By Elle Wood

MILFORD – The Milford Public Library offers a variety of language-learning programs for residents of any age.

Lea Rosell, director of the library, noticed the lack of these programs in Milford and wanted to provide something for the residents.

“There is just a significant need in the town of Milford,” said Ms. Rosell. “We service a lot of those people who work at Perdue (and) are immigrant families. So there is a large Hispanic community.”

Library officials hope that these programs can help connect the community.

“As an organization, we want to try to help people feel comfortable in this community and so providing English as a second language courses and access to things like Mango and bilingual story time, all of that helps make a more cohesive community,” said Ms. Rosell.

The Perdue Foundation recently awarded the library $2,916 to help provide public access to the Mango Learning Database, a language-learning application that provides over 70 conversational language courses.

It will be free for anyone with a Milford Public Library card, which is free to acquire. Since it is an online database, it can be accessed at any time of the day from anywhere, not just the library.

The library hopes the application enhances the programs they already offer and even create new programs.

“There is a lot of opportunity to even do an instructor-led program series here utilizing the Mango Languages Database,” said Ms. Rosell. “I also see this being helpful for those immersion students as well as their parents as they can work from home.”

They partner with Polytech High School, La Esperanza and Reformation Lutheran Church in Milford to provide the English as a second language programs.

“Those are always full,” said Ms. Rosell. “And we have multiple classes each week. We have a basic beginner and level one or two and even something on the weekends, mornings and evening.

“We really try to facilitate and work around people’s schedules as much as possible.”

Milford School District also has a Spanish language immersion program that they offer to elementary school students. They have the same academic content taught as other students, however, half of the day is taught in English, while the rest of the day will be in Spanish to help the students learn dual languages.

The library joined with the school to create a multilingual summer reading program for the students to keep up with the learning over the break.

Ms. Rosell hopes to continue to grow the programs they offer for language learning.

“I came from Lewes and down there we had a French conversation group and a Spanish conversation group,” said Mr. Rosell. “So I do hope to implement those types of groups here within the next fiscal year.”

For more information about the library visit www.milford.lib.de.us.