THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 24, 1995 TAG: 9503230141
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LORI A. DENNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Green Run High School teachers and students recently held a three-day International Market where they invited middle school students to come and barter for foreign food and wares.
The catch was that students had to barter in one of five languages - Spanish, German, Latin, French or Russian.
During one day of the hourlong marketplace, about 80 Plaza Middle School students milled around the five storefront shops.
Second-year language students and others manned the shops and bargained with the middle school students in a foreign tongue.
Clifford Brown and Wendy Lowe, both eighth-graders at Plaza, stood in front of the Latin store, checking their dictionaries for the correct pronunciation for ``How much is it worth?''
``This (Latin) or maybe German. They're the hardest,'' said Brown, as he spewed forth a jumbled mixture of Latin sounds that he was reading from a dictionary given to help students decipher certain phrases.
``What?'' asked Josh Simons, a ninth-grader at Green Run who was manning the Latin booth.
Brown gave up translating from his dictionary and asked Simons how much a genie lamp key ring was in English.
For students like Brown, a first-year Spanish student, it was his first shot at speaking a foreign language in a practical situation.
It also was the first chance for students from Landstown and Larkspur middle schools, which feed into Green Run, to test their skills in a practical way.
``This is to promote languages from the feeder schools on up to high school,'' said Pat Curtis-Lique, a Spanish teacher who has taught at Green Run for 10 years and heads the foreign language department there. ``Sometimes what they see in the classroom doesn't seem real. Here, it's a little more real because they can see how languages can be used.''
Before the marketplace was opened, middle school students were sent a translation dictionary for the five languages, a passport to be stamped at each booth, and a catalog of trinkets that were for sale.
When students first entered the commons area, they exchanged American money for the appropriate foreign currency, depending on what they wanted to buy.
The International Market, which took about four months to plan and 200 hours to build, was funded by a $500 grant that the department had won last year to promote foreign languages, said Curtis-Lique.
Curtis-Lique's husband, Ron, built the storefronts that resemble their respective countries. For example, the Russian store was built to resemble the Kremlin.
Students and club members sold trinkets, like scepters and crowns, from the Latin store and sombreros from the Spanish store. Students also dressed in appropriate garb - flamenco dresses for some females manning the Spanish store and white sheets for those at the Latin booth.
For eighth-grader Michael Boyd, Spanish was a breeze.
He ambled up to the Spanish store and had no problems ordering a sombrero, which cost $3 in American money and equals 30 Spanish pesos. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos
by CHARLIE MEADS
German language students Wolf Horne, left, Justin Logan, Teresa
Richardson and Zack Pattee do a German dance in the Green Run High
foreign language market place.
Spanish language student Evelynne Hood, right, sells items to
students from Plaza Middle School during the Green Run High
International Market.
by CNB