General Romanic language as a high school or junior college course

Abstract

Many high schools offer two years of Spanish, or in normal times two years of French, with fairly large classes in each of the two years. The same holds true for classes in the first two years of Latin. The perplexing problem comes in the third year. There are not generally enough students to justify third year Spanish, third year French, nor third year Latin. Yet the aggregate number of these students is considerable, and they are almost invariably good language students-just the ones who should help America move up from her traditional place at the foot of the language class. If these language-gifted students wait until they reach the junior college (if their community has a junior college) they find the same situation: too few students in any one of these languages to warrant a teaching staff for each branch of this triple-headed subject. For three years the writer has conducted at Peabody College a one-year course in General Romanic Language to which are admitted side by side in the same class students who have had two years of Latin, or two years of Spanish, or two of French. The results seem to justify considering this course as a feasible solution for the modern language problem as it exists in many schools. The experience in this fusion course has revealed that good language students with two years of either Spanish, French, or Latin can work advantageously in the same General Romanic class, and that by the end of the year the members of the class may have a very useful reading ability in all four languages of the Romanic group: Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian. In addition, as will be shown later, those who have had no Latin will have gained a very useful and culturally valuable introduction to Latin. By a reading knowledge in these four Romanic languages, we mean that the students can read (and in normal times will have read) slowly but with practical speed letters in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian, received from Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian young people through international student-correspondence. We mean further that these students, with dictionary, can read Romanic language newspapers and non-technical journals with a speed that can be called reading-approaching one-half the speed of careful English reading.