World Languages
The learning environment at Hyla with a low student-teacher ratio creates an ideal language lab where students:
- Have a lot of opportunity to practice speaking, speaking, speaking.
- Learn Spanish in a proficiency-oriented curriculum focused on what students can do with grammar, not merely grammar itself, with project-based units.
- Experience culture as a catalyst for language learning.
As a core class at Hyla, students take Spanish for four years. We believe language learning matters because it:
- Improves cognitive function across all disciplines
- Expands personal and professional horizons
- Brings an essential dimension to diversity education
Program goals:
- To achieve intermediate level language proficiency in alignment with ACTFL standards
- To become cultural ambassadors who reach across cultural differences, listen to other perspectives, and develop an open mind toward new experiences.
Spanish highlights
Guatemala is our cultural snapshot for Unit 3, providing us with a rich and colorful background against which to practice our vocabulary and grammar. Through listening activities designed to practice interpretative skills, we’ve had the chance to touch upon the country’s fascinating Mayan heritage, as well as it’s volcano-laden landscape, the stunning colonial city of Antigua, and Latin America’s deepest lake, Lago de Atitlán. One lesson that especially resonated with students this week was our deeper dive into Spanish accent marks. While high school Spanish students typically learn to memorize where accents go, they aren't always taught why they occur in certain words but not others. Our class showed genuine excitement to be equipped with the tools to understand this sometimes irksome but important linguistic pattern that tends to plague students (and even native speakers) into college and later life. The weeks ahead will see us grow our marketplace, shopping, and garment vocabulary as we work towards our overarching unit goal: to be able to describe and compare clothing and footwear and to communicate in shopping situations. We will need to add more grammatical tools to the toolbox and towards this end, will be studying certain irregular present tense verbs, stem changing verbs, and gustar in the context of shopping situations and transactions.
Course Progression
In every World Languages class taught at Hyla, students have the option to pursue the core pathway (C) or the advanced option (A). Students may also take additional World Languages classes as Electives through Global Online Academy and One Schoolhouse.
Class |
Themes |
Skills |
Sample Assignments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish 100/101 | • Family, identity, life, interests, hobbies • Cultural snapshots of Hispanic countries: Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Peru |
Basic interpretation and description, memorized performance (C); spontaneous performance, creating with language, sentence discourse (A) |
• Family tree |
| Spanish 200/201 | • Community life, social activities, traveling abroad • Cultural snapshots of broader regions: Central America, the Antilles, the Southern Cone |
Describing in detail, creating with language, linking sentences together, asking and answering questions, spontaneous performance, completing transactions (C); advanced grammatical concepts, handling transactions with complications (A) | • Designing a cultural board game • Conducting a Spanish language tour of your community • Composing a descriptive travel research project |
| Spanish 300/301 | • Citizenship, sustainability, social justice • Social life, health, ecology, history and politics in the Spanish speaking world |
Creating with language, paragraph discourse, handling complications, narrating (C); hypotheticals, expressing and defending opinions (A) | • Performing a skit • Writing a weekly journal • Collaborate in a group project on ecological issues in Latin America |
| Spanish 400/401 | Hispanic literature, film, food, music, and culture; cultural humility; cultural ambassadorship | Paragraph discourse, narrating, hypotheticals, expressing and defending opinions (C); AP exam-related review and preparation (A) | • Reporting on current events in Spain or Latin America • Deliver an ambassador's speech • Reading a short novel in Spanish • Lead a class discussion on a cultural topic • Writing and/or performing a Spanish song |
Language learning is, by nature, experiential, and students should have every opportunity to practice their skills both inside and outside the classroom in both simulated and real-life contexts. Creative curriculum, small classroom sizes, and a school mission that supports both the moral and practical virtues of bilingualism are vital to maximizing student potential. The Hyla environment couldn't be more ideal.Tom Neal, Upper School World Languages Teacher