Foreign languages in Ventura County and beyond
Learning another language can be challenging, but is incredibly rewarding in an increasingly globalized world, not to mention the mental acuity practicing a language provides.
According to the Eton Institute, “the benefits of learning a new language include higher scores on standardized exams in math, reading comprehension and vocabulary by multilingual students compared to the scores of monolingual students.”
With almost 7000 languages in existence, we decided to investigate the diversity of offerings at Oak Park High School and across Ventura County.
From our calculations (shown in the graph), the average of languages taught per school in Ventura County is 2.8 — OPHS is above this average with 4 languages. Another aspect that distinguishes Oak Park is the choice to learn Chinese, with only 25 percent of total schools in the county including that option.
In overwhelming popularity, Spanish has proven to be the most offered language —100 percent of Ventura County schools offer it. This may be in correlation to the second-largest demographic in Ventura County being those of Hispanic or Latino descent.
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Shoshana Medved served as the Ombudsman for the 2020-2021 school year. She served as the Public Relations Manager for the 2019-2020 school year.
Oliver Carter is the Editor-in-Chief of the Talon, alongside Editor-in-Chief Lucy Heine-Van Fossen and Magazine Editor-in-Chief Mina Jung. He joined the...
Leonie Humig served as a Senior Staff Writer for the 2019-20 school year.
Kellen Beckett joined the Talon in the 2017-2018 school year and became the Art Director for the 2018-2019 school year. He served as a News Editor for...
Jay Dugar is a senior at Oak Park High School and Managing Editor for the 2020-21 school year. He served as Managing Editor between 2018-20 and a staff...
Ellie Hand served as the Online Editor for the 2020-21 school year. She served as the Digital Media Manager from 2018-2019.
Michael B Van Slooten • Apr 3, 2020 at 9:18 pm
Excellent piece, folks! Being bilingual -or better yet, a polyglot- is a huge plus!