Let's Get A Foreign Language Subworld! (Advocacy and Explanation)
Arjun M
To all of the community at Schoolhouse and to the Product Team, with this post I hope to explain about bringing a Foreign Language Subworld. Looking at Schoolhouse's article regarding creating new subworlds - https://schoolhouse.world/faq/en/article/what-subworlds-will-be-created-next-lchts5/
Let us address some of the things the product team should know about getting this subworld:
Scoping: Interactive learning through speaking, listening, reading, writing, and practicing belongs in this subworld by learning new languages, becoming fluent in those languages, able to read, speak, and write in new languages. As there are thousands of languages spoken throughout the world (over 7000!), with Schoolhouse's diverse community, the community would teach a variety of languages able to allow this subworld to thrive. Additionally, a large percent of students (about 20% in the U.S.!) across the world take a foreign language classes and just like many other subworlds, like math and science, live tutoring and support for language questions and help wouldn't be a bad idea to add to the subworld. Currently, Enrichment is the hub for anyone wanting to learn a language and as enrichment is extremely diverse and contains a wide scope of things, filtering languages would clear up some space and better organize languages in Schoolhouse. A lecture-style learning without any speaking or interaction between the learner can't thrive in this subworld, as speaking is a primary part of becoming fluent in foreign languages. Often in many sessions, learners go about without any interaction.
Is there significant demonstrated interest from across the community in having this subworld?
There has been many posts gathering many votes across Schoolhouse Feedback & Ideas regarding this topic! I wanted to organize everything into one post the community can vote on and provide their input on! A large number of people have shown interest and are quite excited in partnering to leading this subworld to success.
Right now, our community is primarily made up of English-speaking high school students taking the SAT. Does this subworld deepen the impact we can have on these students?
According to the U.S. Department of Education as well as numerous other universities, learning a 2nd language can help improve your cognitive abilities, vocabulary, writing, and interpretation of sources, helping a lot with analytical and thinking questions given by the SAT.
With considering the interactions aspect that especially language advocates for with different phonetics, and sounds, necessary for speaking in linguistics, a foreign language subworld will help build Schoolhouse to becoming a more impactful place through it's increase in interactions and help.
Feel free to add more explanation and input regarding this topic!
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Natalie C
Great Idea. Would ASL be a language considered?
Sabine R
Love this idea!
Chloe C
I would love this!
DAI Y
Good Idea
Sam P
yes it would help me learn english
Aarav T
Sam P You can go on the Reading and Writing Subworld for that!
Sara R
Great idea! I also think that it would be beneficial if the sessions would be color coded according to the language.
Romina A
Love this idea! I am really interested in majoring in French Language in college so I feel like this is such a good idea to incorporate a foreign language subworld. By incorporating this subworld, we can also tutor AP Language courses such as AP French, AP Spanish, AP German, AP Chinese, etc. We need to add a Foreign Language Subworld!!! Also, let me know if you need help bringing this into a reality because I'm really passionate about having more opportunities for foreign languages!
Aarav T
Hi Arjun M. I love this idea! I think there is a lot of demand in this and your application to criteria is amazing. I wanted to outline a few ways, if you want, you could achieve this goal. One, merge all the feedback and ideas posts about foreign language into one, that way you can have a scope about how many people want to have this subworld. Contact people who "would" tutor the new subworld and organize sessions and series in Enrichment. Over time, (3-4 months) you should begin having some "community" around languages, that community is what bridges the gap between something unofficial in to a subworld. My strongest suggestion is to follow the contact step through Slack. The SchoolHouse slack has all the tutors and it is useful for communication instead of using in SchoolHouse DMs!
Jack R
Love this idea! We could also try to serve as a kind of language exchange platform. It also helps students as most are required to take languages 4 years of high school, and when I first started, nothing made sense. Also, it is popular in the United States at least, for language teachers to…not teach almost, so this Subworld would allow these students to gain better 1 on 1 support. We could also provide a type of session where students are spoken to in the language of their choice (note that I can’t do this for anything but English and I would probably not be the best foreign language teacher, this is assuming we have native Spanish, Chinese, French, etc speakers who would like some free community service hours). On top of that, many English speakers taking the SAT took Spanish 1 (or their language 1) in middle school, meaning they will take at least 1 if not 2 years of AP Language courses which are regarded as being extraordinarily difficult for non-native speakers. This would be an excellent space to support them. This Subworld will complete Schoolhouse.world in terms of having all the major school subjects covered on its platform! Feel free to message me if you are looking for more input.