Learning Spanish Part One: The Problems And Solutions

It is not an exaggeration to declare that the United States of America could be the only country in the world where one can graduate from high school and even college without taking one course of foreign language study. Of those few schools which still require their students to take a foreign language to graduate, the one or two years of foreign language study is woefully inadequate for developing a high degree of spoken fluency. As America crossed into the 21st century, a bilingual rate of less than 9% prevailed. That rate is still true in 2005.

As early as 1979, a Presidential Commission on Foreign Languages revealed that,

Americans incompetence in foreign language is nothing short of scandalous

Some 26 years later, that scandal is still raging in America.

Second language acquisition in the public school system has always suffered from the prevailing political and educational ideology of the times. During the first 100 years of Americas history, America was a multilingual societya fact almost too hard to believe in light of todays bilingual deficit. Although xenophobic tendencies were always hiding in a bush somewhere ready to jump out, there were...