Tips for starting immersion?
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Anonymous
| Consider downloading Duolingo and attempting to learn Spanish. Your kids may be impressed that you're making the effort. And they can "teach" you. |
Anonymous
In a way, this interaction is one of the things you need to be prepared for going in. Native speakers will take every opportunity to tell you that a child of non-native speakers is not fluent and will never be fluent. They will always judge you and look down at you. |
Anonymous
Very much this. |
Anonymous
Please don't generalize about what an entire group "will always" do, and maybe check your own projections and insecurities. |
Anonymous
Yeah, “shiny objects” isn’t really something I’ve ever hear in Spanish. Also, the notion that immersion schools are somehow a trinket to amuse UMC families is strange. We didn’t speak much Spanish to our son until he started immersion, but when he did we all switched to speaking mostly Spanish at home, and it’s been great. Very many families at our school are heritage speakers who depend on an immersion school to maintain their culture. |
Anonymous
Ironically your inability to correctly parse the English language (guessing because it isn't your first language) combined with defensiveness combined to cause you to misunderstand the written word. "They" in the last sentence refers to the group of native speakers who will judge you. "Always" doesn't mean "all". -Ironically signed Someone who judges your English the way you judge our 2nd language |
Anonymous
I didn't use that phrase to describe you all, but I will from now on. It is a genius description. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| My son is in a private Spanish immersion school but is only 2.5. He was really starting to use a lot of Spanish (for a 2.5 year old) but a week after school ended he refused to use any Spanish. If we said a word in Spanish he would say no and tell us the word in English. And my husband is a native Spanish speaker and I have a basic fluency level. So have a plan to keep the language alive at home and breaks! |
Anonymous
Absolutely agree! My child was pretty miserable in immersion/bilingual. Some UMC families act like it's the gold standard but the truth is that it's not for every child nor every family. Not because of lack of ability (it's true that young brains can pick up a new language easily in general), but not every child is comfortable with the ambiguity that is involved in expressing themselves in a language that is not native for them. Keep your eyes open and listen to your instincts. |
Anonymous
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I think the tips will depend on your goals.
If your goal is to make sure she is as bilingual as possible, turn all media at home to Spanish. TV, radio, podcasts, etc. As someone mentioned, it's pretty easy to learn to read spanish and if you read to her a lot, you'll learn a good bit too. That helps with school events and communicating with her Spanish teachers (not that you'll speak, but you'll be able to follow along on field trips etc.) If your goal is more just to make her happy, as some else said, just set lower expectations and don't push too much. |
Anonymous
Young brains can pick a new language, more easily, but there absolutely is a lack or lesser ability among kids, just like adults. There is some evidence to suggest language ability is genetic, so it might just not be your kid's strength, and it is hard to sublimate ego doing something that comes harder to you than others. |
Anonymous
The pp’s point was more nuanced. I was a kid who attended immersion and hated it, but I’m very good at languages and learned the target language and others easily later. But as a little kid I found immersion incredibly stressful and anxiety provoking, almost traumatic. |
Anonymous
Kids with anxiety, kids who are perfectionist, kids who see black and white, kids who can’t deal with ambiguity and unknowns coming from non Spanish speaking household will not do well and no surprises there. I put my kid in at K and overwhelming majority of kids were there since ECE and knew Spanish. He is easy going and although didn’t understand anything at the beginning, he had a great teacher. Kids that young pick it up pretty quickly but PP above is also correct. Some kids pick it up much more easily than others like my son who is in the top Spanish group and scored >90% on MAP in Spanish. We speak no Spanish and do no outside support. Some kids struggle and it’s not uncommon for some families to leave immersion. Most non-native kids do fine and are in the middle. As the kids go higher up in the grades, the expectation gets higher and it’s not uncommon for some families to leave immersion if their kid is struggling. |
Anonymous
“ una estrategia de marketing diseñada para atraer a los padres de clase media alta hacia los objetos brillantes.” So you really don’t understand the Google translate output that you posted at all, huh? This monolingual person trying to judge bilingual people raising their kids bilingual with the help of immersion school is really pathetic. How did Spanish hurt you, PP? |