Juliana Parecki, a 6 year old Jewish-Hispanic girl, speaks Korean in the morning at school and English in the afternoon. And she speaks Spanish at home. She's a kindergartener at PS32, the only school that offers Korean English dual language program in New York City.
Majority of Juliana's classmates are Koreans, and her two non Korean classmates speak English at home. But Juliana took a different path. She's becoming trilingual out of bilingual program before the age of 10.
More and more students take advantages of dual language programs; not only learning foreign languages at early age, but becoming trilingual.
Bibiana Parecki, the mother of Juliana planned it when she married to a Jew. But it wasn't long before she realized he is too busy to teach Hebrew to their daughter. So she turned to the only Korean English dual program in her neighborhood. She said "Juliana is excellent at Korean. Now she's becoming trilingual." This summer, the family visits Colombia with lots of Korean books. Mother is determined to hone daughter's Korean.
Santos Matine, a dual language program specialist at New York City Department of Education has been seeing this trend. She introduced a Chinese who's enrolled in Spanish dual language program. Why? "Because his parents business deals with lots of Hispanics, and they want their son to be ready to help," she said.
The 3rd district which includes Upper West Side is booming with more-than-two languages-speaking kids. It's not surprising to see Japanese speaking Spanish or Jew speaking Yiddish and Chinese anymore. This district has more than 10 schools offering various dual language programs from Spanish, Chinese, to French. It's only growing.
In New York City, there are 89 schools offering dual language programs which are about 5% of all elementary, junior high, and high schools. The biggest one is Spanish composing 79 schools of 89. There are 6 schools that has Chinese dual program.
Dual language programs teach student 50% in English and 50% in other language. Usually one day is English only speaking day, and next day is other language.
Some schools based on their student's diversity, have more than 2 dual language programs. And with the flood of recent immigrants, dual language programs are ready to expand. DOE supports up to $20,000 year each school if they want to start one.
Kum Ju Shin who teaches at PS 32 praises Juliana's Korean is. "If I don't see her but only hear what she's speaking, I can't even distinguish if that's her or Korean," she bragged. Juliana was chosen as an MC at school's Lunar New Year celebration earlier this year. She spoke Korean during the entire program without any accent. She even has a Korean name, Joohee Park similar to Juliana Parecki.
Of course, not everyone is as talented as in language like Juliana. Shin admitted. "I can't generalize that learning another language at early age works for everyone like her, but I truly believe it works better for her because she already mastered English and Spanish before she stepped in Korean."
Bibiana plans the future foreign language learning around this theory. "I will make her speak, read and write in Korean perfectly first, then maybe by high school, I can introduce Latin which is similar to Spanish," she said.
This September, New American Academy opens with an ambitious curriculum; mandatory trilingual program. Everyone has to learn Spanish, French and English by the time they graduate. Shimon Waronker the principal is a Jew who speaks perfect Spanish.
In scenario, a Pakistani student enrolled in this school can speak 4 languages when graduating, Pakistani, English, Spanish and French.
Speaking 4 languages at the age of 12?
Dream big. Shin is sure that she can see "7~8 language speaker so soon" in this diverse New York with booming dual language programs.
This article was written as part of New York Community Media Alliance's Ethnic and Community Media Press Fellowship Developing an Education Beat.
Check out the original article published in Korea Daily on June 11, 2010
