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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You realize for people that are multi-lingual; French and Spanish is not a big deal.  Any combination of languages in Europe is normal in Europe. It comes of as: pulling a fast one.

Say you are Chinese and brag about being fluent in Chinese? Its normal - there was no additional effort on your part.
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Please stop. I am a European. Very few people are fluent in one, much less several languages. Just because they can give you directions to the Eiffel Tower doesn't mean they are fluent.

To say that "being fluent in Chinese requires no additional effort" for a child of Chinese immigrants (if that is what you are talking about) is laughable. As an immigrant I know a lot of immigrants and their kids (not many Chinese). Not a single child is fluent intheir parents' language. It is extremely difficult for an American born and educated child to be fluent in their parents' language. [/quote]

Where in Europe? Only people that are barely fluent in one are: British. My point is growing up multi-lingual does not require effort. If you did not grow-up multi-lingual then you are speaking out of ignorance. If you did not grow up multi-lingual then speaking 5 languages seems out of reach. Read the Op: One parent speaks Spanish and the other speaks French; With your logic all international students should be smarter than most American students because they are fluent in multiple languages.[/quote]

I am from Eastern Europe - a place someone mentioned previous as a hotbed for multilingualism. Laughable. Maybe one in a 500 is at C2 level for one foreign language (English).

"One parent speaks Spanish, other French" - means next to nothing re: languages their children will speak. Even if their kids attend weekend school regularly they will barely crack A1. Those kids can't take college level classes in Spanish or French. It requires a tremendous effort to get them to that level.

Not sure what do you mean by "international students being smarter" but certainly you will agree that getting accepted to a top school while speaking a foreign language, scoring 1600 on SAT etc, is more impressive coming from a student who is not a native speaker of English?[/quote]

The more you reply - the more it seems that you don't know how to be multi-lingual. You think attending weekend classes will make you fluent? You think having parents that are fluent in that language makes no difference?

And International Students are already fluent in English that score a 1600 on the SAT. Which I'm saying is misleading.

If you want to know how to be fluent - it starts with immersion. Immersion either by: TV, family conversations, or being there and forced to speak the language. No one "Normal" person is fluent by attending a weekend class and going through DuoLingo.

You can be a kid in a multi-lingual family only that only watches English and speaks English - this will not make them fluent. If you want to use this case then OK. the kid had an opportunity that didn't use it - nice hard life.[/quote]

I just said - students who attend home language classes can barely crack A1. Does that sound like fluency to you?

It is true that you need immersion for true fluency, but you cannot achieve immersion at a home environment, or by watching shows. It's impossible. There is a lot of research on this, and really everyone who cares knows it - after kids start school, language spoken at home is irrelevant unless there is a significant cohort of kids providing constant conversations in that language (plus you need reading and writing - a whole other ballgame, and very challenging for many languages). Plus, language fluency is also difficult to maintain.

For this reason, true bilingualism (to say nothing of trilingualism) is very rare. The core issue here is that people with very basic knowledge of some language call themselves 'fluent'. It's like calling a person who can add numbers up to 20, a mathematician. You are not fluent, and your kids are not fluent, and yes, it's a very big deal if someone is in fact fluent in 3 languages even if they are "merely" English, French and Spanish.[/quote]

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