After taking Chinese classes at the Upper School (US) for three years, Mimi Fulop ’28 hoped to be able to communicate with her native Mandarin-speaking family. However, she found she was unable to effectively hold a conversation with her grandparents.
“They told me that my Chinese wasn’t understandable at all and that it was very confusing because the tones didn’t make any sense,” she said. “I try to practice it with my family, because my mother speaks Chinese a little bit, but I get made fun of because it’s so bad.”
Mimi said she can translate and understand the language, but it is nearly impossible to be fluent.
“Because of the complexity of the language with the pronunciation, you have to start speaking it really young and get used to hearing it and to be able to distinguish the tones,” she said. “It can either take a really, really long time with a lot of hard work or you’ve already been exposed to it.”
According to the US Program Planning Guide, US students are required to take three consecutive years of one of the six languages. The goal is fluency, but time constraints and language complexity make that difficult, US World Language Department Head James Sennette said.
“The World Language Department considers fluency to mean ease in speaking the language, the ability to understand and the ability to be understood,” he said. “Fluency doesn’t mean perfection, but it’s just the rate at which you speak and your ability to use complex sentences and speak fluidly.”
The level of fluency a student reaches depends on the language, Mr. Sennette said.
“Russian uses a different alphabet. Chinese uses a different alphabet. Arabic uses a different alphabet. So, fluency in those courses looks different than what it might look like in a Romance language.”
Mr. Sennette said the biggest barrier is the classroom setting.
“The challenge is that speaking four times a week is not the same thing as living in a country or speaking it at home. It requires students to be committed to speaking the language, to hearing the language, to using the language as much as possible.”
US Spanish Department Coordinator Rosario Sánchez Gómez agrees.
“One hundred percent fluency cannot be accomplished in a school,” she said. “You can accomplish a lot and if you pair that with outside practice and work you could, but it is very difficult.”
Dr. Sánchez Gómez said she pushes for conversational fluency.
“My priority is communication,” she said. “Even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not 100% fluent. Everybody’s at a different point in their fluency. I encourage them to take risks when they are in the classroom, to push themselves beyond their comfort zone as a way to keep improving and also to take it outside of the school to talk to people … who speak their language.”
US Chinese Teacher Yinong Yang said Chinese is difficult because of the different tones.
“I tell Chinese students, ‘the most difficult thing is: how do you master tones?’ Tones are very challenging. In order to get the tones you have to speak a lot to get the muscle memory.”
Erin Fisman ’26 is minoring in French at McGill University after taking both French and Spanish for four years at the US.
“Simply taking a language class at BB&N won’t lead to fluency unless you are dedicated to practicing frequently on your own and engaging with the language outside of class,” she said. “For example, watching movies, talking with friends, listening to music, etc. I graduated with a strong ability to read and write, while my ability to listen at the speed of native speakers and speak spontaneously is still improving.”
Yuiko Hotta ’27 has taken French for three years and Spanish for four years. She went to a bilingual French-English elementary school. She said her speaking improved after attending the US French exchange program.
“It was pretty cool because I was speaking with people my age and there’s a lot of slang and expressions that you wouldn’t learn in class,” she said. “We were also speaking French the entire time, so we’re fully immersed.”
Yuiko said higher-level French and Spanish classes focus more on speaking than grammar.
“I noticed that last year in AP Spanish, conversations were our main focus,” she said. “I definitely do speak a lot and the whole time I’m listening to the teacher speaking or watching a video in French or Spanish, so there is constant oral.”
Still, Yuiko said it would take a long time for her to become fully fluent.
“Even if I’m getting better at speaking, I struggle to say everything I’m feeling and expressing and every thought in a foreign language as well as I do in English, and that’s something that’ll take a long time to get over.”
