Four years, no fluency

Many U.S. high schoolers seem unprepared or ill-equipped when it comes to their understanding of what it means to speak another language and how to positively participate and interact in an increasingly globalized world. Rachel Hawthorne unpacks and questions current accepted practices in foreign-language instruction in U.S. high schools and its effect on this reality. By focusing on grammar over conversation, she argues, language courses are failing to foster fluency. Drawing on research and international comparisons, she calls for a redefinition of language-learning success and urges schools to adopt methods that cultivate confident, communicatively capable students ready for global engagement