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World Languages

In keeping with our mission, the World Languages Department seeks to educate the whole person, and inspire students to honor the diversity that enriches both our school community and the world beyond St. John's. A large part of this holistic education is teaching students to communicate effectively, an important skill in our interdependent, multicultural world.

Students learn to express themselves confidently in the language they choose to study (German, Chinese, Latin, Spanish), and develop an appreciation for its culture and people. We follow the national Standards for Foreign Language Learning, referred to as the 5 Cs: Communication, Culture, Connection, Comparison, and Community.

Students are challenged according to their ability in differing levels of instruction, and they learn to apply the four basic linguistic skills: speaking, reading, listening, and writing.

World Languages Courses

Its aim is to provide students with ongoing and varied opportunities to further develop their proficiency across the full range of language skills within a cultural frame of reference reflective of the richness of Chinese language and culture.

The course requires students to prepare and translate the readings and place these texts in a meaningful context, which helps develop critical, historical, and literary sensitivities.

This course is designed to provide students with a learning experience equivalent to that of a third-year college survey course in Peninsular and Latin American Literature.

In this Mandarin Chinese class, students will develop the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.

The course emphasizes developing students’ language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

Many of the grammatical constructions introduced in first-year Chinese will be repeated in this course with increasing sophistication in terms of style and usage.

This course is for the above-average Chinese speaker who has excelled in first-year Chinese both in the oral and written component.

In the third year of Chinese, students will continue to develop their oral communication skills and to expand their vocabulary ability and paragraph writing with the up-to-date topics relevant to young students in a fun and interesting way.

A task-based teaching approach will be used to intensify students’ motivation and heighten their awareness of the learning objectives in each unit.

The task-based and flip classroom teaching approach will be used to intensify students’ motivation and heighten their awareness of the learning objectives in each unit.

Specific content includes, but is not limited to, more advanced language structures and idiomatic expressions, with emphasis on conversational skills.

The aim is to promote proficiency in all aspects of the German language: speaking, reading, writing, and oral comprehension, in the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational.

The aim is to promote proficiency in all aspects of the German language: speaking, reading, writing, and oral comprehension, in the three modes of communication: interpersonal, interpretive and presentational.

This second-year course stresses aural/oral communication and the essentials of German grammar.

The students will be introduced to authentic articles, data and literature using a variety of genres presented in printed, audio, audiovisual formats as well as other cultural inputs.

The class provides their students with opportunities to develop their language proficiency by sharing their points of view on more complex issues using open discussion and employing both their spoken and written German skills.

This course is designed for the advanced student to further develop his German language skills, by discussing a variety of cultural topics and themes in the German speaking world.

Latin 1 introduces students to the fundamentals of Latin grammar through readings which reveal the cultural context of the Roman world and its heritage.

The first year of Latin introduces the form and structure of an inflected language, gradually guiding the students to read and compose complex sentences with subordinate clauses, stylistic nuance and sophisticated vocabulary.

Students continue their study of Classical culture, including history, mythology, archaeology, and the influence of Latin on English vocabulary.

In the second year of Latin, students build upon their study of grammar from the first year. The emphasis is upon the reading of continuous prose with complex sentences and subordinate clauses.

In this course, students will continue to study complex and nuanced aspects of Latin grammar while reading increasingly sophisticated selections of Latin prose. 

After an extensive review of grammar and syntax, students will read the poetry of Martial, Ovid and Catullus and the opening chapters of Caesar’s Gallic Wars.

A variety of original Latin texts will be read: history, letters, poetry, legal documents, graffiti, etc.

This course will introduce students to the Classical infrastructure of English with a cross-disciplinary approach, allowing students to master words in context rather than as random elements for memorization.

Students will develop their interpersonal, presentational and interpretive skills as well as study the cultures and practices of the diverse Spanish-speaking world.

This course introduces the student to the Spanish language by developing their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills at a faster pace.

This course introduces the student to the Spanish language by developing their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.

This advanced course emphasizes aural/oral communication and the grammatical essentials of the Spanish language throughout the Spanish-speaking world.

In this intermediate course, students will continue to develop language and cultural competencies by focusing on communication, cultures, connections, comparisons and communities.

Students will develop language and cultural competencies by focusing on communication, cultures, connections, comparisons and communities.

Students will continue to develop an appreciation and understanding of the products, practices and perspectives of the Spanish-speaking world.

In this course, the student refines his oral expression, utilizing all of the grammatical points of the previous three years of study.

In this intensive course, the student excels at oral expression as well as written compositions in the target language.