As t h e number of required courses in schools diminishes, non-collegebound Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, or Cuban-American students frequently fail t o see the value of enrolling in Spanish courses. This article examines how, through t h e development of appropriate promotional material focused on t h e specific goals and needs of native speakers, this problem was faced by the foreign language department at a public high school with a 40% Mexican-American student population.The Spanish t e a c h e r employed in a multiethnicschool frequently has t h e opportunity t o teach students who a r e already familiar with the Spanish language and culture. Unfortunately, all too of t e n t h e s e Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, o r Cuban-American students fail to see what value such courses might have for them.The ability to r e a d a n d w r i t e Spanish could well be a vital job skill f o r such a student--a skill which would enable him or her to get a better job with a higher salary, and a skill with which h e o r s h e is already partly familiar. Furthermore, Hispanic-American students will
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.