Languages
By Madison Black and Kara Larsen
Here at SJHS, students have classes offered to speak different languages! We have two different languages , Chinese and Spanish are available for students. Mr. Beebe and Ms. Edman are the dos teachers that teach Spanish. Ms. George is the teacher of the Chinese Immersion class.
Gibson Condie is a student who is in Chinese immersion. In this class you are not allowed to speak English and in order to get into the class you need to take seven years of Chinese in advance. A good learning process is learning the basics and then building off of that. An easy way of memorizing the Chinese characters is thinking of them as what they mean. It would also be good to learn if you went to a foreign country where they spoke the language.
Mckay Hillstead took Chinese Immersion because he thought it would be a fun experience and a good business opportunity. The most effective way of learning for Mckay is simply paying attention. Mia Montgomery also says that a good way of learning this language is starting out young. She says its a cool language to learn. Its also one of the top 10 most spoken languages.
The Spanish Immersion class putting on their plays
The Spanish Immersion classes is taught by Ms. Edman. Spanish is the second most-spoken language, with roughly 437 million world-wide speakers. Speaking Spanish opens up a new world of opportunities culturally and in a business situation. Ms. Edman says that the reason that she wanted to teach Spanish is because she loves her culture and her language and she wants to share that love through teaching.
One of the challenges of learning a new language, particularly Spanish is that some students don't have enough exposure to it outside of class. Emma Payne, an eighth grader who is in Spanish Immersion says that hardest part for her was speaking the language itself. "It's easy to read,... but saying it is weird."
Spanish is not a language that can be learned overnight. It takes a lot of different strategies to learn a language completely and be able to fluently speak it. Ms. Edman says that the best way to learn in her opinion is to just be immersed in the language and exposed to it all the time. It also helps to be able to follow along by speaking and trying to pronounce the words as they go along.
The language classes at SJHS are amazing and the students have a good time broadening their knowledge of languages. The students are lucky to be able to learn and be given the resources that they need to have to get better.