Redshirting and Language Immersion

[Anonymous]

We have a mid-September DS, who thus will be either relatively young or relatively old for his school year, but not dramatically so. All else equal, we would start him on the older end of the spectrum. We also are looking at language immersion programs, though, so all else isn't equal -- we understand that the earlier he starts a language immersion program, the more naturally the language will come. If anyone else has done this balancing act, we'd love to hear which way you came out and why (and whether there is any research you can point us to). Many thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

If it is MCPS, apply both years. The language immersion lottery is a bear-- my DD is #365 on the waitlist, but there are only 50 spots. Sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If it is MCPS, apply both years. The language immersion lottery is a bear-- my DD is #365 on the waitlist, but there are only 50 spots. Sucks.

Interesting. I was told by MCPS that there were a total of 363 applicants for the Spanish immersion lottery, which is the most popular. The top # should be 313.

[Anonymous]

and we redshirted DC. DC met the cutoff by two weeks, but was not at all ready for K at that time.

DC speaks, reads and writes fluently in the second language now. I see zero reason, from a language immersion/acquisition point of view, to push your child ahead if he is not ready.

If he has a mid-September birthday then you've missed the cutoff anyway; isn't it August 30th for K (must be 5yo by then)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it is MCPS, apply both years. The language immersion lottery is a bear-- my DD is #365 on the waitlist, but there are only 50 spots. Sucks.

Interesting. I was told by MCPS that there were a total of 363 applicants for the Spanish immersion lottery, which is the most popular. The top # should be 313.

I wouldn't trust MCPS on that. I am one very disgruntled parent who is paying for private while my neighbors kids get to go to language immersion program for free.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it is MCPS, apply both years. The language immersion lottery is a bear-- my DD is #365 on the waitlist, but there are only 50 spots. Sucks.

Interesting. I was told by MCPS that there were a total of 363 applicants for the Spanish immersion lottery, which is the most popular. The top # should be 313.

I wouldn't trust MCPS on that. I am one very disgruntled parent who is paying for private while my neighbors kids get to go to language immersion program for free.

This is part of the MCPS marketing. We're all supposed to buy the line that MCPS is all wonderful schools, but guess what? They are desperately overcrowded, the downcounty consortium is nothing special, and the highly-touted immersion programs are impossible to get into. It feels like a rip-off!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a mid-September DS, who thus will be either relatively young or relatively old for his school year, but not dramatically so. All else equal, we would start him on the older end of the spectrum. We also are looking at language immersion programs, though, so all else isn't equal -- we understand that the earlier he starts a language immersion program, the more naturally the language will come. If anyone else has done this balancing act, we'd love to hear which way you came out and why (and whether there is any research you can point us to). Many thanks in advance.

I wouldn't worry about the bolded part. If he starts at age 5 or at age 6 (or whatever) it won't be much of a difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it is MCPS, apply both years. The language immersion lottery is a bear-- my DD is #365 on the waitlist, but there are only 50 spots. Sucks.

Interesting. I was told by MCPS that there were a total of 363 applicants for the Spanish immersion lottery, which is the most popular. The top # should be 313.

I wouldn't trust MCPS on that. I am one very disgruntled parent who is paying for private while my neighbors kids get to go to language immersion program for free.

This is part of the MCPS marketing. We're all supposed to buy the line that MCPS is all wonderful schools, but guess what? They are desperately overcrowded, the downcounty consortium is nothing special, and the highly-touted immersion programs are impossible to get into. It feels like a rip-off!

That's why we live in Arlington!

As for timing, I don't think it would make a difference. Mid-September would mean that your son will almost certainly be the youngest in the class. If he's ready, send him

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a mid-September DS, who thus will be either relatively young or relatively old for his school year, but not dramatically so. All else equal, we would start him on the older end of the spectrum. We also are looking at language immersion programs, though, so all else isn't equal -- we understand that the earlier he starts a language immersion program, the more naturally the language will come. If anyone else has done this balancing act, we'd love to hear which way you came out and why (and whether there is any research you can point us to). Many thanks in advance.

I wouldn't worry about the bolded part. If he starts at age 5 or at age 6 (or whatever) it won't be much of a difference.

OP here -- thanks (to all PPs). Are you speaking anecdotally or are there robust findings on this point (ideally summarized somewhere online)? Many TIA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a mid-September DS, who thus will be either relatively young or relatively old for his school year, but not dramatically so. All else equal, we would start him on the older end of the spectrum. We also are looking at language immersion programs, though, so all else isn't equal -- we understand that the earlier he starts a language immersion program, the more naturally the language will come. If anyone else has done this balancing act, we'd love to hear which way you came out and why (and whether there is any research you can point us to). Many thanks in advance.

I wouldn't worry about the bolded part. If he starts at age 5 or at age 6 (or whatever) it won't be much of a difference.

OP here -- thanks (to all PPs). Are you speaking anecdotally or are there robust findings on this point (ideally summarized somewhere online)? Many TIA.

I am speaking anecdotally as a teacher of a second language to elementary school children in an immersion program, and as someone who has studied second language acquisition. There's a theory called the "Critical Period Hypothesis" in second language acquisition; but evidence for such a critical period is defininitely not robust. It does seem that younger chlidren, if immersed in a second language, do learn to speak it more fluently and with a better accent, than adults do. But keep in mind that it is easier to speak fluently as an 8 year old than as a 28 year old. (fewer demands on vocabulary, grammar, etc.) Also, children can spend much more of their day immersed in study than your typical adult, who is taking classes a few hours a week versus all day every day. Many adults when immersed all day, every day in a second language setting are able to develop fluency. Accent is the one area where you can say children definitely have an advantage over people learning as adults. However, the difference between a child of age 5 and 6 or 7 starting an immersion program, really shouldn't be a factor -- I am not aware of any studies on this point, though; but the stuudies I've seen have compared children versus adults.

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP.... I thought about this some more. I'd say that after the first few weeks of school, in a good classroom with a sensitive teacher, very few card flipping should be going on. Any child who perpetually gets on "red" -- more than once or twice a week in the first few weeks -- should be moved to a more individual behavior management system and have other interventions put into place. If children frequently are flipping cards with the above system after the first few weeks it's a sign that the system isn't working: either the teacher's expectations for behavior are unrealistic, or the classroom instruction is inappropriate, or the teacher is being inconsistent in rule enforcement, or the consequences for getting "red" aren't motivating for the students.

[Anonymous]

woops! Posted on the wrong thread!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a mid-September DS, who thus will be either relatively young or relatively old for his school year, but not dramatically so. All else equal, we would start him on the older end of the spectrum. We also are looking at language immersion programs, though, so all else isn't equal -- we understand that the earlier he starts a language immersion program, the more naturally the language will come. If anyone else has done this balancing act, we'd love to hear which way you came out and why (and whether there is any research you can point us to). Many thanks in advance.

I wouldn't worry about the bolded part. If he starts at age 5 or at age 6 (or whatever) it won't be much of a difference.

OP here -- thanks (to all PPs). Are you speaking anecdotally or are there robust findings on this point (ideally summarized somewhere online)? Many TIA.

I am speaking anecdotally as a teacher of a second language to elementary school children in an immersion program, and as someone who has studied second language acquisition. There's a theory called the "Critical Period Hypothesis" in second language acquisition; but evidence for such a critical period is defininitely not robust. It does seem that younger chlidren, if immersed in a second language, do learn to speak it more fluently and with a better accent, than adults do. But keep in mind that it is easier to speak fluently as an 8 year old than as a 28 year old. (fewer demands on vocabulary, grammar, etc.) Also, children can spend much more of their day immersed in study than your typical adult, who is taking classes a few hours a week versus all day every day. Many adults when immersed all day, every day in a second language setting are able to develop fluency. Accent is the one area where you can say children definitely have an advantage over people learning as adults. However, the difference between a child of age 5 and 6 or 7 starting an immersion program, really shouldn't be a factor -- I am not aware of any studies on this point, though; but the stuudies I've seen have compared children versus adults.

I'm curious as to the distinctions between different levels of languages (as per the State Dept. classification of languages). In other words, for a native English-speaker some languages are relatively easy to learn and some languages are relatively difficult to learn.

By way of example, any of the Romance (Latin-based) languages (French, Italian, Spanish) are relatively easy for native English speakers to learn. Similarly, the Germanic languages (Dutch, German) are as well. Whereas "Olde" English was part of the Germanic family of languages, it underwent a revolution after 1066 when William of Normandy conquered Britain. English hasn't been the same since (approx. 40% Latin-based and 60% Germanic). This makes English inherently challenging even for the linguists who speak one of its bases. (For the record, modern English follows the simpler sentence structure of the Romance languages vs. the verb-at-the-end-of-the-sentence construction of German.) These languages are phonetic based and share a common alphabet.

OTOH, there are "Level 4" languages: those of exceptional difficulty even for hand-picked, exceptionally intelligent State Dept. employees to master. Such as, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi. Mandarin is a tone-based language with tonal syllabic differences that the adult brain and ear have great difficulty learning to discriminate. Thus, the expression "chinese ears" for children who learn to distinguish and mimic the correct sounds. All of the level 4 languages have symbols and characters that bear no resemblance to English - even the reading style is different (top to bottom or right to left vs. left to right).

There's a good reason that the State Dept. believes it takes at least 4 times as long for language learners to acquire basic communication skills in Level 4 languages than in other Indo-European languages. Some of them you really need to learn as a child.

[Anonymous]

The age is not going to make that much of a difference, either to language acquisition abilities or probably to the child's comfort with kindergarten.

Most information will be anecdotal because the research on redshirting itself yields mixed or insignificant results.

Studies on language acquisition show that infancy is easiest and a drop off at age 13, but not a whole lot of variation in the early years.

If you do decide to wait a year, consider some Spanish in the meantime; many kids start K with a leg up. My daughter started K with zero Spanish and it's been a bit of a baptism by fire, but in sort of a good way (she realized that this is a pretty fun game and that there's no pressure to know everything right away).

If you are still up in the air, contact Ximena Hartsock in the Chancellor's office. She is in charge of bilingual ed and has a PhD in it.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it is MCPS, apply both years. The language immersion lottery is a bear-- my DD is #365 on the waitlist, but there are only 50 spots. Sucks.

Interesting. I was told by MCPS that there were a total of 363 applicants for the Spanish immersion lottery, which is the most popular. The top # should be 313.

As best I recall when we did this a couple of years ago there wasn't one single lottery for Spanish immersion-- you had to apply to each school individually (with some schools being up to an hour away by bus). I think for the school closest to us I think there were about 10x as many applicants as there were spots (but we've been fairly happy with our neighborhood school).