Eighth Grade Language
French I, Spanish I, Chinese I and Japanese I are high school courses and successful completion of the course will allow your child to proceed to the second level course as a freshman. Students finishing Latin IB can take Latin II or take a modern language in their freshman year. If you elect to have your child start a modern language in ninth grade, he/she will have four years of study which could terminate in an Advance Placement (AP) course.

Latin 1B
As a companion course to Latin 1A, this second year of the Cambridge Latin Course develops the student’s foundation in the essential grammar and vocabulary of the Latin language. The emphasis of this course is to develop reading skills and a sense for the language’s unique means of expression. An effort is made to demonstrate the strong influence of Latin upon English vocabulary. An acquaintance with Roman literature, life, and history is made through a discussion of the meaning of words and the translation of passages. The more familiar the student becomes with the powers of language, the more adept the student becomes in his/her own thinking and expression. Latin 1B is the recommended foreign language course for Eighth grade, and completes three years of Latin study.

French 1
In this first-level course, students begin to attain proficiency in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing the French language. Students create original monologues and dialogues to reinforce the skills in oral understanding and communication. Students are introduced to the French culture as well as language. Language structure concepts are developed by using contemporary reading selections, comprehension activities, and vocabulary expansion activities.

Spanish I
In this first level course, the students begin to attain proficiency in the skills of listening, reading, comprehension, speaking and writing of the foundational material. Vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, and verb conjugations are emphasized, in addition to other grammatical concepts. Language and grammar concepts are developed using games and paired activities, as well as traditional reading and writing activities. Students are also exposed to Hispanic history, civilization, culture, current events, and music.

Japanese 1
Japanese I is an introductory course in which students learn to listen, speak, read, and write simple daily conversational Japanese. Students develop an understanding of basic grammatical structures and study verb tenses in the polite form of speech. Students learn basic vocabulary and useful idiomatic expressions based on several different themes and perform a number of interactive and role-playing activities. Students acquire communicative skills to convey and comprehend mostly factual information on a variety of familiar topics. Students master two sets of phonetically written syllables, Hiragana and Katakana, and recognize some basic Kanji characters. Students are also familiarized with many elements of Japanese culture such as their lifestyle, annual holidays, food and traditional arts.

Chinese 1
Chinese I is a basic course for the beginning students of Chinese. In this class, the students learn the course objectives including the following: (1) Listening: students understand basic daily conversation, (2) Speaking: students develop accurate pronunciation through the Pinyin system, communication in daily dialogues, (3) Reading: students learn to read over 120 Chinese characters and essays with or without Pinyin, (4) Writing: students are capable of writing 84 Chinese characters, and short sentences.
Cultural activities are arranged to provide each student with opportunities to enhance language and cultural learning; these activities include Chinese carnivals, Chinese movies, Chinese performances, field trips such as visiting museums, markets, restaurants.