By Gigi Mu?oz David

SPANISH will again be taught in selected public high schools to better prepare students to communicate in a widely used second language.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the Special Program in Foreign Language would ?prepare students for meaningful interaction in a linguistically diverse global workplace.?

The language would be taught only in special classes at schools whose students had mastered English and shown the ability to learn another foreign language, Lapus said.

The program aims to develop students? skills in listening, reading, writing, speaking and viewing, and will be offered in one public high school per region. Each school will have two classes of 35 students.

In selecting the pilot schools, the department will consider only secondary schools with the highest mean percentage score in English in the whole region.

The school should also be able to provide substitute teachers who will take over the classes of the foreign language teachers while they are on a two-month training program at the Instituto Cervantes.

Senior Education Specialist Rose Domingo said the program would begin on a pilot basis in school year 2009-2010.

She said the program was developed after President Arroyo visited Spain in 2007 and learned that call center agents in the Philippines could earn double if they knew how to speak Spanish.

In 1987, the country abolished Spanish as one of its official languages and lifted the requirement that college students learn it. With AFP