National English testing when your child is in an immersion program.

[Anonymous]

DS just scored low on NWEA tests. He is in Chinese immersion. He can read and do early Marh. I am do disappointed in his score. I don't want to show him his score and shoot down his pride but I am having a hard time digesting test results how have immersion parents been addressing English testing- hire a tutor and study English in top of the other language? How can a parent/ child balance two languages and activities? Ugh.

[Anonymous]

Not familiar with the NWEA test - how old is your child and what does the test measure? Comprehension, vocabulary, grammar?

[Anonymous]

I am not familiar with the NWEA test, but how old is your child? I have read that scores for students in immersion programs tend to start out lower in early elementary school because their language acquisition is divided between English and another language. As they get older (by high school), their scores catch up to the monolingual peers and often surpass them, but this is over a period of many years.

I have heard of parents pulling their first grader out of immersion programs because they score lower on verbal standardized tests than children in English speaking schools. The benefits of an immersion model is for cognitive development in the long run, not short run.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I also have heard that immersion kids score lower in the early years.

Investigate if this is a problem, or if it is just part of the immersion.

If you are not satisfied with his English language development, get a tutor (particularly if your house is first language mandarin).

Read more. To him. As a family.

[Anonymous]

What language is spoken at home?

My kids go to an immersion school and I'm not familiar with the test you are referencing. But English is our home language.

I know a few years back one of our neighbor's kids tested low on some english test (not in the immersion program). He had to take it because when they moved back to the States, English was not their primary language due to being overseas (parents speak multiple languages, kid was not at an "american" school). So he's in the school's system as a non-native speaker. He didn't do well on the test, despite the fact that he is AAP center and was in 4th or 5th grade and was using 50 cent words like a kids studying for the SATs.

We all got a big kick out it. We figured most of us wouldn't do to well on it then - most likely testing grammar we don't remember. The parents were pretty calm about it. They knew that their kid was fine in their language skills.

[Anonymous]

14:10 - exactly! When I grew up back in the day in Wisconsin, the children in the "advanced" reading groups and "advanced" English class read books, wrote essays, had various discussions about the content, etc. I very specifically remember classmates in the "regular" classes were doing sentence diagrams - marking the subject, object, past present participles, etc.

We definitely never did that in our classes. So if the test measures things like that, I wouldn't be too concerned. Not that it isn't useful, but I don't think it reflects comprehension.

[Anonymous]

OP - it is true that studies have shown that kids who are in an immersion program (or simply exposed to multiple languages from an early age) may test lower on a single language measurement (in this case English). It is because they are learning more than one language and their brains have to "catch up" (for lack of a better term). However, they do get to the same level as the others eventually. At what point that will happen depends on the child - it may be by 5th grade or may be by 7th-8th grade. And at that point they are at a higher level for both languages, not just one!

If you put your child in an immersion program I'm assuming you did the research prior and understand what it means to be in such a program. If you are still concerned talk with the teachers and make sure he is achieving the markers they have set for him. You don't say what age he is or what grade, but if he is still young and only a few years into the program then I would not worry as much. Immersion/dual language programs are something that is for the long term, not short term.

My kids are both in immersion/dual language programs and I couldn't be happier, but they were a little behind in those beginning years of school. But now they are both fluent (speaking, reading and writing) in 2 languages. On the other hand, their friends who did not go into immersion programs are great at English and only at a beginning level of language at the high school level.