Language is a major academic area with each course earning six credits per year. French, Spanish, German, and Latin are offered as regularly scheduled courses. Ancient Greek, Italian, and beginning Japanese may be offered for independent study credit, depending upon teacher availability and student interest.

Students who are planning education beyond high school are strongly urged to study German, Latin, French, Spanish, or a combination of these languages. Students wishing to derive maximum benefit from language study and who wish to gain entrance to the most selective universities should follow the longest possible sequence.

All four-year state colleges and universities in Massachusetts require a minimum of two years of high school foreign language study or the equivalent for entrance. Students may choose any of the language offerings to fulfill this requirement. In addition, many colleges and universities nationwide have similar entrance requirements as well as a requirement of language study or proficiency for graduation. Some institutions give college credit or exempt students from degree requirements in languages for demonstrated proficiency in high school courses.

Language courses stress a balanced approach in which the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing are developed. While English may be necessary on occasion, French, German, or Spanish is the language of instruction in these courses. Latin courses also deal with oral aspects of the language, but greater stress is on reading, grammar, and vocabulary development. Students of French, German, and Spanish utilize the language laboratory on a regular basis and are encouraged to use this facility after school or during free time. In some courses, students use the Macintosh computer lab to develop writing and communications skills. In most courses, audio tapes and videotapes presenting authentic culture and language provide the basis for listening comprehension practice and role-playing activities.

Students are expected to develop the skills of understanding modern world languages spoken at normal speed and of speaking these languages, within the confines of vocabulary and structures studied. Progress in oral skills greatly affects a student’s grade and is measured in terms of proficiency guidelines for each course.

Evaluation of student achievement varies with the course. Due to the emphasis on oral proficiency development in modern languages, class participation, daily assignments, and listening/speaking work may count as a majority of a student’s grade, especially in the first two years. Because of the cumulative nature of foreign language acquisition, it is imperative that the student aim for complete mastery of structures and vocabulary. Students are expected to manifest a high degree of accuracy at each of the developmental stages of the course.

Students may continue in a sequential course with a C- or above; however, a grade of * B or better is recommended when passing into level 1 courses, especially at the Advanced Placement level. A grade in the D range, while still considered passing, requires serious remediation during the summer and the passing of an examination to be administered before the start of the next school year. This examination must be passed with a C- or better for a student to be allowed to enter the next year of study in the sequence.

Students wishing to prepare for the Advanced Placement Examination should take LEVEL 1 courses through the senior year for maximum benefit. Students wishing to prepare for the Achievement Test may take either LEVEL 1 or 2 courses, but they should be in at least a fourth-year course to ensure that they have covered sufficient material for the test.

All courses are full year, 6 credit courses.

Years One and Two of Study

In introductory courses, comprising years one and two of study in the high school, students master certain basic vocabulary, syntactic and morphological structures, and aspects of culture and civilization in order to be properly prepared for and successful in subsequent years of advanced language study. These elements are essential and held in common. Students need to be in classes that will build their confidence, allow them to attain an adequate degree of proficiency, be encouraged to experiment, practice unfamiliar concepts and words, and to gain sufficient practice in a learning environment reflective of the greater community in which the languages are spoken. In such an environment students will have the best opportunity to learn and decide their goals for continued study in the languages they have chosen. Since language instruction will be at the highest level of curriculum, all students will receive level 1 credit for years 1 and 2.

French 1 and 2, German 1 and 2, Spanish 1 and 2

These languages in these years are open to all students in grades 9 to 12. Each provides an introduction to the language and culture. Students in all languages are heterogeneously grouped.

Speaking: All modern languages taught in the Wellesley Public Schools, are conducted exclusively in the target language. Students learn to engage in simple conversations in class, respond to questions posed by the teacher and classmates as well as record monologues in the language lab.

Listening: Since the learning of correct pronunciation is essential for achieving proficiency, students will hear the target language spoken by native speakers from various countries and regions through recorded materials (CDs, videos, CD-ROMs and music), and through their teacher and peers.

Reading: Students are expected to learn and retain vocabulary and grammatical structures presented in the textbook as well as understand content. Reading materials will mainly come from the textbook, but may include ancillary materials as well.
Writing: Students are expected to write coherent sentences, paragraphs, short essays and dialogues using the vocabulary and grammatical concepts presented in their textbook.

Culture: The courses concentrate on the cultures of countries where the languages are spoken as the official language of the country and in countries and regions where it is spoken by a large number of native speakers. Readings in the text and ancillary materials (music and videos), as well as anecdotes that a teacher might share provide a student with insights to the mosaic that is the essential culture of the speakers of the language being studied.

In the second year of study students may be required to produce individual reports/projects or to independently complete one or two outside reading selections per year. By the end of this course in French, German and Spanish, students are expected to demonstrate strong listening and reading comprehension skills within the range of contexts studied during the year. They should also be able to explain, describe and narrate orally in complete sentences in past, present and future tenses. Their writing must communicate clearly and show synthesis of the verb forms, tenses, major grammatical concepts, and a strong control of vocabulary studied since the first year.

Latin 1 and 2

Latin students are engaged in the essential grammatical concepts of Classical Latin as written and spoken during the first century B.C.E. and are exposed to the major cultural and historical events of this most tumultuous and important segment of Roman history. This is accomplished through a clever presentation of a reconstructed life of the Roman lyric poet known as Horace. As they progress through the course, students are expected to demonstrate the understanding and application of linguistic concepts, derivatives and root words through exact translations (Latin to English and English to Latin) in an uncoached environment within the cultural and historical contexts studied.

In the second year of Latin, the elements of the writings of Caesar and the poetry of Catullus, Horace and Ovid are studied from historical and literary perspectives. Reading and translation tasks become more sophisticated, and students are expected to demonstrate control and application of the ever-widening range of grammatical forms and concepts studied during the course.

Leveled offering begin in the third year of foreign language study. At this point we hope that students will be self-selecting in their choices of courses for continuation. In the main, students who choose level 1 should expect to engage in language-learning activities that will prepare them to take the advanced placement examinations in the modern languages, and to do ever more advanced reading of complicated texts and literary analysis in Latin.