Experiences with language immersion schools

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Back to the OP, our son attended Spanish-language daycare in Arlington since he was 11 months old and has a native accent. He just started dual-immersion kindergarten (half the day in English, half the day in Spanish) here in Arlington as well and seems to love it.


I'm the 11:00 poster. Would you be willing to post the name of your Spanish Language daycare and how you found it?

I did a search on these forums and only came up with DC ones, nothing in NoVA. Also searched on Yahoo... not much luck.

Thanks.


I'm the one who posted about this. We're in Arlington and the County publishes a directory of in-home child care providers that lists, among other things, the language/s used:

Child Care Information - 703-228-1685
The goals of Child Day Care Services are to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of children in child care facilities and to assist parents to become self-sufficient by subsidizing the cost of child care services for eligible persons who are employed or in training which leads to employment. The Child Care Office licenses day care facilities; monitors their compliance with local child care ordinances, state standards, and regulations; and provides education and training for providers of child care. The Child Care Office has a directory of child day care facilities (184K PDF Format) and a list of family day care providers (127K PDF Format) . You can also order these directories by calling 703-228-1685.

http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/HumanServices/services/family/HumanServicesServicesFamilyChildrenFamily.aspx#childcare

Good luck!
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I'm a psychologist working in a school with a partial language immersion program (Math and Science in Spanish, the rest in English). I think it is great for some kids and not good for others. Some things to consider:

It is better for a child with no experience in the second language to start the program as early (i.e., kindergarten or 1st grade).

Children who have difficulty academically in their first language will have even more difficulty with 2 languages.

Children who have difficulty with transitions may have difficulty switching from English to the other language or, if the classes are taught by different teachers, adjusting to differences in teaching/classroom management style.

Also to consider, state tests are in English, and although some immersion programs try to make sure kids know the necessary terminology in English, things always show up that kids don't know because they were taught that skill or information in another language.

Hope this helps!


I think the poster made some good points, but I do have a few comments in response:

1. Most school districts in fact limit entry to the program to kindergarteners and 1st graders. I know from experience that Arlington does.

2. Another comment regarding Arlington's program - traditionally, the program offered math, science, and some Spanish language arts in Spanish. This year, they've eliminated early release on Wednesdays so that they could add more Spanish language arts, science, and art/music (depending on the grade) in Spanish. Arlington's program continues through middle school and the County offers very advanced special language courses in high school for graduates of the immersion program and other native speakers - they've upped the language arts quotient and added additional subjects (art/music) because they found that some kids were not prepared to do middle school-quality written work in Spanish under the previous format.

3. I'm not an expert but it seems a stretch to say that a child with academic difficulties in his/her first language will have that many more difficulties with a second language. It seems to me that some children pick up another language quicker than others, and some do have particular subject difficulties. LDs/speech issues are another matter all together.

Our son's preschool "over-diagnoses/labels" kids and I'm glad our son already knew a second language before going to kindergarten -- otherwise, I would've feared sending him to an immersion program. We've seen that, despite all sorts of concerns expressed by the preschool at the time, he's strong in both his languages and that bilingualism doesn't cause problems. He actually is now happy in an immersion program where both his languages are valued. So, I'd certainly ask the school about learning/academic issues and try to do some research, but I wouldn't necessarily assume that an immersion program will automatically make things worse.

The other points about testing and transitions I really can't speak to. I just know, as another PP pointed out, that in other parts of the world, children are raised learning 2, 3 or more languages (I think that in some Scandinavian countries, kids learn up to 4 other languages by the time they graduate high school). Only in this country do people worry that learning other languages can create problems for children.
Anonymous


Respectfully, there is nothing at all "respectful" about your response. I am not the English teacher who posted, but to call her (him?) "intellectually lazy" because she bothered to post her own suspicions about a single student is really below board. She may be wrong. She didn't say immersion is always bad. She merely stated that she wondered if the child struggled in part because she hadn't had as much traditional schooling on English grammar rules. As for "misconceptions about being bilingual", I must say that I doubt that those misconceptions are as prevalent on this particular board. I've known a number of children who are bilingual. Some are raised by bilingual parents. Some are products of immersion schools.

I'm quite certain the results one gets from these programs is dependent on a NUMBER of different factors, and I suspect that the parents roles are a piece of it. I can tell you from experience, that the one big drawback of sending your child to an immersion school where neither parent speaks the language, and especially if the language is "more" foreign... your child WILL lose the ability to speak (and the benefit of the immersion program) if he/she doesn't continue to speak the language throughout his life. So if you do a Chinese language immersion program, and your middle/high school doesn't offer Chinese, and neither parent speaks Chinese, and you don't otherwise socialize with Chinese speakers... your child will gradually lose his ability.

That said, I think they're terrific programs... but look at the whole picture. Not just the program.

Perhaps "intellectually lazy" was too strong but the teacher did say that his/her experiences with that one student did in fact lead him to believe that immersion programs "mess" with a child's English proficiency.

You are right about "use it or lose it" though, although again, Americans are very lazy about learning other languages. In this day and age, there are so many ways to keep up a language that somehow never pop into people's heads. All the cable companies offer foreign language channels, including channels in more "exotic" languages like Chinese. There are kids programs/movies in foreign languages, newspapers and magazines, surfing the web, internet radio, online bookstores in different languages...In areas like this, you can definitely find appropriate classes for kids in many languages outside of school. As someone who speaks 4 other languages (two of them fluently), I've used methods like these to learn/keep up my languages. I don't mean this to be critical but just to point out that parents and/or the child, if they're proactive, can find plenty of ways to at least maintain a second language at a reasonable level of proficiency, even if immersion programs stop at the elementary school level.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:


Respectfully, there is nothing at all "respectful" about your response. I am not the English teacher who posted, but to call her (him?) "intellectually lazy" because she bothered to post her own suspicions about a single student is really below board. She may be wrong. She didn't say immersion is always bad. She merely stated that she wondered if the child struggled in part because she hadn't had as much traditional schooling on English grammar rules. As for "misconceptions about being bilingual", I must say that I doubt that those misconceptions are as prevalent on this particular board. I've known a number of children who are bilingual. Some are raised by bilingual parents. Some are products of immersion schools.

I'm quite certain the results one gets from these programs is dependent on a NUMBER of different factors, and I suspect that the parents roles are a piece of it. I can tell you from experience, that the one big drawback of sending your child to an immersion school where neither parent speaks the language, and especially if the language is "more" foreign... your child WILL lose the ability to speak (and the benefit of the immersion program) if he/she doesn't continue to speak the language throughout his life. So if you do a Chinese language immersion program, and your middle/high school doesn't offer Chinese, and neither parent speaks Chinese, and you don't otherwise socialize with Chinese speakers... your child will gradually lose his ability.

That said, I think they're terrific programs... but look at the whole picture. Not just the program.

Perhaps "intellectually lazy" was too strong but the teacher did say that his/her experiences with that one student did in fact lead him to believe that immersion programs "mess" with a child's English proficiency.

You are right about "use it or lose it" though, although again, Americans are very lazy about learning other languages. In this day and age, there are so many ways to keep up a language that somehow never pop into people's heads. All the cable companies offer foreign language channels, including channels in more "exotic" languages like Chinese. There are kids programs/movies in foreign languages, newspapers and magazines, surfing the web, internet radio, online bookstores in different languages...In areas like this, you can definitely find appropriate classes for kids in many languages outside of school. As someone who speaks 4 other languages (two of them fluently), I've used methods like these to learn/keep up my languages. I don't mean this to be critical but just to point out that parents and/or the child, if they're proactive, can find plenty of ways to at least maintain a second language at a reasonable level of proficiency, even if immersion programs stop at the elementary school level.

Actually, I'll partially correct myself - the English teacher said, on the basis of one student, that s/he believes that immersion programs "mess" with a child's English grammatical abilities.

But even this statement is manifestly incorrect, as anyone familiar with bilingualism/immersion programs would know.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
I'm the one who posted about this. We're in Arlington and the County publishes a directory of in-home child care providers that lists, among other things, the language/s used:

Child Care Information - 703-228-1685
The goals of Child Day Care Services are to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of children in child care facilities and to assist parents to become self-sufficient by subsidizing the cost of child care services for eligible persons who are employed or in training which leads to employment. The Child Care Office licenses day care facilities; monitors their compliance with local child care ordinances, state standards, and regulations; and provides education and training for providers of child care. The Child Care Office has a directory of child day care facilities (184K PDF Format) and a list of family day care providers (127K PDF Format) . You can also order these directories by calling 703-228-1685.

http://www.arlingtonva.us/departments/HumanServices/services/family/HumanServicesServicesFamilyChildrenFamily.aspx#childcare

Good luck!


11:00 poster again. Thanks for posting this info.
Anonymous
Hi OP - one more thing to consider when thinking about immersion program since neither of you parents speaks the immersion laguage - will you be able to help your child with homework? help with learning to read and write in that language? how will your child learn to read in English? will you work with him in the evenings on that?

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:I am considering all elementary school options for my DS.

Important point: Neither my husband nor I speak a foreign language.

Can people share actual experiences they have had both positive and negative.

Any longer terms points of view?

Thanks!


Hi OP, are you looking at bilingual programs as well as immersion, i.e. one language? There are many variations of language instruction methodologies. Some schools start 100% at pre-k to 1st or 2nd and then go 50/50. Others have only a few hours of foreign language a week. I'm tri-lingual and my husband bilingual and we still had trouble sorting it all out. We'll be in 50-50 English/Spanish through middle school.

The greater DC area has a wealth of language and cultural educational options. Many have active parent groups where you can learn and enjoy along with your child.

My personal experience with immersion (at the urging for my monolingual parents) was of huge academic benefit IMO and just plain fun growing up. (I picked up the third language with my DH.)

As pp mentioned, much of the rest of the world communicates in more than one language to varying degrees of fluency. There's no one way to do it and it's never too late to start learning another language and other cultures.

Hope you and DC enjoy school! (The book by G'town profs is called Bilingual Edge.)
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Hi OP - one more thing to consider when thinking about immersion program since neither of you parents speaks the immersion laguage - will you be able to help your child with homework? help with learning to read and write in that language? how will your child learn to read in English? will you work with him in the evenings on that?



In the dual immersion program in Arlington, children learn to read simultaneously in Spanish and English. In other programs where it is 100 percent in the target language for the first couple of years, English reading is taught later.

Regarding reading, there's one important thing to realize -- reading is a skill that needs to be learned only once. Thus, if a child learns to read first in Spanish, those reading skills transfer with little difficulty to learning to read in English. Obviously, if the other language involves another alphabet or character set (Chinese), it's a bit more complicated.

From what I understand about our son's program, many children who enter the program as monolingual English speakers actually learn to read first in Spanish because the spelling rules are much simpler.

In terms of homework, in an immersion program, you help your child with the underlying concepts. I don't know if it's any more daunting than trying to help your child in a subject that you were terrible in as a kid, like math.

The nice thing about immersion is that your child learns the language by doing -- rather than having to learn later by memorizing verb tables etc. To us, there was no hesitation. The opportunity to acquire near-native proficiency in another language - and the advantages in developing one's English skills and subsequent learning of a third language - really only happens through immersion, or if your child later turns out to be gifted in language learning
Anonymous
I was in the MoCo immersion program in elementary school. I agree with the PP who said she felt it to be a boon academically and also lot of fun. I kept taking the language (French) through HS, but not in college. Many, many years later, I can still speak it enough to communicate, although my comprehension is better. It is such a cool thing to have another language and to have the ability to connect with people from other countries. I think it's really empowering for a child. Especially for those (like me) from monolingual families.
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