St. Mary’s School of Winchester offers a second language in Italian to four-year-old preschoolers to fifth graders. We are fortunate to be one of the only local Catholic schools in the area to offer this program through a grant provided by C.A.S.IT.  By working closely with the schools and the Italian Consulate, C.A.S.IT. demonstrates its commitment to the success of Italian language.

Learning a second language in elementary school boosts student achievement in other academic areas! According to the Center for Applied Linguistics learning a second language at an early age will do the following:

• Enriches and enhances a child’s mental development.
• Improves a child’s understanding of his/her native language.
• Gives a child the ability to communicate with people s/he would otherwise not have the chance to know.
• Gives a student a head start in language requirements for college.
• Increases job opportunities in many careers where knowing another language is a real asset.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) identifies foreign language as a core subject, only about a fourth of U.S. public elementary schools report teaching foreign languages, and most of these schools provide only introductory courses. Fewer than half of all U.S. high school students are studying a foreign language.

On examining the research in 2005, education research analyst Janice Stewart found that foreign language study, “especially when introduced in the early elementary school years,” is associated with three additional benefits of “increased cognitive skills, higher achievement in other academic areas, and higher standardized test scores.”