Elementary Spanish/How this book works

Immersion education PS 9 uses a teaching technique called "full immersion" for the dual language classes. This technique constantly surrounds students with the language they are learning as if they were traveling in a foreign country. Unfortunately, most of us do not have the opportunity to spend our days fully immersed in another language so this book will take a hybrid approach. Example dialogues and other material presented in these lessons are designed to reflect genuine interactions you might see in daily life rather than the very simplified dialogues you find in many other language books. These dialogues will present advanced material you have not seen before and that you may not understand. Do not worry.

The most important skill to learn during your studies is how to handle language interaction that you do not understand. If you have taken formal language classes in school this skill may be unfamiliar since most classes focus on building up from a very basic foundation and completely mastering each element used. Immersion is focused on giving you the tools you need to function in an environment of native speakers where you will be surrounded by elements of the language that you have not seen before. This is how your children learn at school.

While the children at PS 9 will have full days of formal education, our goal is to make the material available outside of the classroom for parents who want to learn alongside their children and help them practice their language skills in the home. We want to provide the tools and examples you need as a self-guided learner to not only learn the material but to help your child learn it as well.

Each unit will have three groups of lessons all focused on the same general topic and all designed to have the same general level of difficulty. These focuses on communicating with different groups of people: fellow parents using this guide, your children at home, and native speaker acquaintances and community members. Feel free to complete as many lessons as you have time for during each two week period. Our regular in person language exchange events will only focus on the first group of lessons from each unit, those focused on talking with other parents.