Skip To Main Content

World Languages

WORLD LANGUAGE KEY COMPONENTS

Communication

Real-world communication is purposeful and takes place in a variety of authentic settings that represent what a student will experience in the target cultures. These are the three modes of real-world communication:

• Interpretive: Language users listen, view, and read using knowledge of cultural products, practices, and perspectives.

• Interpersonal: Culturally appropriate listening and speaking, reading and writing, or viewing and signing take place as a shared activity among language users.

• Presentational: Speaking, signing, and writing take place for an audience of listeners, readers, and viewers in culturally appropriate ways.

The Communication Standard uses structures to capture the multiple components of grammar that students must learn to communicate with accuracy. Students must acquire the following:

• Orthography: the writing systems of languages that have them
• Phonology: the sound system (and parameters in ASL)
• Morphology: the rules for word formation
• Syntax: the principles of sentence structure
• Semantics: language-based meaning systems
• Pragmatics: systems for language usage

Cultures

Students must acquire the ability to interact appropriately with target culture bearers to communicate successfully. Culturally appropriate language usage requires an understanding of the relationships between the products and practices of cultures and their underlying perspectives. While acquiring knowledge of products, practices, and perspectives of the target cultures, learners engage in comparisons among their cultures and the target cultures, and also explore how cultures affect each other when they interact in multilingual and multicultural communities.
Connections

Language users address a variety of topics appropriate for their age and range of proficiency that increase their knowledge of numerous areas of the curriculum. As students develop their ability to communicate in the target language and cultures, they are able to more fully address topics that increase in complexity and learn how target-culture bearers understand and address discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary concepts.
 

Structures

Languages vary considerably in the structures that learners use to convey meaning; therefore, the following standards are general in order to apply to all languages. It is expected that the curriculum will feature language-specific structures essential to accurate communication. As students acquire vocabulary in the target language, they grasp the associated concepts and comprehend the structures the language uses to convey meaning. Moreover, students discover patterns in the language system. A language system consists of grammar rules, vocabulary, and elements such as gestures and other forms of nonverbal communication. A language system also includes discourse, whereby speakers learn what to say to whom and when. As they progress along the Language Learning Continuum, students use linguistically and grammatically appropriate structures to comprehend and produce messages. Students identify similarities and differences among the languages they know.

Settings

For students to communicate effectively, they use elements of language appropriate to a given situation. Language conveys meaning best when the setting, or context, in which it is used, is known. This knowledge of context assists students not only in comprehending meaning but also in using language that is culturally appropriate. Context also helps define and clarify the meaning of language that is new to the learner. As students progress along the Language Learning Continuum, they carry out tasks in stage- and age-appropriate situations that reflect the target culture.

For additional information, please visit the California Department of Education website.

SPANISH CLASS DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

DEPARTMENT CHAIR

  Karina Suarez   Teacher

WORLD LANGUAGE TEACHERS

  Isabel Galan   Teacher
  Angel Gonzalez   Teacher
  Kenia Orellana   Teacher
  Nancy Oviedo   Teacher
  Hector Rodriguez   Teacher
  Erica Rojas   Teacher