Students face limited language options

BY MARKUS MUKHERJEE AND ETHAN BUTT Staff Reporters

A survey was sent out to all of Sequoia asking what new languages they would like to be offered at Sequoia. Students were also asked about whether or not they would consider taking an IB course on their chosen language, totalling 81 responses. A lot more people chose languages like Russian, Japanese, German, and ASL (American Sign Language) and some more interesting choices like Arabic, Greek and Tagalog. However, 20 out of the original 81 responses said that they wanted to learn Mandarin Chinese as their second language.

“If I took a language outside of school, I feel like Mandarin would be really good,” junior Brandon Kwan said.

A common reason for learning a second language is for communication with others, including family who speak a different language.

“My grandparents speak it and it’d be nice to be able to communicate in their normal language,” Kwan said.

For those who show interest in cuisines all over the world, languages would vbe a useful life skill.

“Also going to restaurants, I’m a big fan of Asian food so even going to Asian restaurants, being able to order in Chinese just would be so much more helpful,” Kwan said.

For students who already know another language other than Spanish or French, they have found it to be a practical life skill. Languages gave students a better way to frequently communicate with people from another country.

“Yes, it is a useful life skill and it’s also cool because you’d speak another language. I go to Taiwan all the time every year. I speak Chinese there all the time and I never speak English when I’m there. So it’s a great life skill. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to talk to my

Preferred Languages: family,” freshman Oona Martin said. Martin also expressed her feelings on no longer taking the second language she is comfortable with. of things we have to take into account when we’re offering languages. It really all comes down to how many students are committed to learning a language for four years” Stout said.

“I’m a little disappointed because I feel like it would be a great opportunity for others to learn more about my culture and my language. It’s also a great opportunity for me to expand my knowledge. I think Chinese being offered as an IB course would not only provide more options for students but also be a gateway to a whole other culture,” Martin said.

Currently, Sequoia allows students to take either Spanish or French as an elective; however, there are plenty more languages that students are considering taking.

If students decide to drop out midway through or the language just has a small amount of people that are interested, it will result in more and more classes with less people. However, she thinks that there are many other approaches to learning languages.

We might have 25 or 30 students who are interested in Mandarin. The question is, do we have 25 or 30 who are interested in taking it the whole four years.

Kristin Stout, Instructional Vice Principal

“Spanish is definitely the most popular language to learn, which makes sense because of where we live and the prevalence of Spanish, and then French is the next one that students are interested in,” Kristin Stout, instructional vice principal, said.

According to publicschoolreview.com, 56% of students at Sequoia are Hispanic, so it’s important for other students to also learn about a language and culture that some people are more familiar with.

She also mentioned how challenging it would be to offer more languages at Sequoia. If students decide to drop out midway through or the language just has a small amount of people that are interested, it will result in more and more classes with less people.

“I think it would be very complicated to actually put it into practice. There’s a couple

“One is there can be four or five levels to a language. So we might have 25 or 30 students who are interested in Mandarin. The question is, do we have twenty five or thirty who are interested in taking it the whole four years? Is it going to go up or is it going to drop to 15, 10, 5, and it’s hard for me to run a class of five students,” Stout said.

Students are able to take matters into their own hands and use outside resources as a benefit to learning not only common languages, but also more unique languages. Not a lot of people need to know sign language. Outside resources can allow students to take a more personalized and student-driven approach to learning, since the school won’t require an entire IB course dedicated to teaching that one specific language.

“We also have some students who take sign language through the community college, because of spoken language, maybe they have a learning difference or disability,” Stout said. “I think what’s so great now is the prevalence of different ways to learn languages.”