Date: Fri 27-Aug-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: JEFF

Quick Words:

schools-language-Anders

Full Text:

Rethinking Foreign Language Teaching-- Newtown Resident Researches

Language Acquisition

(with photo)

BY JEFF WHITE

For Newtown resident M. Barrett Anders, the grant she received from the French

government to study language acquisition in children this summer provided an

opportunity to solidify many of her beliefs concerning the relationship of

young students and foreign languages.

"The idea was to almost have a seminar, sort of a workshop idea of language

teachers from all over the world," Mrs Anders said in a recent interview. "It

was sort of a UN approach to education, actually discussing how to be more

effective in teaching foreign language to younger children."

"It was a very successful idea," she added.

As a 15-year teacher at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private

international school in Greenwich, Mrs Anders has struggled through the years

with the way American schools teach foreign language.

"Foreign language has always been extracurricular [in schools]," she

explained. "You might need it for college, great if you do. Spanish might be

important because we're close to Mexico, so there might be that need there,

but it's very tangential, it's very nebulous."

During her research in France, Mrs Anders joined language teachers from China,

Romania, Guinea Bissau and Portugal, among other countries. It was in these

instructors' experiences with teaching English in their native countries that

stark contrasts were highlighted between how other countries deal with

teaching a foreign language and the US method.

In most of these countries, explained Mrs Anders, students are expected to

learn English by the time they are 12, "and that is the way it is." This is,

she went on, not counting the learning of French or other foreign languages.

In many ways, Mrs Anders is a product of the European method of language

expectations. "I had the opportunity as a child to live overseas with my

parents, and I learned French," she recalled. "However, I didn't appreciate it

at the time. I learned it because I was in an international school and the

expectation was just to do it."

When living in Germany, she took advantage of the German public schools by

immersing her children, who were both under 10 yeas old, in them. Inside of

six months, they were functional in German. When her family returned to the

US, German was not offered largely in public schools. So her children took up

French, but were not nearly as proficient as they were in German.

"They can write French, they can read French, but they can't speak French. Not

well, at least."

The problem for Mrs Anders, who besides living in Germany has lived and worked

in Portugal and France, rests in the methods that public schools use when

teaching foreign languages. "I want to be careful, because it sounds like an

indictment that our programs are terrible. Not necessarily," she explained.

"It's that we teach language to be able to write it and decipher it. We teach

it like a science. Teachers do not necessarily have to be able to speak well."

During the daily lectures, presentations and activities of the research

conference, Mrs Anders met Karen Morris, a Massachusetts pioneer in foreign

language immersion.

For the past several years, Mrs Morris has run a successful immersion program

in Holliston. She translated the entire elementary curriculum of the town into

French, and students enrolled in her school specifically to take classes in

math, science, social studies and language arts conducted in French. The

success of the program rests in the students' consistent performance on

standardized tests, and most students are almost fluent in French.

"I think the only effective way to teach language is through this immersion

approach," Mrs Anders said. "If you want to have a child to grow up and by age

12 be able to speak and function in another language, the only way to do that

is through immersion."

Mrs Anders' long-held belief that the current methods of teaching foreign

languages are problematic has been echoed in various publications over the

past few years.

A 1998 cover story in US News and World Report maintained that "children who

do not learn a language by puberty will never be fluent in any tongue." The

article went on to suggest, "Schools might rethink the practice of waiting to

teach foreign languages until kids are nearly grown and the window on native

command of a second language is almost shut."

A typical day for Mrs Anders at the program included classes in methodology,

French as a second language at the elementary level, and discussing French

writers and educators. Teachers also participated in linguistic games that can

be played with students.

The seminar did not focus solely on the French language, though it was the

common language used by the participants.

From her own personal research, and the research she performed with her grant,

Mrs Anders plans to write a book. The title of the book is tentatively I've

Spent Five Years in High School French and I Can't Speak a Word.

"In my book I'm going to be looking at how we can make it a little bit easier

for communities to actually implement immersion programs if they want them,"

she said.

Mrs Anders would also like to get her PhD. She is currently looking at Yale's

neurolinguistics program, which is the study of how a child learns a foreign

language.

"In order to validate the study of foreign language, I think Americans need to

have a good reason, and we don't have the same reasons as other countries need

English," she explained. "So maybe this neurolinguistics data and scientific

logic might make us feel that there is a good reason to learn [a language]

when they're young."

Mrs Anders plans to take a leave of absence from teaching in order to

concentrate on her research, as well as her consulting practice, Passepartout

Consulting. She offers her services in K-6 curriculum planning, human resource

referral and advocacy of the benefits of a second language.

"I don't want to ever create the impression that I think our system is

terrible, but it's a matter of fact that we approach foreign language in this

country as a scientific subject, and just meeting a certain level of ability

and skills, and that's fine," she said. "But it's just a little too bad."