This is one of the hot topics in education circles these days: How to get foreign language learning included the national standard exams.

Does your area offer any k-12 Arabic programs or classes?

Jeremy

1 Comments:

At 14:13, Blogger KHodges said...

I realize this is an old post, but I just came across this site today.

I was convinced that I would be able to find a Russian-teaching job Fall 2008 (or several jobs, since any Russian teaching position would only be part-time) here in Salt Lake area, but as you pointed out, Mandarin Chinese and Arabic are more critical than Russian right now. So I'm learning Arabic and getting a masters in Russian and Arabic teaching. And in several years, hopefully I will then be sought as a teacher either here or elsewhere instead of practically begging "Please, Russian would be a great addition to your school's program!"

I agree 100% that we must break the prided American monolingualism and teach foreign/world languages as early as possible. I'm psyched that funding has recently been approved for the opening of dual immersion schools here (Spanish, French, Navajo, and Mandarin Chinese). America needs to shifts its priority to learning various languages and cultures as you expressed - languages of peace.

Thanks for this blog. It's wonderful to come across.

 

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