FORK UNION, VA — Drew Leydig, a senior day student of Fork Union Military Academy, earned Honorable Mention honors for the 2021 National Spanish Exam, the NSE announced this week.
Leydig, who took the Spanish 5 exam, along with 10 Spanish 1 students from the Academy took the National Spanish Exam last month for the first time in school history, thanks to their World Languages Department Head CAPT Mark Boyd.
“When COL Coggins requested I administer some type of foreign language standardized assessment, I immediately thought of the National Spanish Exam since I have administered it before,” said Boyd. “There are few students who take the Spanish 5 exam compared to Spanish 1 or 2, and there were only 2,242 non-native students that took the Spanish 5 exam. Therefore, Drew earning Honorable Mention honors, is a huge accomplishment!”
To earn Honorable Mention (Mención Honorífica) honors, the Fork Union, Va., native scored from the 50th through the 74th percentiles.
The National Spanish Exams are a motivational contest to recognize student achievement in the study of Spanish and to stimulate interest in the teaching and learning of Spanish. The exams are online, standardized assessment tools for grades 7-12, given voluntarily by about 4,000 middle and high school teachers to over 55,000 students throughout the United States to measure performance and achievement of students who are studying Spanish as a second language.