Edition: U.S. / Global

Unorthodox Path to a Language Teaches Schoolchildren to Live It

Published: March 29, 1989

In her unorthodox kindergarten, 6-year-old Brooklyn Schwartz spends one day learning in English, one day in Spanish, one day in English, alternating languages in this manner throughout the year.

On a recent Spanish day, her teacher, Angela Lochner, taught the rudiments of addition. Mrs. Lochner set up ''la bodega'' and Brooklyn and her classmates, roughly half of whom are of Hispanic origin, lined up at a makeship counter. Each bought an 8-cent snack of zanahorias con mani (carrots and peanut butter), counting out 5 cents for the carrot wedge and 3 cents for the peanut butter spread.

''Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco,'' said the blonde Brooklyn, squirming uneasily as she summoned these still unfamiliar words for Mrs. Lochner. A Different Approach

The approach used in Brooklyn Schwartz's class in the voluntary program at P.S. 84 on Manhattan's West Side is revolutionizing both language instruction and bilingual education in many parts of the nation. The method, known variously in educational jargon as dual language, two-way immersion or bilingual immersion, has the lofty aim of giving English-speaking elementary schoolchildren a truly fluent command of a foreign language, both spoken and written. At the same time, it hopes to preserve the native languages of children from Hispanic and other foreign backgrounds, not eradicate them.

Classes do not take the conventional approach of spending one period a day learning a language. The students learn mathematics, science, social studies and all other subjects in that language, alternating days in English, as in Mrs. Lochner's kindergarten, or alternating half days or weeks.

''You don't learn language in a vacuum, you learn it with content,'' says Dr. Concepcion Valadez, a professor of education at the University of California at Los Angeles who advocates the approach.

While the method has been adopted by certain elementary, middle and high schools in roughly 20 cities with sizable Hispanic populations, it is also found in a heavily Arabic neighborhood in Hamtramck, Mich., and a heavily Greek one in Long Island City, Queens.

Sixty-five other schools in 17 states run simple programs that are not aimed at immigrant children. Their students, few of whom are native speakers, learn their subjects in a foreign language, but do not alternate days with English. These classes started in Canada to teach French to English-speaking Canadians and caught fire in the United States largely in this decade.

The new bilingual programs that alternate English and a foreign language deliberately mix native speakers and English speakers, hoping that each group will pick up unfamiliar words from the other. Because they prod children to bolster their native language, not hide it, the programs differ from conventional approaches, which aim at exclusive use of English. Language and U.S. Economy

The programs have been growing as Americans recognize that one factor in their slipping position in the world marketplace may be a dearth of people who can speak foreign language. Only 22 percent of the nation's elementary schools offer languages while such instruction is the rule in rising powers like Japan and Western European countries.

With the numbers of Hispanic, Asian American and other immigrant children climbing sharply, many educators have realized that languages immigrants bring should be used as a resource, and not eliminated in the interest of assimilation.

Not everyone likes immersion programs. Advocates concede they are still viewed skeptically by parents who wonder whether their children will develop a strong grasp of science and math or whether young children will be overwhelmed by the extra burden of learning a language.

''Immersion is counterintuitive,'' said Myriam Met, the foreign language coordinator for public schools in Montgomery County, Md., which has placed classes in 3 of its 110 schools. ''It's hard to believe you can teach a subject in a language they don't know and expect them to do as well or better than if you taught them in a language they do know.'' 'Fossilized' Speech Errors

Hector Hammerly, an associate professor of applied linguistics at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, criticizes Canada's plentiful French immersion programs for producing children whose speech, while rapid, is studded with ''childish'' flaws. He examined 100 teen-agers who had been in programs for 12 years and found that because they had been forced at a young age to speak beyond their competence, early errors had become habitual and then ''fossilized.''

''The children come out speaking not in French, but in a faulty classroom pidgin, a classroom franglish,'' he argued.

He acknowledges that single-period language lessons may also produce incompetent speakers. What he advocates is a sort of middle way: that schools first teach children the fundamentals of a language, then use the language to teach academic subjects.

Bilingual immersion programs are not easy to carry out. They require cadres of hard-to-find bilingual teachers trained in the subtleties of teaching subjects in a foreign language.