Global Preparedness

Second Language Fluency

One of the goals of Avenues: The World School is to have every graduate achieve real proficiency in a second language by graduation. For many people around the globe, this degree of language proficiency is taken for granted. For students in the United States, it is much less common.

As citizens of a rapidly shrinking world, Avenues graduates will need the capacity to establish relationships of trust with people from all over the world. Trust grows much faster when people can communicate and understand each other easily. Proficiency in a second language is fundamental to the ability to be a truly global citizen.

Thus beginning in the Early Learning Center, Avenues exposes children to both Spanish and Chinese, and going forward through the Lower, Middle and Upper schools, each student will work towards proficiency in one of these languages. In the Upper School, students who have demonstrated proficiency in either Spanish or Chinese may continue that study or choose to add another language to their studies by following a supervised course of independent study in a wide variety of other languages. As second language proficiency clearly enhances one’s ability to learn a third language, Avenues expects a number of its Upper School students to have attained proficiency in three languages prior to graduation.

A description of our immersion process, along with a chart of some language considerations for Chinese and Spanish, may be found here.

http://www.avenues.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Immersion1.pdf

Language teachers know immersion in a new language is the fastest path to language acquisition. The easiest way to gain an immersion experience is through travel, and thus Avenues will offer an extensive program of summer travel programs beginning with China in the summer of 2013.

As Avenues develops campuses in other countries, travel to these campuses and collaborative work between campuses, supported by 21st century telecommunications, will be another pathway to immersion. On every campus, faculty will work to create immersion settings—language clubs, language tables in the dining room, plays presented in different languages—all designed to give students the chance to immerse themselves in the language experience.

Upon graduation, Avenues students will truly be on the path to global citizenship.