Community engagement and the method “Learning by Teaching”: A pilot project to embrace foreign language learning from the first days

Abstract

The pilot community-engaged project, Niños y Niñas Bilingües y Biculturales (NNBB) forged through a partnership between the University Child Development Center and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, combined the learning goals of upper-level Spanish courses with the benefits of learning a foreign language at an early age. College students worked cooperatively to develop a 3-week program covering basic vocabulary, geography, and cultural features from Spanish-speaking countries for monolingual English-speaking preschoolers. The purpose of the study is to understand the impact of the community-engaged program on a) college students’ perceptions on their involvement in the community and b) college students’ perceptions of foreign language learning at an early age. Students’ written reflections indicated that this program stimulated them to proactively participate more in the community and helped them to experience children’s fast ability to learn a foreign language. Participating parents revealed in the Likert-scale surveys a disposition to implement a systematic and consistent foreign language program in the preschool curriculum.

Keywords

• Bilingualism
• Community engagement
• early education
• learning by teaching
• monolinguism