The Goal
Through years of research, researchers have also taken note of the fact that compared to other language-learning programs, that say, one individual tries later on in life or even in high school or middle school as an elective, children in an immersion program early on in life are much more effective in learning the foreign language (in this case, Spanish). This is not to say that once the program is over the children are fluent in the language, but gives them a head start in the Spanish language. The school’s hope is that once students have graduated grade 6 (the final grade of the school) that they will carry on their already known knowledge of the language into a middle or high school intermediate or secondary course. Their goal is once the students graduate from the Elementary school, they go on to complete Spanish 3, 4, and 5 AP in their secondary schools. By this point the students should be fluent in the language and able to converse with native speakers. They will achieve this goal at Cesar Chavez Elementary by employing Spanish speaking, well qualified and experienced teachers, keeping their standards high, and participating in two-way immersion. Minority speaking students who are part of this two-way immersion program seem to be doing extremely well and if not better than others in other kinds of programs and English speaking schools because their classmates and peers are native speakers and interact with them every single day of the school year.
Why would a parent want to send his or her child to a Spanish immersion school like Cesar Chavez?
Besides the information posted above, compiled here are a few more reasons why parents nowadays are giving Spanish immersion schools like Cesar Chavez Elementary a serious thought:
1.To this day it is in greater demand than ever before for young professionals to be bilingual. If our children of today learn early on a different language, this betters the chances of their success in the future.
2. When children are young, their minds are fresh and new. This is a perfect opportunity to open up and be comfortable with the ideas of diversity. Solid interaction, everyday with a different culture, is a wonderful way of keeping the prejudice ideas and actions away.
3. Neurological researchers have found that the best time to learn or start a new language is before the age of twelve. Before then, the mind has not developed or wired in all of its sounds. If we keep and learn the sounds from a different language before then, our brains will keep them wired in, thus, there is less of a chance that we will forget them.
They are a Spanish school.
Read more about this topic: Cesar Chavez Elementary School
Famous quotes containing the word goal:
“Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.”
—Erich Fromm (1900–1980)