What's the best way to prepare for language immersion?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the concern, really, but YY kids are fine. They can all read and write, and many are conversant in Chinese by the time they graduate. There are many international families who speak other languages at home, who know a thing or two about language acquisition and still choose YY. Come by at pickup and you will hear French, Italian, Russian, Amharic, Japanese and more. They are not all crazy or delusional negligent parents.

All YY graduates that we know (we've had three kids there so quite a few) have gone on to do well at DCI, private schools, and other middle and high schools in DC and the suburbs. It's okay. Peace out, folks.

You know that these kids are "conversant" because you're what, fluent?

We're native speakers who left YY just last year. The truth is that only a small number YY students speak passable Chinese by the time they leave. These are the kids whose families have hosted au pairs for years, and/or have a native-speaking parent who's worked hard to require the kids to answer Chinese w/Chinese through the years. The % of these kids is in the single digits. The % of intl families who really speak other languages at home also in the single digits.

More than 80% of YY students, speak what I can only describe as hopeless Chinese by the time they graduate for all those years of immersion. I wish that the program were the success you describe, but it's not. If it were, we'd have stayed. But, yes, many of the kids turn out "fine" anyway for the simple reason that they're being raised by highly educated, affluent parents.

[Anonymous]

YY used to run a low-cost 4-week-long summer immersion camp. The camp was cancelled some years back for reasons that were never clear to us.

Too bad about the camp being nixed, because it did help level the playing field between the low SES and high SES families with au pairs. There were more low SES families in the school then, a lot more.

I'd wager that the camp will return under the next head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:YY used to run a low-cost 4-week-long summer immersion camp. The camp was cancelled some years back for reasons that were never clear to us.

Too bad about the camp being nixed, because it did help level the playing field between the low SES and high SES families with au pairs. There were more low SES families in the school then, a lot more.

I'd wager that the camp will return under the next head.

You must not be a YY parent. The summer camp used to be funded by OSSE money that was available at all DC schools. When the OSSE money went away, so did those camps, at YY and many other local schools. YY has offered two weeks of camp for at least the past three years. It is not free, but there are discounts for FARM families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the concern, really, but YY kids are fine. They can all read and write, and many are conversant in Chinese by the time they graduate. There are many international families who speak other languages at home, who know a thing or two about language acquisition and still choose YY. Come by at pickup and you will hear French, Italian, Russian, Amharic, Japanese and more. They are not all crazy or delusional negligent parents.

All YY graduates that we know (we've had three kids there so quite a few) have gone on to do well at DCI, private schools, and other middle and high schools in DC and the suburbs. It's okay. Peace out, folks.

You know that these kids are "conversant" because you're what, fluent?

We're native speakers who left YY just last year. The truth is that only a small number YY students speak passable Chinese by the time they leave. These are the kids whose families have hosted au pairs for years, and/or have a native-speaking parent who's worked hard to require the kids to answer Chinese w/Chinese through the years. The % of these kids is in the single digits. The % of intl families who really speak other languages at home also in the single digits.

More than 80% of YY students, speak what I can only describe as hopeless Chinese by the time they graduate for all those years of immersion. I wish that the program were the success you describe, but it's not. If it were, we'd have stayed. But, yes, many of the kids turn out "fine" anyway for the simple reason that they're being raised by highly educated, affluent parents.

Yes, we are mostly highly educated and affluent. So I'm not sure why you come coming back here to concern troll us about how clueless we are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the concern, really, but YY kids are fine. They can all read and write, and many are conversant in Chinese by the time they graduate. There are many international families who speak other languages at home, who know a thing or two about language acquisition and still choose YY. Come by at pickup and you will hear French, Italian, Russian, Amharic, Japanese and more. They are not all crazy or delusional negligent parents.

All YY graduates that we know (we've had three kids there so quite a few) have gone on to do well at DCI, private schools, and other middle and high schools in DC and the suburbs. It's okay. Peace out, folks.

You know that these kids are "conversant" because you're what, fluent?

We're native speakers who left YY just last year. The truth is that only a small number YY students speak passable Chinese by the time they leave. These are the kids whose families have hosted au pairs for years, and/or have a native-speaking parent who's worked hard to require the kids to answer Chinese w/Chinese through the years. The % of these kids is in the single digits. The % of intl families who really speak other languages at home also in the single digits.

More than 80% of YY students, speak what I can only describe as hopeless Chinese by the time they graduate for all those years of immersion. I wish that the program were the success you describe, but it's not. If it were, we'd have stayed. But, yes, many of the kids turn out "fine" anyway for the simple reason that they're being raised by highly educated, affluent parents.

No dog in this fight, but after a decade of interacting with YY families in my Cap Hill neighborhood, I've observed that it's non-Chinese speaking parents who like to claim that most of the students leave the program "conversant" or "proficient" in the language. Unfortunately, what I hear from the native Mandarin speakers I know around here is something quite different.

This is one of the problems of running an immersion program where hardly any of the parents speak the target language.

Call me a troll, go for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the concern, really, but YY kids are fine. They can all read and write, and many are conversant in Chinese by the time they graduate. There are many international families who speak other languages at home, who know a thing or two about language acquisition and still choose YY. Come by at pickup and you will hear French, Italian, Russian, Amharic, Japanese and more. They are not all crazy or delusional negligent parents.

All YY graduates that we know (we've had three kids there so quite a few) have gone on to do well at DCI, private schools, and other middle and high schools in DC and the suburbs. It's okay. Peace out, folks.

You know that these kids are "conversant" because you're what, fluent?

We're native speakers who left YY just last year. The truth is that only a small number YY students speak passable Chinese by the time they leave. These are the kids whose families have hosted au pairs for years, and/or have a native-speaking parent who's worked hard to require the kids to answer Chinese w/Chinese through the years. The % of these kids is in the single digits. The % of intl families who really speak other languages at home also in the single digits.

More than 80% of YY students, speak what I can only describe as hopeless Chinese by the time they graduate for all those years of immersion. I wish that the program were the success you describe, but it's not. If it were, we'd have stayed. But, yes, many of the kids turn out "fine" anyway for the simple reason that they're being raised by highly educated, affluent parents.

Yes, we are mostly highly educated and affluent. So I'm not sure why you come coming back here to concern troll us about how clueless we are.

Highly educated, affluent and clueless about how to raise bilingual children - none mutually exclusive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the concern, really, but YY kids are fine. They can all read and write, and many are conversant in Chinese by the time they graduate. There are many international families who speak other languages at home, who know a thing or two about language acquisition and still choose YY. Come by at pickup and you will hear French, Italian, Russian, Amharic, Japanese and more. They are not all crazy or delusional negligent parents.

All YY graduates that we know (we've had three kids there so quite a few) have gone on to do well at DCI, private schools, and other middle and high schools in DC and the suburbs. It's okay. Peace out, folks.

You know that these kids are "conversant" because you're what, fluent?

We're native speakers who left YY just last year. The truth is that only a small number YY students speak passable Chinese by the time they leave. These are the kids whose families have hosted au pairs for years, and/or have a native-speaking parent who's worked hard to require the kids to answer Chinese w/Chinese through the years. The % of these kids is in the single digits. The % of intl families who really speak other languages at home also in the single digits.

More than 80% of YY students, speak what I can only describe as hopeless Chinese by the time they graduate for all those years of immersion. I wish that the program were the success you describe, but it's not. If it were, we'd have stayed. But, yes, many of the kids turn out "fine" anyway for the simple reason that they're being raised by highly educated, affluent parents.

Yes, we are mostly highly educated and affluent. So I'm not sure why you come coming back here to concern troll us about how clueless we are.

If the shoe fits...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the concern, really, but YY kids are fine. They can all read and write, and many are conversant in Chinese by the time they graduate. There are many international families who speak other languages at home, who know a thing or two about language acquisition and still choose YY. Come by at pickup and you will hear French, Italian, Russian, Amharic, Japanese and more. They are not all crazy or delusional negligent parents.

All YY graduates that we know (we've had three kids there so quite a few) have gone on to do well at DCI, private schools, and other middle and high schools in DC and the suburbs. It's okay. Peace out, folks.

You know that these kids are "conversant" because you're what, fluent?

We're native speakers who left YY just last year. The truth is that only a small number YY students speak passable Chinese by the time they leave. These are the kids whose families have hosted au pairs for years, and/or have a native-speaking parent who's worked hard to require the kids to answer Chinese w/Chinese through the years. The % of these kids is in the single digits. The % of intl families who really speak other languages at home also in the single digits.

More than 80% of YY students, speak what I can only describe as hopeless Chinese by the time they graduate for all those years of immersion. I wish that the program were the success you describe, but it's not. If it were, we'd have stayed. But, yes, many of the kids turn out "fine" anyway for the simple reason that they're being raised by highly educated, affluent parents.

Yes, we are mostly highly educated and affluent. So I'm not sure why you come coming back here to concern troll us about how clueless we are.

If the shoe fits...

Why do you care so much? You left the school, so good for you. Other parents are happy, so good for them. Seriously I do not understand why you need to grind this axe over and over and over again.

Are you jealous that the opportunity to learn Chinese is squandered on children who can't/won't take full advantage of it?
Do you not want non-Chinese people to learn Chinese?
Are you angry that there is no preference for Chinese speakers?
Are you bitter because a parent/teacher/administrator personally treated you badly?
Do you hate charter/specialized schools?

I expect that you will turn this back on YY familes yet again and talk in circles about how our kids are no good in Chinese, au pairs, demographics, two-way immersion, immersion light, yada yada yada. I get that. But why on Earth do you care so much?

I have frequented these boards for years now, and have never, not once, seen anyone complain about Sela students not knowing any Hebrew, not hosting au pairs, not having any cultural connection to the school. Not once. What do you think the difference is?