Going Global with Summer Language Camps

In this increasingly small world in which we live, hardly anyone would disagree that being multilingual and multicultural is becoming ever more important. Knowing other languages and understanding other cultures is a necessary skill set for today’s students as they prepare to live and work in the 21st century global economy.

No matter what career students enter, they will be interacting with others around the world on a routine basis and doing business locally with those whose native language is not English. Just take a look at the numbers of native speakers worldwide: Mandarin has 845 million and Spanish 329 million, compared to English’s 328 million.

Learning another language makes career sense, too. Demand for linguists in areas such as technology, law enforcement, intelligence and medicine is soaring.

Yet in the United States, we lag far behind in preparing students for the reality of the global age. Thirty-four states don’t even require a foreign language for high school graduation, whereas in the European Union 100 percent of students learn English (often along with two or three other languages).

In China, English instruction begins by third grade (with proactive parents offering enrolling their children in English classes at age 4 or 5) but in the U.S., when we do offer foreign language classes, it tends to be later (typically eighth grade in Alameda), even though research shows that children are much more capable of learning to speak as a native when exposed to a language at a younger age.

Furthermore, classroom learning tends to focus on memorizing grammar and vocabulary.

For these reasons, language immersion programs for children are becoming increasingly popular.

Essentially, immersion is a way of teaching a second language by using that language to teach other subjects. Research from Georgetown University and the University of Illinois-Chicago show that immersion actually rewires the brain to mimic the brain patterns of native speakers, something that does not happen with traditional classroom learning.

This summer, Alameda and other Bay Area children have the opportunity to participate in language immersion programs in both Mandarin and Spanish provided by the Alameda Education Foundation (AEF). AEF is offering the programs as part of its Enrichment Summer Camp program and is partnering with Language Alive! for Mandarin and Lango for Spanish.

In both camps, students will do typical camping activities — from playing soccer to arts and crafts to science experiments — but all in either Mandarin or Spanish. Lango, the Spanish language camp, also includes taking pretend trips each week to different destinations of Latin America to further expose children to different cultures and points of view.

Darin Ow-Wing, the director of Language Alive!, says immersion learning is effective because “kids can quickly put new words to use in fun activities, fostering a ‘can-do’ attitude toward learning,” rather than being passively desk-bound.”  Ditto from Tanisha Foster, director of Lango: “Campers spend each day moving from one activity to the next, much like they would at any summer camp, but all the while they’re doing it in Spanish.”

Both Ow-Wing and Foster point out that besides offering a competitive edge for children’s futures, learning another language helps students in all academic areas.

“Students who develop two or three languages to a high level tend to achieve higher performances in other academic areas, as well,” said Ow-Wing. Research shows that learning languages helps increase listening ability, memory, creativity and critical thinking — all of which are thinking processes that increase learning in general, no matter what language one speaks.

The full Language Alive! Mandarin Immersion camp is six weeks, with two three-week sessions also available. Lango goes for four weeks, with single-week camp options. Both camps are from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and offer before and after-care for additional fees. Camps are for students in kindergarten through fifth grade and open to both new learners and those who already speak the languages.

AEF is also offering a variety of other enrichment camps this summer in areas such as drama, carpentry, dance, music, writing, soccer, marine science and middle school math. Camps take place at Lincoln Middle School (except soccer, which is at Lincoln Park). Click here for more information on all camps.