Teaching in English is a common feature of most Cognita schools worldwide. In 2016, our schools in Chile will be introducing English World, a bilingual stream, to their Early Years programmes. The move to a bilingual approach, using the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) programme, will mean children are immersed in English from the start of their school years, enabling them to absorb it as native speakers do. “English has always been central to our teaching but is even more important now with the expansion in communication technologies,” says Tatiana Bustos Vega, Bilingual Projects Coordinator for Cognita in Chile and co-leader of the project with Claudia Lüer Mas, English Coordinator. “To use Skype, social media or any other communication technology properly, our students need to be able to speak English fluently so they can connect with the rest of the world.”
Excellence in EAL teaching is a hallmark of the International School Ho Chi Minh City-American Academy. The school uses the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) standards, a framework to assess and monitor student progress in EAL. “Our approach to EAL is intensive, carefully monitoring the progress of individual students so we can quickly identify where extra support is needed,” says Heather Carreiro, Curriculum Coordinator. For those whose weaker area is reading and writing, there are intensive classes where students focus primarily on reading and writing techniques and also develop the vocabulary and skills needed for reasoning, finding information within text and grammar. They receive detailed feedback and consolidate what they have learned through active writing and reflection.
The Australian International School Singapore is one of a number of Cognita schools that offer Mandarin. This video follows an AIS Mandarin teacher as she goes about a typical day in school.
Language learning is at the heart of Cognita’s four schools in Spain. Students are taught mainly in English but study many other languages, too. El Limonar International School Villamartin in Alicante hosts students of some 33 nationalities aged 3-18. They are taught predominantly in English and also learn Spanish language and culture with a third language option of French, German or Chinese from year 5 (age 8-9). For some there is the chance to add a fourth, such as Russian, in the shape of an i-GCSE, the international form of the English GCSE qualification for 16-year-olds.
Daily foreign language learning is part of the curriculum at Stamford American International. This video looks at how the school teaches languages in keeping with its international ethos.
