Literacy
Culture
About ‘En Nuestra Lengua’© (ENL)
Our vision:
En Nuestra Lengua (ENL) is a Saturday-based academic program where the students, teachers, and families join together in a positive and welcoming environment to support life-long successful bilingual learners. All students and families are important and bring with them a wealth of experience and knowledge to share with others. We work tirelessly to ensure that all students are successful and that each parent is an ally in the education of our children.
Our mission:
ENL’s objectives are the development of literacy skills of students in order to understand, speak, read, and write in Spanish, and to build pride in the HIspanic community and rich Latino culture.
Background:
The ENL program is aimed at maintaining Spanish from a young age, involving students (and their families) in daily communicative activities, thus providing an environment in which the children can develop their bilingualism to the highest level. Research studies indicate that learning well the language spoken at home helps students to be more creative and better able to overcome challenges. Furthermore, these studies have found that bilingual children who are literate in both languages perform better on achievement tests than their peers. Of course, maintaining a minority language is a process that demands significant effort. For the most part, language immersion programs in the US are by definition programs for the study of foreign or second languages, and do not support those US students who already speak Spanish as a home language. The purpose of ENL is to support specifically Spanish-speaking students, providing them with the resources to be able to contribute broadly to the globalized society of the 21st century.
Program directors:
Teresa Satterfield, Ph.D.
José R. Benkí, Ph.D.
