Rationale for Studying Foreign Languages Studying a foreign language completes and improves a student’s education while providing the foundation for further personal enrichment, scholastic achievement, and economic opportunity¬ ties. The need for California students to learn and understand a foreign language is more evident today than in times past. In recent years Cali¬fornia has been transforming its education system so that children, the state’s future leaders, are able to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century. This framework seeks to improve foreign language education by relying on the guidelines of the Language Learning Continuum (for more information, see Chapter 2, Figure 1). It describes what students 1 California Department of Education Created