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During their weekly Spanish classes, students use songs and silly dances to gain exposure to the language and cultures of the Spanish-speaking world.
Red Cedar is one of four county elementary schools that offer Spanish instruction. The others are Broad River, Hilton Head Island International Baccalaureate and Bluffton. The Beaufort County Board of Education voted last month to encourage all elementary school principals to follow suit.
All county high schools and middle schools offer foreign language classes.
Elementary school principals will try to include foreign language courses in their related arts offerings without adding staff or increasing the district's budget, superintendent Valerie Truesdale said.
Elementary schools are required by the state to offer art, music and physical education. Most offer additional related arts classes, such as technology, dance and drama. Because schools are staffed on a per-pupil basis, it's easier for larger schools to offer a wider variety of related arts courses, Truesdale said.
"For a small school, having foreign language is going to be a challenge," she said.
Sean Alford, the district's instructional services chief, said he will meet with elementary school principals in December to gauge interest in making room for foreign language instruction. In most cases, that would mean eliminating or cutting back another related arts class.
"If we do it within our existing staff, something else is going to have to go," he said.
Why teach foreign language early?School board member Michael Rivers said the school district's job is to prepare students to compete in a global society. Failing to expose them to foreign languages -- particularly Spanish -- would put them at a disadvantage, he said.
"It's almost, in my opinion, educational neglect," said Rivers, who introduced the issue of elementary school foreign language programs to the school board.
Clemson University professor Constancio Nakuma, who has studied foreign-language acquisition, said the younger a person starts learning a language, the better.
Research shows those who start as children have the best chance of developing native-like pronunciation, Nakuma said. A person's ability to learn a foreign language and develop correct pronunciation declines after puberty, he added.
"The findings from linguists suggest the earlier you learn a foreign language, the more proficient you're likely to be," Nakuma said. "Introducing Spanish at the elementary schools can only be a good thing."
Is weekly instruction enough?
Some researchers say offering foreign language instruction only once a week will not give students sufficient time to develop useful conversational skills. Others say any exposure is a step in the right direction.
Students studying Spanish for one hour a week would be limited to learning common expressions and a little bit about the culture of the Spanish-speaking world, one researcher said.
"You might learn a song; you might learn the numbers one to 10, but that's not really learning the language," said Elaine Tarone, director for the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition at the University of Minnesota. She said consistent, daily instruction would be required to develop any level of proficiency.
Others say that at the elementary level, any exposure is better than nothing.
"The fact that they're putting in any program is great," said Marty Abbott, director of education at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. "The kids will get something out of it."
At county schools that now offer Spanish classes, students study the language for 45 to 60 minutes once every five to seven days, said district administrator Sarah Owen. Owen said she is not aware of any districtwide analysis to compare the performance of students who started taking Spanish in elementary school to their peers who started later.
Although some critics might say students do nothing more than play games in a weekly language class, Spanish teacher Marty Izaguirre says her students will leave the school with the ability to read, write and speak simple Spanish if they take the class from the beginning of elementary school through fifth grade.
"We do play games and sing songs, but we also do specific grammar instruction," said Izaguirre, who teaches at Red Cedar Elementary. "We just do it in a fun way."
Spanish teacher Jennie Pruehs, who taught at H.E. McCracken Middle School before transferring to Red Cedar, said exposing students to the language in elementary school lays a foundation for the consistent instruction they will receive in middle and high school.
"If kids already know the days of the week, the colors, you can start putting nouns and adjectives together right away in middle school," she said.
By the numbers:
• 15 percent of public elementary schools in the United States offer foreign language
• 51 percent of private elementary schools in the United States offer foreign language
• 22 percent of elementary schools in South Carolina offer foreign language
Source: Beaufort County School District
