Last Thursday, Skyline’s Japanese students were sorely missed in the halls as they were busy showing off what they had at a Japanese speech contest. So what is the current situation with Skyline’s foreign language programs as a whole and what are sentiments people have about them?!

Students for the most part seem happy that classes are not focused on vocabulary to a detrimental degree. Senior Japanese student Keith Thompson remarked “The usage of grammar and the knowledge of vocabulary are studied equally in my class. We often have to write essays proving that we know the grammar and it [grammar] is graded more heavily than using a vast array of vocabulary”. French student Emma Hawkins corroborated this viewpoint with “[in French] we definitely do not focus on vocabulary. Most of our projects and lessons are focused on the grammar and we write a lot of essays to practice our writing skills. Vocabulary is what we learn on our own”. The same goes for the more advanced Spanish classes, where teachers have students learn the meaning, context, and usage of vocabulary in novels independently and only discuss things like theme, cultural background, and character symbolization in class.

The excessive use of online translators that comes with an emphasis on vocabulary does not seem to be a problem either. Thompson felt “I don’t find online sources particularly helpful, since they’ll often prove incorrect, but I do find knowledgeable friends helpful. They can explain things well and work as good partners to practice oral fluency with”. Others felt that only online translators that also conjugated verbs were of any value.

Another usual concern that comes with foreign language classes, that teachers will grade oral presentations too subjectively, does not seem like a significant concern at Skyline either. In the words of one senior “I like to be prepared and I think that my grades reflect my preparation”. Thompson revealed that although “I do feel that my teacher grades the oral presentation very subjectively. I find that certain students have a tendency to often get better grades than other students simply because the teacher likes us”, for the most part “the grading is not subjective”.

A more real concern in the field of oral communication is the ability to think in the language instead of having to prepare to be able to communicate in it. Many students have trouble taking the mentally-difficult, but imperative, step of letting go of their inhibitions and just “winging” presentations instead of having to prepare every time. Hawkins expressed “we had a guest speaker (usually a native French speaker) come in and speak French and I could understand 80% of what was being said”. Yet, it is worth noting that if students explicitly told the native speaker they needed the conversation to slow down a bit, the dialogue could probably be conducted with complete understanding for both parties.

Do students feel they will actually use their learning in real life? Hawkins conceded that “I honestly believe if I went to France, I would be too afraid to speak French. I would probably end up speaking English anyway, because most Europeans speak at least a little English”. On the other end of the spectrum, the venerable Senora Knecht led Spanish students on a trip to Peru where they actively put their skills to work in exploring Macchu Picchu, interacting with the locals, and even working their way through a riot from locals angry at the government opening what they believed to be sacred archaeological sites to foreign tourism and investment.