The design of the language program at Hamlin grows from the core belief that the purpose of learning a language is communication. Accordingly, we place at the center of our planning the student’s ability to comprehend another language and to actively use it to express herself. We design activities that include all aspects of communication—listening, speaking, writing, reading, and the use of non-verbal modalities. We introduce students to different cultures, showing them that one key aspect of communication involves understanding both one’s own and the other’s cultural norms; we help them to see that their own cultural givens are particular, not universal. We create a safe learning environment where students are comfortable “mucking about” in the language, practicing profusely, taking the risks and making the thousands of mistakes that are essential to eventual mastery. We aim to delight and inspire our students so that they get “hooked” for life on the process of acquiring new languages and understanding new cultures. To this end we incorporate much energy, fun, and humor into the classes; to this end also, we help our students see the relevance and immense importance of language study by helping them build connections--to the communities where the languages are spoken, to the art, music, and history of other cultures, to other languages that they know. Additionally, we aim to empower our students with the range of learning tools they need to succeed, now and in the future, as they work to acquire true communicative competence. Our curriculum is spiral, meaning that throughout the year and each new year, students reinforce and build onto what they have already learned; they deepen their previously-acquired knowledge and skills and they also find the most effective places to integrate new material so that it is well-connected and useable.

In the Lower School, students have French class one or two times a week, meeting for thirty to forty-five minutes per session. In the Middle School, beginning in fifth grade, students may choose to continue with French or they may begin taking Spanish instead. Middle School language classes meet every day for 40 minutes. Graduating eighth graders are ready to take Spanish 2 as ninth graders; about two thirds of the French students place into French 3 as ninth graders, with the rest going into French 2.

Hamlin’s Lower School French program is designed to captivate students’ curiosity about language, take advantage of young learners’ auditory abilities, and lay the groundwork for foreign language acquisition. Students develop a sense of the rhythms and rhymes of French, they build a foundation of basic vocabulary and simple sentence structures, and they form positive associations with the language as they discover cultural habits and events in French speaking communities. The emphasis is on listening and speaking; towards the end of Lower School, students begin more formal reading and writing practice to prepare them for the Middle School program. Some examples of the communicative topics covered are: meeting people; shopping for food; expressing feelings; visiting the doctor; discussing animals. These topics seamlessly integrate functions of language, grammatical structures, and vocabulary.

In the Middle School, we build on the enthusiasm, knowledge, and skills that students have acquired in their early years, whether they continue with French or elect to study Spanish. Our pedagogy and methods of assessment evolve to match the developmental stages of the students as they grow, but the philosophical underpinnings of what we do remain the same and the students experience a strong sense of familiarity in the program as they move on. Students find themselves learning about similar, high-interest topics, only in greater depth, and they find themselves participating in many similar activities—cooperative work, games, personalized speaking opportunities, songs, gestures. The biggest transition for them is the addition of formal, graded assessments such as quizzes and tests; we work hard in the fifth grade year to help them learn how to study and how to take such tests.

Middle School language students learn to understand and to express themselves on a wide variety of topics. Among other things, they convey information about themselves and their own lives (what they like to do, who is in their family, what their house is like); they use transactional language (ordering in a restaurant, asking directions, visiting a doctor); they practice social skills (offering and accepting invitations, inquiring about someone’s day or health, deciding which movie to watch); they express their views on issues of concern to them (the environment, fashion, relationships between adults and children); they tell stories of things that have happened to them in the past and their hopes and plans for the future. Embedded in these linguistic tasks is an enormous range of vocabulary words and grammatical concepts; these are taught in conjunction with the functions of language they best support. Some of the key grammatical structures the students master by the end of their time at Hamlin include the use of: regular and irregular verb forms; reflexive verbs; past, present, and future verb tenses; articles, adjectives, and adverbs; object pronouns; interrogative expressions; negative constructions. Finally, we explore a variety of places where the target language is spoken, looking at cultural values and practices, demographics, arts, geography, economy, and politics.

Students leave Hamlin with a sturdy and deep foundation of knowledge of another language; they are confident, fully aware of what they do know, and they are resourceful, unafraid to improvise in situations that are linguistically challenging. Many go on to study abroad in high school; many choose to take up a third language as well. Our students have at their disposal a personalized, well-honed set of tools for learning another language. They have glimpsed other cultures and had their appetites whetted for further discovery; they have started to de-center their own experience, learning that we all wear particular cultural lenses. We are happy to say that Hamlin girls graduate with strong, well-founded identities as language learners, proud of what they have done and eager to continue their studies.