Middle School Curriculum

Novice High Spanish spans two years at Durham Academy Middle School. Novice High A Spanish aims to progress towards the High B level, as specified by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) proficiency guidelines. The classroom experience is grounded in the four communicative skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The three modes of communication—interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational—provide the organizing principle for the course content. Students will enhance their proficiency in Spanish through various activities encompassing cultural exploration, interpersonal interactions, communication strategies, vocabulary acquisition, and language control.

Students develop the skills to identify the topic and isolate facts from texts, request and provide information by asking and answering questions, interact with others, and express, react to, and support preferences and opinions using a string of sentences. They are exposed daily to authentic materials appropriate to their level. The class is taught almost exclusively in the target language, and students are expected to use the target language at all times to the best of their ability.