The mission of The
Kids Abroad Foundation is to organize and provide spoken
foreign language learning programs for American elementary
and secondary school students, with the goal of enabling the
students to communicate with native speaking children of
their own age. At the core of the Foundation’s approach to
foreign language instruction is starting to teach foreign
languages at an early age when language learning is easiest,
so that students can learn to speak and understand other
languages naturally by continued exposure, the same way they
learn English. The Foundation will experiment with different
instructional techniques as resources allow, in an effort to
create programs that result in speaking fluency before the
students finish high school.
In seeking to achieve these goals,
the Foundation will generally adhere to the following
principles and policies:
A. The Foundation will engage in
fundraising activities in order to provide financial support
for its language teaching programs, permitting classes to be
offered at low or no cost, enabling wider public
participation than would otherwise be possible.
B. Wherever possible, native
speaking teachers will be used.
C. English will be used in the
classroom as little as possible.
D. Teaching emphasis will be on
speaking and aural comprehension, rather on the written
language, although reading and writing may be taught as an
aid to using the spoken language.
E. When teaching elementary
school children, teachers and the Foundation will attempt to
design the curriculum to be fun, to keep the students’
interest.
F. Native children’s
audio-visual materials in the language being taught will be
included in the curriculum where appropriate, to give
extended exposure to the spoken foreign language in a medium
that is appealing to the children.
G. Whenever feasible, the
Foundation’s fundraising activities will be organized around
a theme related to the culture of the country or countries
where the respective languages are spoken, so that
fundraising activities can also offer learning
opportunities.
H. From time to time as demand
warrants, the Foundation will organize trips abroad for
students and their parents, to enable them to visit host
families having children of similar ages to the American
students, and permitting the children from the different
countries to interact with each other, use the language that
has been taught, and learn about each other’s culture.
Parents or other outside funding will be expected to pay the
cost of such trips.
I. German will be the initial
language offered, but to the extent feasible a variety of
other foreign languages for which there is student demand
will be offered as the program expands.
J. The Foundation’s program will
initially be offered in Loudoun County, Virginia, but will
be expanded to other points within the wider local area, as
and if parent interest, volunteer support, and available
funding permit.
K. The Foundation will not
attempt to duplicate public school foreign language
instruction, unless the corresponding public school program
is found to be inadequate. |