Language education evolved from Greek and Latin lessons designed to get you I to college which required them because in the rennesance reading classical texts was important and the ability to was essential and it persisted for hundreds of years. Because of this speaking wasn’t a part if the pedagogy and is kinda tacked on in modern language ed
I’m not sure how much of this has changed since I was a kid, but when I was in high school we had 4 years of Spanish and French, but only one year of either one was mandatory. Most kids in my school ended up just taking a year of Spanish as a freshman, and only those who actually wanted to learn another language elected for the remaining years.
Every school I know of has four years of either French or Spanish.
Yeah, but it’s rote memorization. It’s not immersive usage. So almost no American students retain anything from those years of study.
Language education evolved from Greek and Latin lessons designed to get you I to college which required them because in the rennesance reading classical texts was important and the ability to was essential and it persisted for hundreds of years. Because of this speaking wasn’t a part if the pedagogy and is kinda tacked on in modern language ed
I’m not sure how much of this has changed since I was a kid, but when I was in high school we had 4 years of Spanish and French, but only one year of either one was mandatory. Most kids in my school ended up just taking a year of Spanish as a freshman, and only those who actually wanted to learn another language elected for the remaining years.
I’ve never known a school that requires 4 years to graduate.