Fluent Fun Children Get A Jump On Learning Foreign Languages

Learning Spanish was a picnic this week for some Central Valley elementary students.

Nine children gathered in a circle around Spanish instructor Amy Rogers as she pulled plastic tableware and blue and white checkered napkins out of a picnic basket, calling out the words in Spanish. They repeated them, holding up each item as she called it out.

The youngsters, in kindergarten through third grade, come to Sunrise Elementary School an hour early every Thursday to study Spanish.

They are part of a new program, run by an independent company, that introduces young children to foreign languages.

About 70 CV elementary schoolchildren are studying French, Japanese and Spanish before school.

Housed at Sunrise Elementary, the language program is open to any CV children. The school district provides the room. A non-profit company, International Educational Systems, supplies the teachers and materials, which is why students pay tuition for the language classes.

Why would 70 youngsters willingly go to school an hour early?

“I really like it,” said 10-year-old Ben Chaikin, who goes to French class every Tuesday at 7:45 a.m. “Mostly we practice new words.”

This is the fifth-grader’s first time taking a foreign language. “I’d like to take German, too,” Ben said. The IES program may offer German in the future, according to director Erin Black.

“The way they teach it, it’s pretty easy,” Ben said of learning French.

His teacher, Roseanne Day, explained that the classes aren’t book work and grammar. Instead, children learn through singing songs and playing games.

They do have books and tapes they can take home, but they don’t have homework, Day said.

“I think it works because it’s fun,” said Day, who got her teaching degree from Eastern Washington University in 1987. She doesn’t have discipline problems with students because they aren’t asked to sit still and be quiet. “They have to get up and move around.”

During Thursday’s Spanish class, Rogers certainly had the children moving.

They took turns hiding a flower or picnic item, then said “hot” or “cold” in Spanish while someone searched for it.

They chased each other in a modified game of “Duck, Duck, Goose.” Monica “Susana” (her Spanish name) Trantow tapped her classmates on the head saying “tenedor” (fork), then ran when she tapped another girl and said “servilleta,” or “napkin.”

The girls and boys stood up, sat down, ran in a circle and stopped during a Spanish version of the game Simon Says.

The Parent-Teacher Organization at Sunrise looked into the language classes last year and liked what it saw.

“We were kind of hoping to fill one class,” said Tere von Marbod, Sunrise vice principal and a member of the school district’s language committee. Instead, more than 70 children signed up. Some had to be turned away.

The large-group classes (18-23 students) of Spanish and French are full, while small-group classes (7-15 students) of Spanish and Japanese have more space. New students will not be accepted after this month because the children already have been studying since October, Black said. Large-group instruction costs $24 a month, while small-group instruction costs $36 a month.

Black said the Sunrise response was phenomenal. A Japanese program at a Nine Mile Falls school last year was discontinued because there wasn’t interest to fill one class. IES teaches four at Sunrise. It also operates a large program in Coeur d’Alene, Black said.

The rationale for exposing children to foreign languages early is that they learn more easily. If they formally study a language later, they’re more likely to become fluent, according to research cited by the IES program.

“We know that children acquire languages better at an early age,” von Marbod said.

“That’s the best time to learn a different language,” Black said. “Young children in that age group are better able to imitate sounds.”

Veronica Love agrees. Her daughter, Rebecca, 7, and son Robert, 9, are in the French class.

“I think it’s easier for them than it is me,” said Love, who listens to her children’s French tapes at home. Even her 3-year-old is picking up a few French words.

The Central Valley district agrees that if children are going to be fluent in another language, they need to start learning early, said Geoff Praeger, district liaison for the language committee. The state Commission on Student Learning is considering a requirement that all high school graduates be able to speak two languages.

“Our frustration, of course, is funding,” Praeger said. The district doesn’t have the money to teach other languages at the elementary level. In addition, elementary teachers already are required to teach so many other things that it would be tough to fit in a foreign language, von Marbod said.

The IES classes “were like an alternative way to offer that,” von Marbod said.

Ben Chaikin’s father, John, said the French classes are worth the cost.

“If he’s getting things out of it, I think it’s worthwhile.”