Reply to Recent feedback on Lycee Rochambeau

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Recent feedback on Lycee Rochambeau"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Congrats OP! I don't have experience at LR but I did teach English in CP at a lycée in another city. Regarding your question 2, I'd look for ways to integrate some French, without going overboard. Maybe a few minutes of French a day at home, just listening to an audiobook program or watching a short excerpt of a language learning video, but not expecting your child to speak the French she's learning if she's not ready. As you may know, it's considered normal for children to go through a "silent period" where they are first learning a language. From Wikipedia:

"The silent period is often associated with Stephen Krashen's input hypothesis, and does not appear very frequently in the modern second language acquisition literature.[2] Krashen hypothesizes that [b]learners are building up language competence during their silent periods through actively listening and processing the language they hear, and that they do not need to speak to improve in the language[/b].[2] He says that silent periods of up to six months are not unusual.[1] According to VanPatten and Benati, although discussion of the silent period in modern second language acquisition research is rare, this is not necessarily any indication that the idea is wrong; rather they are of the opinion that it indicates how the priorities of the field have changed."

I think it couldn't hurt to do a fun weekend class or something, like your local equivalent of http://www.oldtownfrench.com/ Something fun and active.

I wouldn't stress about fluency level, but more exposure would definitely be good, especially in advance of your travels and a big transition to a new school.[/quote]

OP here.  Thanks so much for this.  Yes, I remember the "silent period" being mentioned a few years ago when we toured another immersion program.  I would imagine this could even be a bit more prolonged for our kid, since she's pretty quiet/observant in new social situations in general.  We might be able to fit a weekend language class in (she also does a couple of weekend sports), and I like the idea of other regular exposure; I think we could incorporate that via audiobooks or something.  If we decide to enroll her, we'll probably check out what's available at Alliance Francaise.  Thanks again for your input![/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics