Bumping this one since the hamsters didn’t register my post.
Oh, fine, everyone posts in this old thread, but nobody posts in my new thread in which I link to this thread. I see how it is. 
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=134158
All I know is that I spoke occasionally useful but rather embarrassing French through about fourteen years of classes, then moved in with a cute Québécois boy for six months and was speaking it quite fluently at the end.
Same thing happened when I went to Spain. Maybe not exactly fluent yet, but after just one month I was much, much more confident with it to the point that I felt comfortable discussing politics and flirting, and I could understand the large majority of what was being said to me.
Good question, doreen. It sounds to me that in the lay-language politically-weighted debate, “immersion” is being used to mean “good luck, non-English-speaker, sink or swim!” and “bilingual” to mean “no te preocupes, no saber inglés no te causará ninguna dificultad”. Really it would not be that simple – immersion should be combined with help to catch up on the non-language subjects so that by the time they’re in HS they test up to standard, and the student (and school) is not penalized along the way for the inevitable lag; Bilingual Ed should have as it’s directing goal a graduate who IS, really, bilingual, it should put you to the test by periodic immersions, to see if it’s working.
There is likely no one-size-fits-all solution. Bilingual-Ed, well designed and well executed, will work for some. For others it will be immersion well designed and well executed. It’s not “weaseling”, it’s a recognition that neither method is magical in and of itself. Heck, regular non-bilingual schools aren’t exactly doing a sterling job of imparting functional literacy, common values, and basic skills to native-speakers of the dominant language… And I have no problem if those who have made a career of obstinately pursuing ineffective or wrongheaded programs, in whatever language, lose their jobs (and even if it is december saying it, that IS a real problem in the system).
matt_mcl, folks like you and me who went thru “second language” instruction are neither here nor there in the American Bil-Ed situation in sense that that our schools provide the “second language” instruction as something of a political formality (when it’s officially mandated) or a desirable bonus/useful extra, but essentially, at heart, as something “foreign” – with the understanding that the student who wants to function in a society that speaks this language will know to put in additional effort.
The issue with Bil-Ed in the States is about how schools can at the same time maximize a student’s academic potential AND integrate the student into the greater national culture (and whether those are goals at all) w/o trampling on his/her identity.
However, it’s true: the best way of developing the part of the language skills that have to do with the stuff of daily human interaction is intensive daily human interaction in that language.
Let’s not call California’s change an abandonment of Bilingual Education. The actual change was to require the program to enable the students to communicate and learn in English within a certain number of years. Basically, the electorate of this great state told the education establishment, “You will now do the job you told us at the outset you would do. Get off your duffs and do it.”
If this is the case, and the decision was left up to the teachers, and they chose to abandon BE, doesn’t that kind of imply that they didn’t really have much faith in the system they were trying promote?
Teachers: “Bilingual Education is great! It’s the One True Way!”
State: “Okay, then make it work. You have 3 years to show results.”
Teachers: “Umm… on second thought, let’s try immersion.”
At any rate, regardless of why California switched to immersion, they did, and scores improved. I would say that this provides an excellent large-scale argument in favor of immersion.
Jeff
They didn’t choose to abandon it. I clearly indicated that the idea, at least in California, is that bilingual education is supposed to be a tool, not an end in itself.
I have never been in USA, so I will state this without knowing too much about the situation there. Just logic’s.
So, think logically. State what is true or what is not.
First some definitions:
- I take as example a Spanish-speaking family, living in US, an both mother and farther has Spanish as their mother tongue.
- or ditto, but only one parent in the family.
- they have immigrated to e.g. USA, before the child/children has been born.
Now, let’s take 100 of these families and think about that everyone should be given a fair chance to get the kid(s) a good education.
I am not speaking about:
- a family where the other parent is speaking English as his/her mother tongue.
- a family that has immigrated when the child was 5 years old, or 16 years old.
- a family where one parent is speaking e.g. Spanish and the other e.g. French. (In these cases the situation/problems/solutions are different).
- privet schools or children of e.g. diplomats.
So;
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The child learns abstractive thoughts through a language. (Mathematics, geometry, grammatics of another language, etc.)
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To learn a “new” language, beside Your mother language, You need a mother language with a vocabulary as broad as possible.
Right?
If You have a very good basis whereupon to build, You obviously can build a broad second/third and so on, language. -
The parents should read their mother tongue as much as possible to the child at early age at least until the child has learn how to read and can manage by herself.
-
The mother language of immigrates is not usually “high regarded” by the authorities, thus the child has to be thought that his language and culture is valuable.
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The best language in the world is Your mother language.
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Multicultural people has a better chance to lead a richer life than monocultural people.
Of these assumed 100 families there will be some in the middle class and some, because of lack of knowledge of the main language, has jobs that is not very well paid.
I assume that the last mentioned are 20 - 30 % of an assumed Hispanic group in USA.
(I can be totally wrong, I just assume…)
There is probably a lot of families with only one adult… = not so much time to e.g. read for the kid(s).
If we think of these families “where the parent(s) is picking straw-berries for living. (I have had this “profession” myself, I do not mean any offence). Or serving at “McBurgers”, or cleaning floors all day.
In these cases, if the child is not taught in Spanish:
- one day the child comes with his math-book and says: “Mom, I do not understand this.” Mama is looking at the book and tells “that she does not either understand”.
(If You do not believe me, just send Your child to a French, [or what ever language You do not speak], school and try to figure out how many apples Maurice has).
Sooner or later the child begins to think that his parents are not very bright…, and begins to feel ashamed of his own culture/surroundings/family or whatever. The child wants to be very American (English-speaking American), and tries to live up to that.
“99% sure” he fails, because he wants it fast, supressing his own language/culture etc…
And he begins to lose his identity and self-respect.
Surely the child learns to speak without accent, the intonation will be perfect, but his vocabulary will be quite narrow.
As far as I know, the programs that has been half this half that, has never been very successful.
Good results in Sweden and in Finland has been got when the child can learn everything in his mother language until he is 13 - 16 years old and then gradually goes over to the main language of his country.
In this case, they have had a chance to learn the “new” language on a very broad basis, with a good vocabulary, with a good understanding of abstractive thoughts etc., on the basis of their mother tongue.
It helps very much if the school contacts often the parents and stress to the parents that it is very important to the child to learn his/her mother language!
Where the schools do that, I do not know.
Attention! I know many exceptions of this rule, about children that had most probably learned the language just listening to people. Well, I am certainly not one of them.
Most of us that are writing here has a quite good education, and think mostly from our own point of view.
I am above speaking about how to give everyone, despite of how the family lives, a fair and equal chance to study and learn. The result will always be, if You study and not only just manage through the school: You learn the main language in which ever country You are living.
I hope my (self learned) English language is simple and clear enough.
English is not my second language, it is my fourth.
I was a total failure at school, so do not condemned my writings because of lack of grammar.
I would love to see some cites showing an increase in scores due to immersion. See this article for an analysis of the data from Oceanside, the darling of the “English Only” movement and Ron Unz.
Chris