Language immersion/lessons
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Anonymous
+ 1 to all of this. |
Anonymous
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The above article in a serious psychological journal referencing a meta-analytical review of the effects of bilingualism on executive functioning in adults, should give the parents who go for years and years of half-baked language immersion in DC public schools pause.
I'm raising my children fully bilingual to shore up their ethnic identity, to help them communicate well with immigrant relatives whose English is weak, and to increase their employability, knock on wood, as adults. I'm not raising them bilingual in the vain hope of making them smarter than monolingual peers in this country. The findings of the study, summarized in the abstract at the link above, are hard to ignore. Because of enduring experience of managing two languages, bilinguals have been argued to develop superior executive functioning compared with monolinguals. Despite extensive investigation, there is, however, no consensus regarding the existence of such a bilingual advantage. Here we synthesized comparisons of bilinguals’ and monolinguals’ performance in six executive domains using 891 effect sizes from 152 studies on adults. We also included unpublished data, and considered the potential influence of a number of study-, task-, and participant-related variables. Before correcting estimates for observed publication bias, our analyses revealed a very small bilingual advantage for inhibition, shifting, and working memory, but not for monitoring or attention. No evidence for a bilingual advantage remained after correcting for bias. For verbal fluency, our analyses indicated a small bilingual disadvantage, possibly reflecting less exposure for each individual language when using two languages in a balanced manner. Moreover, moderator analyses did not support theoretical presuppositions concerning the bilingual advantage. We conclude that the available evidence does not provide systematic support for the widely held notion that bilingualism is associated with benefits in cognitive control functions in adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved). |
Anonymous
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I took Russian, Finnish, Latin, German, English and Spanish in US. None of it was a waste, not even German I have never used. I could pick up German on my own if I needed it.
Everybody I know took 3 foreign languages. Some are better at Russian because of exposure, some in Finnish, most are can carry a conversation in English. Learning all those languages does not come at an expense of other subjects. We beat everybody in math, science and ELA (well, our ela) on our continent last time it was measured. Learning languages is not hard. Bigger countries don't have a culture of learning languages. While I had a great Spanish teacher in US, he was all over the place and did not teach the language the way I had been used to learning languages. DC is learning 2 foreign languages right now. I don't care for him to be bilingual but because we started quite early, he can probably just chill in his future Spanish classes or take Italian or French or simply take a test for credit. Now that saves up a lot of time to study for other classes. I think this early exposure is important to kids to whom languages don't come easily, and a parent should know that. |
Anonymous
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Braggart, sounds like you're Finnish, or Russo-Finnish, and you studied Indo-European languages (both living and dead) as second, third and fourth languages. Not an unusual path for Finns, at least during the Cold War.
OK, but you grew up in multi-lingual Europe, not the East Coast of the US, and didn't jump between learning very difficult Asian tonal languages using non-phonetic writing systems and Indo -European languages. When you're up against 3,000 characters for basic literacy in Chinese, best to stick with learning to speak, write and write just two languages (possibly multiple dialects of Chinese) as a kid, Chinese and English. Add whatever you want as an adult. |
Anonymous
| If you can't get into a DC immersion school, maybe consider private like Waterfront Academy, a Spanish bilingual school (http://www.waterfrontacademy.org) |
Anonymous
And Catholic. I’d happily pay for a private Spanish immersion Montessori, but I do not want my child being taught a faith that isn’t ours. |
Anonymous
Get real. If it’s Spanish, you can bet that the benefits of being bilingual is not exaggerated in this country. After English, it’s the 2nd most widely spoken language in the US. I took French in school and now in retrospect, wished I had taken Spanish. I’m in the medical field and need a phone interpreter regularly. There are jobs in my field that specifically is looking for someone who is able to speak Spanish or says Spanish speaking a plus. I’m sure other service oriented fiends like law, business, marketing, etc.. it would be greatly beneficial. The majority of people in 1st world countries are at least bilingual. Not so in the US which is clearly a disadvantage and it’s a shame that all schools don’t start a 2nd language seriously in early elementary like other countries. In addition, the executive functioning benefits are also easy to see. Kids learn very young to switch back and forth and organize what they want to say in 2 languages in addition to reading and writing. Learning to be bilingual in itself is a challenging curriculum. |
Anonymous
I also want to add that it’s just too funny how someone post an abstract of a meta-analysis and people here jump on it and say there is not much benefit to bilingualism. It’s obvious these people are not in the science oriented fields. Seriously? Do you folks even know what a meta-analysis is and the weaknesses of it? You believe that bilingualism does not have much benefit from a 1 paragraph abstract without reviewing the sample size, methods, parameters, statistical analysis, etc?? I could go on and on.... |
Anonymous
| Social scientist who dived into the study and found its methodology sound. The analysis that executive function in adults is not improved by growing up bilingual, despite the popularity of the counter-veiling view, is well supported. The analysts do not argue that learning foreign languages isn't useful in other ways. I see that nobody has argued that on this thread either. |
Anonymous
I'm from a European country with several official languages where we didn't start studying a second language seriously until age 9. It's an American urban myth that Europeans generally start studying 2nd languages seriously in early elementary! |
Anonymous
Yes but I’m assuming since your country had several official languages that many children had early exposure to more than just 1 language at an early age in hearing and/or talking. That is not the case in the US which has only 1 official language. |
Anonymous
The majority of countries who are not English speaking all start English early in school though. |
Anonymous
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The major benefit of being bilingual is that you can talk to people in more than one language.
I'll add that you don't have to be a fully balanced bilingual to enjoy this benefit. You can have survival Spanish, conversational German and advanced reading ability in French, and gain benefits from all of these. To the PP who has concerns about one hour per week language in schools, I wouldn't diminish the value of that so quickly. |
Anonymous
Depends on what you mean by early. In my native Belgium, kids usually don't start studying English in government schools until age 8-10. The thinking is that children need a strong grounding in their "home language" in the lower grades before adding other languages. Most Americans I talk to about language study for children are under the impression that Western Europeans generally favor bilingual immersion programs for their children from a young age. We don't, not unless at least one adult in the home speaks the language of immersion/serious language study. |
Anonymous
Definition of early is relative but compared to US, yes it’s very early. You are talking 4th grade. You need to realize that kids in Europe are exposed to many different languages early - English, Dutch, French, German, etc... It might not be formally taught in schools but the exposure is also important. You don’t get that here in the US. The setting and context is very different. It’s not like each state speaks a different language as what would be comparable to the European countries. Studies have also shown that exposure and learning another language is best in the early years (toddler and elementary years) for fluency similar to native speaking. |