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NO HABLAN INGLéS Ashland Middle School students put their Spanish-speaking skills to the test Comment By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted May. 5, 2015 at 8:31 PM Updated May 6, 2015 at 10:36 AM By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted May. 5, 2015 at 8:31 PM Updated May 6, 2015 at 10:36 AM » RELATED CONTENT • AMS Spanish speaking village » Social News It’s not easy being a stranger in a foreign land. Just ask Myles Montgomery, eighth-grader at Ashland Middle School, who while visiting a Spanish-speaking country was mauled by a pig (don’t ask) and found himself soon thereafter sitting on a hospital bed before a doctor who knew not a lick of English. “Dónde le duele?” Where does it hurt? Montgomery, leaning heavily on what he’d learned in his Spanish 1 class, and a little on universal gestures, managed to improvise his way through the catastrophe and receive the necessary treatment. Crisis averted. Ham for dinner. “I have to do some actions sometimes,” he said, motioning with his hands. “I worked my way around words I don’t know to basically not say the word (in English). It’s hard to explain.” And harder to perform under pressure, but Montgomery’s make-believe pig-bite emergency gave him an opportunity to practice the Spanish that he’s learned in a real-world situation, which in theory will help him scale the language barrier should he eventually encounter one in real life. The exercise was only a small part of Ashland Middle School’s week-long simulation known as Spanish World Day, which for two hours each morning drops Spanish students into a fictional, Spanish-speaking world populated by booths and challenges them to accomplish a long list of every-day tasks, from buying food to riding a bus. The "world" occupies the entire AMS main gym and is staffed each day by 15 volunteers who, in the five days allotted, will cycle approximately 400 students through a battery of questions and phrases, no English allowed. “In their Spanish classes during the year it is an immersion environment, so they’re not allowed to speak any English in class,” said AMS Spanish teacher Marina Borowy, who was responsible for finding the volunteers. “We only use Spanish in class with them, so throughout the whole year they’re learning a variety of vocabulary and using it in different situations. And then when they come here they are only allowed to speak Spanish, and they have to try to accomplish all these tasks that a normal person would have to accomplish in their day-to-day life.” To make the project as authentic as possible, the students were not tipped off beforehand which words or phrases may come in handy, nor were they provided a cheat sheet. They simply arrived at the fictional bank and had to figure out, based on what they’ve learned, how to deposit their fictional money. Later, they waited in line at the fictional fruit stand to buy some fictional watermelons. Students were graded on their success and marked down for slipping in English. “They just had to pull from what they’ve been learning all year and put it together in different ways,” Borowy said, “to be able to communicate their needs.” Some stations demanded more command of the language than others, but all of them posed a unique set of challenges. On the bus, the students had to know which stop to get off. At the meat store, items were weighed on a scale and customers charged accordingly. Students also visited the consulate to have their passports stamped, checked out a toy store and purchased supplies necessary to complete an art project. “It just gives you more real-life experience, even though it’s contained,” said eighth-grader Sarah Aaronson after visiting the vegetable stand, the fruit stand, the butcher and the bus station. “On the bus, it was a little confusing because we weren’t sure where to get off, and the language barrier is part of that.” Montgomery agreed. “The card station was hard,” he said. “It’s writing cards to people, and I wasn’t sure what she meant by the writing so I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to write at first, but I figured it out.” Bonnie McCracken, who was a sixth-grade teacher at AMS for 25 years before retiring three years ago, jumped at the opportunity to work one of the stations, so she was there Monday selling lobster and other meat products to students, some of which confidently bargained for better prices while others simply completed the task as quickly as possible and checked it off their to-do list. McCracken, who said she used her Spanish in the Peace Corps, is a firm believer in language immersion programs which force students to solve their difficulties outside of the classroom. She helped many through that challenging process Monday, usually with a smile. “Cinco?” a girl asked during a transaction. “Cinco, por favor,” McCracken said. The girl handed over some fake paper money, McCracken handed over a paper cut-out of some meat product and that was that. “I think it gives them a chance to really have to use their Spanish because the hardest part is they have to speak Spanish in class all the time,” McCracken said. “They hear Spanish and they’re not used to it so they come here, they have to use it to do the transactions. So it forces them to, and that’s the only way you can learn it. I know when I learned Spanish, you don’t want to speak it — it’s embarrassing, it’s hard, you don’t have good confidence. But I think this builds their confidence up a little bit. Just a little bit at a time. It’s not like they have to say a whole long sentence or anything, they just have to tell me what they want.” Of course, few of the students know off the top of their heads every word they would probably need to know in order to successfully complete the laundry list of tasks they’ve been assigned. But to Borowy, improvising their way through Spanish World Day provides a valuable lesson in itself. “Yes, that’s a big part of language fluency and natural language learning, that you’re able to communicate even though you’re going to be making mistakes,” she said. “They know they’re going to make mistakes, they’re going to say things wrong. Or they may have to act out part of it. Part of their sentence might be words and part of it might be acting. But being able to let that filter down so that they’re able to communicate without being nervous about those things is a huge part of it.” Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings DailyTidings.com By Joe Zavala Ashland Daily Tidings Posted May. 5, 2015 at 8:31 PM Updated May 6, 2015 at 10:36 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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