Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Questions on how we spend our money and our time - consumer goods and services, home and vehicle, leisure and recreational activities
JackoC
Posts: 4714
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:14 am

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by JackoC »

pizzy wrote: Thu May 25, 2023 3:02 pm
toddthebod wrote: Thu May 25, 2023 3:01 pm
pizzy wrote: Thu May 25, 2023 1:04 pm
toddthebod wrote: Wed May 24, 2023 11:26 pm I'm curious where you live, because the public school system in my city has nineteen immersion programs at the elementary school level including Mandarin. (Amazingly a neighboring city also has a Mandarin-immersion public school.)
I'm curious where you live
San Diego. I'm aware of a French immersion, a Mandarin immersion, and a million Spanish immersion public schools in San Diego Unified, as well as a German Charter school. And that's not even considering all the suburbs with their own school districts.
We are in Southern NJ and I don’t know of any. But I may just have my head in the sand.
Northern NJ right near Manhattan, there's a charter school with Spanish immersion. Daycares have Mandarin immersion (from signs) not sure about any of the grade schools. No direct experience as to the extent or results beyond that casual knowledge.

And the value is, obviously, a value judgement. I believe the earlier statements of truly bilingual people that pronunciation indistinguishable from native is very difficult to achieve in most languages if you didn't learn them when quite young ('never' is hard to apply to particularly gifted and/or determined people). OTOH how valuable is near-perfect native speech? Around 40% of people in our county were born in other countries, almost all non-English speaking ones, but while some recent comers are difficult understand many others have interesting accents in English no barrier to understanding. Spoken Chinese OTOH has a higher hurdle since the 5 tones change which character a base sound represents. You have to come closer to correct pronunciation to be understood than most languages even ones partly related*. Also if you want full across the board capability you need to memorize at least 100's of characters (6,500 is sometimes defined as 'common' but it's 80/20, you get a lot of capability knowing a lot fewer but still 100's). What's the actual goal? PS to add, some posts 'deconstruct' a language education goal in non-flattering ('I'm just being realistic') ways but you can do the same for studying any soft subject rather than all STEM. But not all kids are built to excel in STEM (though of course everyone here's kids can excel in whatever they choose) and not all fulfilling lives require it.

*the Japanese and Korean languages themselves aren't believed related to one another or Chinese, but both have a lot of Chinese derived words (though often Chinese character pair words coined in one of those countries which sometimes also migrated to the others). However J and K lost morphologic tonality (tone to distinguish otherwise similar sounding Chinese characters) centuries ago so are not as difficult to pronounce reasonably correctly for English speakers. Some other aspects are more difficult than Chinese though IMO.
jlawrence01
Posts: 1908
Joined: Mon Feb 25, 2013 12:34 am
Location: Southern AZ

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by jlawrence01 »

Some random observations:

1) My uncle wanted to teach us all German because in my Midwestern home city, there were more German speakers than any other language. I am glad I did not invest the time in the effort since most of those speakers have either died or acclimated to 100% English.

2) I spent several summers at the University of Montreal in the 1980s. At the time, Canadian universities were offering French immersion programs at francophone Universities and English immersion at anglophone universities. I can honestly say that I had a better command of French walking the streets on Montreal interacting with the significant population that spoke only French than the students of those classes who hung together speaking English outside of the classes.

3) Which language do you learn? Several of my friends have moved over to the Philippines and several invested in Tagalog classes with Berlitz and other similar programs. Then, they moved to Cebu and Mindanao and found that Tagalog was the THIRD language of the area after Cebuano and English.

4) if you become fluent in a language as an American, you will gain some credibility among locals. However, in some countries, the locals would prefer to practice their English with a native speaker.

Personally, I think an exchange where you went to a location where English was not spoken might be the best way to actually learn the language.
JackoC
Posts: 4714
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2018 11:14 am

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by JackoC »

jlawrence01 wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 6:31 pm Some random observations:

1) My uncle wanted to teach us all German because in my Midwestern home city, there were more German speakers than any other language. I am glad I did not invest the time in the effort since most of those speakers have either died or acclimated to 100% English.

2) I spent several summers at the University of Montreal in the 1980s. At the time, Canadian universities were offering French immersion programs at francophone Universities and English immersion at anglophone universities. I can honestly say that I had a better command of French walking the streets on Montreal interacting with the significant population that spoke only French than the students of those classes who hung together speaking English outside of the classes.

3) Which language do you learn? Several of my friends have moved over to the Philippines and several invested in Tagalog classes with Berlitz and other similar programs. Then, they moved to Cebu and Mindanao and found that Tagalog was the THIRD language of the area after Cebuano and English.

4) if you become fluent in a language as an American, you will gain some credibility among locals. However, in some countries, the locals would prefer to practice their English with a native speaker.

Personally, I think an exchange where you went to a location where English was not spoken might be the best way to actually learn the language.
Interesting observations about adult/near adult situations mainly. But all have some relevance IMO to 3 yr old preschooler as in OP in that key questions even before figuring out 'how' are a) which language? and b) why exactly, that language and the whole idea. Both of which are no brainers in small outward looking countries: the language, for now, is English, and whatever other reasons there may be, learning English is a way to be/stay in the socio-economic elite in those countries, which is what people everywhere want for their kids in the overwhelmingly majority of cases I believe. The question becomes more difficult if the country is bigger or English speaking, and is hardest of all in the US which is very large and (mainly) English speaking. It's perhaps further complicated by emerging technologies though of course that can be debated, going back to having a clear idea of the intended benefit to the (US) student.

I say this having a hobby in older age of studying languages. Although I didn't like it when first introduced to it in junior high (French, which I also thought was hard, only later realizing how easy it is for an English speaker relatively). Teaching little 'mainstream' US kids foreign languages wasn't a thing then (though of course in some ethnic communities it always was). But in considering upcoming grandkids the question (for my kids, I won't butt in unless asked) will be which language and exactly why. The people pointing out that it's time you could be learning something else are of course right, time is finite. But we must also decide why exactly we have kids studying each of the something else's too.
Pitagoras
Posts: 145
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2019 9:51 am

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by Pitagoras »

Watty wrote: Thu May 25, 2023 12:55 pm
Keep in mind that if your kid goes to an immersion school in the language you speak then English will be their second language so they will also need to do a lot of work early in life to learn how to speak English without an accent.
I do not agree, UNLESS the child has no other activities besides school. "Living" in a country makes it unavoidable for a kid to learn the local language. I did not speak Spanish til 5 since my interactions outside of family (both my intimate and my extended family spoke only German), were really scarce. I learned when I went to school even though it was a bilingual school, but we spoke Spanish in the pauses and then..any activity outside was mostly in Spanish (playing hockey, handball, soccer, boy scouts, etc.)..

local language will always find its way...WHEN you are a young of course.
Pitagoras
Posts: 145
Joined: Mon Apr 08, 2019 9:51 am

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by Pitagoras »

simas wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 7:58 am thank you for sharing - a cool story. and also, the whole accent thing, I would not 'worry' about it that much, it is what makes you be 'you'.
Thanks...I do not worry that much but in certain situations it affects my communication effectiveness. I am also a little bit hearing impaired (although I do not use anything...yet), which I am suspecting makes it more difficult for me to understand others. I can participate in all business conversations. But, I do not get all the jokes. And I also can't watch a movie without subtitles...I was hoping to get better after now...7 years, and I guess it gets better, but not as fast as I wanted.

Addressing my pronunciation challenges is not easy...I am looking at apps or softwares to practice...not easy.
halfnine
Posts: 2421
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2010 12:48 pm

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by halfnine »

Pitagoras wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 8:18 am
Watty wrote: Thu May 25, 2023 12:55 pm
Keep in mind that if your kid goes to an immersion school in the language you speak then English will be their second language so they will also need to do a lot of work early in life to learn how to speak English without an accent.
I do not agree, UNLESS the child has no other activities besides school. "Living" in a country makes it unavoidable for a kid to learn the local language. I did not speak Spanish til 5 since my interactions outside of family (both my intimate and my extended family spoke only German), were really scarce. I learned when I went to school even though it was a bilingual school, but we spoke Spanish in the pauses and then..any activity outside was mostly in Spanish (playing hockey, handball, soccer, boy scouts, etc.)..

local language will always find its way...WHEN you are a young of course.
Yes, I think people are overestimating how easy it is for kids during the first decade of life to pick up two languages. The hard part and the effort part is actually often not on the child side but on the parent side to ensure the children are getting enough hours of exposure to both. Now, if one wants to say that when the children are older than 10 that if they want to continue progressing with the language to a more advanced level (especially reading/writing) then the time/effort has too much cost to reward then that could certainly be debated.

As to accent, children will pick up upon the accent of their social group peers as a method of fitting in.
mayday23
Posts: 201
Joined: Mon Feb 10, 2014 9:29 am

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by mayday23 »

Our daughter, 4th grade, did full immersion with public school in Spanish. Monday - Thursday was Spanish and Friday was English.

Half way through 4th grade we moved states and transitioned out of immersion and she was completely behind in her studies compared to other students. Which makes sense, in terms of how do you teach science or the 13 colonies in Spanish to kids who are still learning the language. COVID certainly didn't help as remote learning in another language is borderline impossible.

Hindsight, i wish we didn't put her in immersion but she was able to get back on track with other kids after a few months of heavy studying. How she rolls her "r's" are quite cute though.
simas
Posts: 1295
Joined: Wed Apr 04, 2007 5:50 pm

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by simas »

Pitagoras wrote: Tue May 30, 2023 8:24 am
simas wrote: Fri May 26, 2023 7:58 am thank you for sharing - a cool story. and also, the whole accent thing, I would not 'worry' about it that much, it is what makes you be 'you'.
Thanks...I do not worry that much but in certain situations it affects my communication effectiveness. I am also a little bit hearing impaired (although I do not use anything...yet), which I am suspecting makes it more difficult for me to understand others. I can participate in all business conversations. But, I do not get all the jokes. And I also can't watch a movie without subtitles...I was hoping to get better after now...7 years, and I guess it gets better, but not as fast as I wanted.

Addressing my pronunciation challenges is not easy...I am looking at apps or softwares to practice...not easy.
Toastmasters? if you have them in your area -will teach you public speaking, may make you friends ,etc.
Alfonsia
Posts: 328
Joined: Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:47 pm

Re: Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

Post by Alfonsia »

Immersion was initially sold (in the public system in the area) as an alternative for the kids who didn't get into the G&T programs, it did behave a little like that initially in that it was a self selecting group that had involved parents whose kids didn't get into the academic magnet, but it seemed to progress into a lot of native Spanish speaking kids as the years went on (there were other languages, Mandarin, French, Portuguese!). If your kid can get into a public magnet program, no way would I pick DI over that. Public magnet programs are often highly selective and you get a more valuable cohort than your $$ can buy in your usual private school.
Post Reply