Awareness of Language Program
Awareness of Language is a sixth-grade foreign language course which helps students to understand language, why people use language, how language works, and the importance of other languages in today's interdependent world. This course provides opportunities for interdisciplinary study, in particular with the English/Language Arts and World Studies curricula.
The course lays a foundation for a successful foreign language experience.
Students explore verbal and non-verbal communication and gain an appreciation of linguistic and cultural diversity. This course also provides a brief
encounter with two modern foreign languages.
The goals of The Awareness of Language are:
- to lay the foundation for success in future foreign language courses;
- to develop positive attitudes toward linguistic and cultural diversity; and
- to provide students with an understanding of the practical advantages of knowing another language.
The length of the course, to be determined by each school, affects the number of objectives (listed below) to be covered. Upon completion of this course, students will:
- understand the nature and role of oral and written language as a system of human communication;
- identify how people may communicate verbally and non-verbally;
- recognize the diversity among human languages and cultures;
- demonstrate an understanding of key concepts encountered in the study of foreign languages (e.g., adjective agreement, verb conjugation to reflect person, number, and tense; word order; and word families);
- recognize how language and culture influence one another;
- compare and contrast aspects of their own culture with others;
- understand, speak, read, and write Latin words and phrases;
- identify the ways in which Latin has influenced English and other modern languages; and
- speak some simple phrases in selected modern foreign languages.
Contact your school to find out if this course is being offered this year.
Updated October 2, 2006 | Maintained by Paula Peró
