"A Foreign Language in the Elementary School program provides quality instruction in foreign languages to children in those grades that precede middle school or junior high school across the United States. Regular FLES programs concentrate primarily on the development of listening and speaking skills and on cultural awareness. Grammar is not ignored but is learned indirectly rather than through direct instruction. The goal of FLES programs is functional proficiency in a foreign language." (From FLES Official Website)When I was in elementary school, my school participated in a FLES program. The research question was " Can elementary school students learn language better if they learn at a younger age?" Can being a novice language learner at a younger age result in a great chance of native speaker proficiency in that target language?" This was what the educators at the time was researching with this new FLES program.
They bought in Foreign Language teachers in Spanish, French, Italian, and Russian to my school. My family chose for me to learn French because my mother thought French was a beautiful romantic sounding language and my mother loved Paris.
I enrolled as a novice language learner into the FLES French program. I learned phrases such as "My name is", "Je m'appelle Yvonne." Comment t'appelez-vous?" "How are you?", "Comment ca va?"--and lots of other formulaic questions.
We learned from a French grammar textbook and followed the adventures of the Dubois (French family name) family. Madame and Monsieur Dubois and their kids as they went to the store, went shopping, and went on family trips all in scripted French conversations and located in a fictional French village.
We read about French culture in English and in French. We had Paris Match, L'Express magazines in our classroom. I loved looking at the pictures of the glamorous French movie stars of the time.
My main interaction was with my teacher and with my fellow students as I learned French. We did not have any native speakers of French in our classroom.
We did go out to see French movies at the local community college and those French movies were a blast. We also went to see Carmen in French at NYC Broadway.
We ate French foods in the classroom while celebrating French holidays. I loved eating croissants and the Buche du Noel. The teacher would cook these French foods for us.
Because of my novice French experiences, I majored in French and French Literature when I went to college.
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