POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES IN TEACHING FOREIGN LANGUAGES USING CHILDREN’S LITERATURE TO ELEMENTARY STUDENTS IN AN AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM

This article describes how foreign languages can be taught to elementary students using Krashen’s (2003) comprehensible input framework. Krashen posits that students learn best when they understand the target language as supported by their native language. Guided by this hypothesis, we developed and designed a program integrating bilingual children’s literature to engage and teach students Spanish and French. Challenges in implementing the foreign language afterschool program included issues regarding time constraints and student-teacher ratio in a multigrade-level class. On the other hand, the possibilities in using children’s literature to teach foreign languages in a meaningful way outweighed the issues we encountered. Using bilingual children’s literature to teach native English speakers Spanish and French enabled us to bridge foreign language teaching and language acquisition in a purposeful way. Among the benefits of the foreign language afterschool program includes elementary students understanding and using Spanish and French greetings, basic conversation, simple phrases, and songs while also learning in the company of other children.