English has always been an important part of the education at Santa Maria Marianistas. In keeping with the tradition of excellence in English, the staff of the English Department is striving to give our students the best education in the language that is possible. Since Santa Maria was founded, the knowledge of English has become increasingly more important for success. One third of the world’s population speaks fluent English, that is about 1.9 billion people. The interesting thing is that of this one third of the world that speak English, for many it’s their second language. Only about 350 million speak it as their native language because they live in an English speaking country. The students of Santa Maria will be counted as part of this one third of the world’s population that speaks English as a second language.

Our aim is to help our students to develop all the language skills they will need to perform successfully in whatever they decide to dedicate themselves to in the future. Their English should also enable them to take advantage of all that is available through Internet and to communicate easily when dealing with English speaking visitors or traveling. We do our best to provide our students with a tool that will serve them well in the world of today and in the future.

Every year our students demonstrate good English on the tests that are administered and/or prepared by the Educational Testing Service (Pennsylvania, USA). The results on the TOEFL, one of these internationally recognized tests, taken by our seniors have been improving year by year (see article). This means that year by year our students are finishing Santa Maria better prepared to work and study and travel in English. This is our goal.