ABSTRACT
Opportunities for learning more than one language should be provided to all students in an increasingly smaller world with the concomitant need for communication across languages and cultures. The issues differ, as does the research that informs them, but all point to a sound educational practice—students in largely monolingual cultures should pursue facility in more than one language. VanTassel-Baska concluded that if vocabulary development and linguistic competence in English are desirable program objectives for talented students, then Latin would be a logical second language choice, preferably introduced by the fourth grade. At the elementary level, there are basically two kinds of models employed for teaching a language: those that focus on exposure to the culture and varying amounts of language, Foreign Language Exploratory (FLEX) and Foreign Language in the Elementary Schools (FLES), and total or partial immersion programs that target language proficiency.
