At tonight’s Council Bluffs Community School District’s Board of Education meeting, four Abraham Lincoln High School students will present information on the importance of learning a foreign language. Megan Frush, a junior, Jessica Hipnar, a freshman, Daniel Cano-Pargas, a sophomore, and Thanh Nguyen, a junior, have been working together on a project for a sociology class on the importance of teaching a foreign language early in life because it improve a child’s future both culturally and academically, as well as having an effect on the community.
The data the students collected favor a greater focus on foreign language development, Hipnar said.
“We all feel strongly that a foreign language should be taught in every grade starting in elementary school and continuing all through high school,” Hipnar said. “Through some of our research, we found that in order for an individual to become fluent in a foreign language, they really need to start learning the language in their early years, which is a major reason behind starting it in the elementary schools.”
Together, the group selected several issues in the Council Bluffs Community School District they would like to change.
According to Hipnar, the district currently only offers a foreign language at College View Elementary School and the group will propose to the board that they would “like to eventually see a foreign language curriculum being taught in all of the elementary schools.”
Second, the group discovered that the foreign language class taught in the middle schools is only an introductory class – with students only receiving nine weeks of foreign language curriculum. Additionally, foreign language classes in middle schools have limited availability.
See: South Westiowa News
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