Bristol Consolidated School students in grades 3-7 are learning foreign language skills in a unique program designed to provide instruction on a shoestring budget.
As many as 24 students are participating in a pilot program using Rosetta Stone software.
Rosetta Stone costs $89 per annual license for unlimited use. For about $2000, students gain exposure to foreign languages for a fraction of the cost of traditional instruction.
BCS treats the program like an extra-curricular activity. It’s optional and doesn’t cut into time reserved for other subjects. Instead, students voluntarily attend as many as three 45-minute sessions per week.
The students also have the option of working from home, and many do.
“I have kids who are so motivated they do three to four sessions a week at home,” BCS Principal Jennifer Ribeiro said during a presentation before the Central Lincoln County School Committee. “The youngest ones are the most eager.”
The school has the ability to see who logs in from home and what activities they do. “We can really see who loves it,” Ribeiro said, and a majority of the students do.
Although Rosetta Stone offers many languages, BCS asks the students to choose from six: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Russian. The language of choice is Spanish, although the class includes two students of Japanese, as well as budding German and Russian speakers.
The idea for the program started with a query from Ribeiro to BCS Technology Coordinator John Cough.
Last spring, Ribeiro wanted to enroll her son, a seventh grader at Nobleboro Central School, in a foreign language immersion camp, and she asked Cough for advice.
Cough didn’t know about any camps, but he excitedly told Ribeiro about Rosetta Stone.
BCS has a response to intervention program, wherein some students receive extra instruction in topics they’re struggling with, while others have the option to participate in enrichment activities. Ribeiro recognized Rosetta Stone as an excellent offering for those students.
After communicating with and gaining the support of parents, BCS launched the Rosetta Stone program in mid-September 2011.
Ribeiro wants to continue and improve the program next year. She wants to survey parents and students and talk to Lincoln Academy about how best to prepare students for high school foreign language study. Finally, if possible, she’d like to bring someone in to complement the computer lessons with weekly instruction. The biggest challenge, she said, isn’t money but time.
She believes there may be interest elsewhere in the district, as more people hear of the program. “If people start clamoring for something, you don’t have to sell it by yourself,” she said.
Cough, the technology coordinator, proctors the Rosetta Stone sessions and learns the lessons alongside the students. He’s studying Spanish – a rusty skill after 20 years of neglect – and was recently able to test some of his newly acquired phrases during a visit to Puerto Rico.
Cough and the students sit at computer screens and wear headsets with earphones and a microphone. The software grades their performance after each unit.
Rosetta Stone teaches lessons in the student’s language of choice, without translation, and doesn’t allow a student to move on until he or she receives a perfect score on every lesson.
Taylor Holmes is the school’s lone German student, while his younger brother, Jalen Holmes, chose Russian.
“I think it’s a really good way to learn a language,” Taylor said during a March 6 session. As a Rosetta Stone voice spoke German phrases, he clicked on corresponding photographs.
Across the room, Spanish student Aspen Dyer worked on another type of lesson. The software displayed a photograph of a person talking and a blank dialog box. The software voice speaks a sentence, which the student has to type, complete with correctly conjugated verbs and accurately placed accent marks.
Dyer typed “Estamos cenando adentro” (“we are eating inside,” she translated), earned a check mark and moved to the next lesson.
Seventh grader Evan Eckel was reviewing numbers in Spanish. “I wanted to learn a new language,” Eckel said. “I thought it’d be cool – something different.”
Eckel has faith in the program. “I think it will give me an edge” in high school, he said.
The translation-free lessons are a challenge, but after a bit of repetition, things fall into place. “You won’t know what you’re doing and then it will just hit you,” Eckel said. “You finally put it together.”
Two more students, Dorothy Hodous and Kate Organ, will help with a March 7 presentation to the Bristol School Committee. They plan to impress the committee with some basic Spanish phrases and guide them through a lesson.
The meeting starts at 6 p.m. in the BCS library.
