About St. Anne Pacelli

Based in Columbus, Georgia, St. Anne Pacelli Catholic School's upper and lower schools were founded in 1952 and 1958. They are the only PK4-12 Catholic School serving southwestern Georgia. Their mission is to provide an excellent education in a faith-filled environment. Students participate in daily prayer and are challenged to become the best that they can become inside and outside the classroom. The student body is composed of students from many faiths, whose diversity strengthens their school.

Challenge

The student population of St. Anne Pacelli Catholic School, which is part of the Savannah, Georgia Diocese, includes hundreds of students whose cultural heritage includes a strong relationship to a language other than English. In response to students and parents desire to include culture and language in their education, the Diocese began a heritage language project to help children of all ages learn and preserve their family language. Working with the Diocese, St. Anne Pacelli sought out a solution to help their 9th to 12th grade students connect with their heritage through its' language.

The school decided that a software-based language learning system focused on building students reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Italian, and Japanese would provide the best opportunity to facilitate the new heritage language program. To meet their objectives, the software-based language learning system needed to be:

• Affordable
• Easy to implement
• Flexible to meet teachers and students needs

Solution

Transparent Language's Byki Deluxe language software in 6 languages was made available on the schools in-classroom language lab computers. Using Byki, the teachers were able to tailor individual vocabulary lists to each student's personal learning needs. The lists were created in conjunction with grammar and vocabulary workbooks that the teachers were already using to supplement their curriculum. For students who learned faster, additional vocabulary lists were provided to match their abilities.

The teachers also utilized Byki's achievement testing to help evaluate the students learning progress. Byki's testing program can administer test or quizzes to students on any of the vocabulary or phrase material that they learn in Byki. Students can take practice tests and when ready, print the final test results and submit to their teacher for a grade.

Results

"The carryover we have seen with our students using Byki is amazing. We have seen improvements in our student's language retention, accents, and pronunciation."

The teachers were able to observe immediate results. For example, students using the Byki Japanese program began writing sentences using Japanese Hiragana after only 2 weeks. Other students were able to create custom vocabulary lists to meet their personal interests, so they could understand online videos in that particular language.

The school is particularly pleased with the Byki voice recognition feature - that allows the students to record their speech word by word within the program - offering them instant feedback and opportunities for pronunciation improvement.

"Our students are able to carry away what they learn in Byki and start using it right away. With the students going back to quickly refresh the content that they have already learned, they are building a much stronger reinforcement of the material."