Acquiring new languages provides us with opportunities to travel, to work in international fields, and to communicate with speakers of other languages. By learning a language, we place value on the practices, products and perspectives of the people in the cultures where that language is spoken. We connect what we learn in our language classes to what we learn in our social studies and science courses and we compare our own lives to the lives of people in the target cultures we study. Ultimately, our goal is to use the language outside of the classroom in authentic situations to benefit ourselves and others.

New York State requires the study of a World Language (WL). All students must therefore earn 1 WL credit to be eligible for a high school diploma. One way to earn an Advanced Regents Diploma is for students to earn a total of 3 credits in the same WL and pass (with a score of 65 or better) the World Language Checkpoint B Examination for that language. 9th graders may also register for a second World Language in addition to the language they learned in middle school.