Since its start at Berkeley High School in 1993, the Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS) program has provided students who have grown up speaking Spanish with an intellectually stimulating track focused on building on their existing skills. An alternative to the traditional Spanish track, SNS tends to focus on sharpening academic vocabulary as well as comprehension of complex literary texts and videos.
This program was founded to support bilingual students who already have a background in Spanish, especially those that did not feel adequately represented in the standard Spanish progression. For the past 33 years, the BHS SNS program has been helping native speakers to feel more represented in their language class.
Susi Lopez, an Advanced Placement (AP)/International Baccalaureate (IB) Spanish, SNS 3, and Spanish 3 teacher of 16 years, notes that the one key difference between the two Spanish pipelines is conversational fluency.
“The native speaker students would be able to go to any Spanish-speaking country and reach the goal of communicating with the people from that place successfully,” Lopez said. She adds that the purpose of SNS is less about creating student comfort with speaking Spanish, but more about elevating the Spanish that the students already have by increasing their academic language.
“I have students in Spanish for Native Speakers that could communicate really well, (but) they don’t necessarily have the academic Spanish — the knowledge of vast academic vocabulary that they would need in order to perform well on a volunteer opportunity or a job,” Lopez said.
In the SNS track, Lopez uses the skills that her students are already familiar with to build off of and augment their use of the language. For her standard Spanish track class, she uses what is called the “total physical response and storytelling” method, a technique that uses an abundance of different gestures while talking to help students learn verbs. Additionally, students spend a lot of time reading. For her SNS classes, Lopez uses more complex texts as well as TV shows to help students improve their academic language skills.
“(SNS) is interesting because you get to read a lot of books in Spanish, and unlike (AP) Spanish Lit or AP (Spanish Language), you get to choose what you read,” Alegra Smith, a BHS junior who has progressed through all these classes, said, “I chose to read ‘The Hunger Games,’ which I’d already read in English, so that was interesting, seeing that kind of perspective.”
Lorenzo Cohen, a BHS junior who is currently in AP Spanish Language after having taken SNS 2 and 3, agrees with Smith’s view on the interesting texts being taught in the SNS class. “We’re looking at actual writing in Spanish or articles,” he said.
With 8.9 percent of Berkley residents’ first language being Spanish, BHS has many students who have spoken Spanish from a very early age. For Smith, whose first language was Spanish, having a class where students can speak conversationally is important so these students can practice Spanish outside of school with others that also have a high level of fluency.
“It (SNS) also helps in learning how to converse with people in general. The whole class is not supposed to speak English — whenever you’re talking to classmates, you’re speaking in Spanish,” Cohen said, “So I think the biggest thing is speaking Spanish naturally and in a public setting.”
After BHS students complete SNS 3 or Spanish 4, the two Spanish pipelines both merge into AP Spanish Language, creating a class of students with diverse Spanish skill sets.
“It is one of the best things at the school with the programs that we have, because in the AP class we have kids that can speak really well but are still a little weak on their grammar, or kids who came from the regular track whose grammar is fantastic, but they need practice speaking,” Lopez said, “We put those two kids together, and then they can help each other and learn from each other, and it really is a magical thing that happens when I see them work together and learn together from each other.”
The SNS track provides BHS students who have a background of speaking Spanish with a unique opportunity to improve their language skill set, in a classroom geared specifically towards their needs.
These classes focus on increasing students’ comprehension of complex texts and videos, rather than a basic understanding of vocabulary and grammar.