TEMECULA - Seventeen-year-old Alex Ruelas has no problem pronouncing words in Spanish, which he speaks at home with his Mexican-born parents.

Figuring out where the accent marks go on the page, however, is a bit tougher for the Temecula Valley High School junior.

Until this year, Alex might have been in limbo in Spanish classes, with oral skills more advanced than those of his peers but written skills that had yet to catch up. In the fall, Temecula high schools offered, for the first time, Spanish classes for Spanish-speaking students.

Temecula Valley Unified School District trustees unanimously approved the classes last year, but the idea initially surprised board President Stewart Morris.

"I heard 'Spanish for Spanish speakers' and it kind of caught me off guard," he said. "Once they explained to me what it really was … the light went on."

Supporters say these classes are needed for the same reason that American children who grow up speaking English at home study English in school.

Native Spanish speakers can be bored in regular Spanish classes because their peers are learning basic words they have known for years. But the same students may be lost in higher-level language classes without formal training.

"To put that child in a Spanish 1 class because they don't have the grammar (skills) is really a waste of their time because they don't need that instruction," said Dianne Vaez, the district's director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. "What they need is instruction in grammar, reading and writing."

Vaez said Temecula teachers are pleased with the fledgling programs, which serve about 160 students at the district's three high schools. She said the only problem noted so far is that some students placed in the more advanced course really belong in the beginners' classes and vice versa.

Nationwide, anecdotal evidence suggests classes for native speakers are becoming more popular, said Joy Peyton, vice president of the Center for Applied Linguistics, a Washington-based nonprofit that promotes the teaching of different languages and cultures. Her organization, however, does not track the prevalence of these so-called heritage language programs.

"They're getting, I would say, more well-established because some people have started programs that are strong and successful programs, and they serve as leaders for other schools that want to start programs," Peyton said.

Many high schools, including Temecula's, hope these classes will ultimately spur Spanish-speaking students to take college-level classes in the subject.

Last year, Latinos made up nearly 60 percent of students who took the Advanced Placement Spanish language or literature tests. A decade earlier, fewer than half the test-takers were Latino. The numbers don't separate native speakers from non-natives.

Evangelina Perez, who teaches the two Spanish for native speakers classes at Temecula Valley High, said her students' familiarity with the language means she can teach them more "intricate" Spanish-language literature by writers such as Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mexican-born Octavio Paz.

"They're getting introduced to all the authors of the Spanish-speaking world," Perez said.

She also doesn't need to use the tricks she uses with her traditional classes, such as teaching concepts with words that are similar in Spanish and English.

For instance, Perez recently taught students how Spanish adjectives can be transformed into adverbs by adding "mente" to the end, just as English adjectives can be transformed by adding "ly." To illustrate the concept for students in her regular classes, Perez used the word particularmente as an example because it has the same root as the English version, "particularly."

Perhaps the biggest difference is that classes for native speakers are taught almost entirely in Spanish, while regular classes often use English. Perez has even included a handful of high-performing nonnative students in her new classes to increase their exposure to the language.

Briana Cabello, a Temecula Valley High junior who speaks a mix of Spanish and English at home, said her past classes concentrated only on teaching the Spanish language while her new class covers history and other subjects.

"It's more like a normal class in Spanish," she said.

Though many native students excel at speaking, they still have words to learn. For instance, when Perez questioned students in class about their essays on their dream houses, the teenagers sometimes lapsed into English to explain why they wanted a two-story house or a home in Mississippi.

Alex, like some of his friends, signed up for the class because he thought it would be an "easy A," but said he's not fluent in Spanish and sometimes struggles with the vocabulary.

"I thought it was going to be easy," he said, "but it's a little harder than I thought it would be."

Contact staff writer Rani Gupta at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2625, or rgupta@californian.com.