This paper addresses the issue of integrating students with special needs into foreign language programs in the early childhood years. A partnership between a university and a charter school in central Florida began as a result of parent and teacher interest in providing a foreign language program for its prekindergarten students. Since 2014,…

The paper examines the recent national programme of English language instruction in the Mexican public primary schools, called the "Programa Nacional de Inglés en Educación Básica" (PNIEB). The programme, initiated in 2009 by the Ministry of Education as part of the national curriculum, represents the largest expansion of English…

Teachers and students can have ambitious educational goals, including critical reflection on the world around them, both that which is "home" and that which is "foreign." The environmental questions which face us all can be part of the elementary school curriculum, and the Foreign Language Elementary School (FLES) contribution…

Among the reported proven positive results of early world Language (WL) study are improved cognitive abilities and "higher achievement test scores in reading and math" (Stewart: 11), which are expected student performance outcomes for the Common Core Standards. The future viability of Foreign Language in Elementary Schools (FLES)…

Educators have generally believed that foreign language instruction should begin in kindergarten or earlier to promote optimum oral language development (e.g., Abbott, 1998; Curtain & Dahlberg, 2010; Rhodes & Pufahl, 2010; Rosenbusch, 1991; Swender & Duncan, 1998). This article describes two Spanish programs in the Westport…

Project addresses the challenge of providing Spanish instruction in small, rural, public, and private schools in Nebraska and Iowa. The project added Spanish to the curriculum by providing extensive support in technology hardware and software to non-Spanish-speaking classroom teachers who reinforce weekly Spanish classes taught by non-certified…

The first section of this report presents six articles describing FLES techniques. Harriet Barnett discusses the use in FLES of individualized teaching techniques that are in popular use in other subject areas. Yvonne Le Manchec encourages early second language instruction through the use of educational situations in which the child will be…

This booklet, based on a nationwide study of elementary school foreign language programs, addresses the following topics: (1) why students should learn a foreign language; (2) information that may help persons select and initiate a specific type of program; and (3) a detailed description of three elementary school approaches used in the country…

This report describes the background, aim and design of the EPAL (English in the elementary school) project in Sweden. As background to the project, a survey is included of the increasingly important position of teaching English from the 1940's through the great school reforms of the 50's and 60's. Developments in foreign language teaching in the…

The two-part document provides background information on ethnic heritage and language schools (EHALS) in the United States as well as results of a survey and a directory of these schools in Cleveland, Ohio. Part I contains a rationale for community language schools, traces their evolution from the colonial period to the present, and summarizes the…

The status of foreign language in the elementary school (FLES) is discussed in an attempt to dispell the myth that there are few successful FLES programs in the U.S. Results of an eight-state survey show that 18% of the responding elementary schools report that they do teach foreign language. Descriptions of eighteen innovative programs confirm…