The provincial Gov’t here has recently decided to remove the option to have our kids learn French starting in grade 1 and have all kids start in grade 5 (there is a French and English school system, this only applies to the English side).
There is a lot of debate with people citing various studies, etc. No need to get into all that here, but I would like to know how it’s done in other countries. Specifically European countries. Is this an issue in places like Switzerland? Do they start learn multiple languages right from kindergarten or start later as well?
I’ve found lots of studies and numbers but would like to hear from someone who can speak from experience as a student or parent.
I’m guessing you’re in a Canadian province - when I was a kid in Ontario I started French immersion in Grade 1 (and raised such a stink about it! I was a very dumb child sometimes). Which province? If it’s no longer an option, period, I’m going to be very ticked off.
I wish I could have started French that early, immersion or not. I would love to be able to speak it. As it is, I can read cereal boxes, but that’s about it.
This is New Brunswick we’re talking about here. I don’t agree with this. The earlier you start a second language, the better. I started in grade 7 in Ontario and took French throughout high school. I can get by, but I’d hardly consider myself fluent.
My kids have been taking French since grade 1 and my son will be going into immersion next year in grade 4. My 10 year old daughter doesn’t seem to have the aptitude for immersion, but I hope she continues to take French.
Your link mirrors my experience very closely - despite being in French classes through my entire educational career, I didn’t become really fluent until I had to get a job and speak French for at least half the day.
We’re in New Brunswick. I went through early immersion (starting French in grade 1) and my wife went through the French school system. It’s unfortunate as we are much more capable of helping our kids through immersion than our parents were and now the option is gone. There’s such a panic about it you would think we just became a bilingual province recently…
Our plan now is to make sure we speak more French around the house, expose the kids to some French books, such as Asterix (my favourite from that age). They’ll be OK, but I wonder how they do it in countries where they’ve had a longer history of learning this way.
Sunspace’s article gives a pretty good summary, and it points out that the context in which a child learns a language is important, too. Being in a classroom often isn’t as conducive as having friends who speak the target second language. The dingbat I lived in in East Hollywood had kids playing by the pool all day during vacations, speaking English, Spanish, Armenian and Korean. Depending on which language had the plurality, you could sometimes hear code switching. To them, they’re not “learning” a new language, they’re just having fun.
If you really want your kid to learn French, see if s/he has any French speaking friends to play with.
Well, as a comparison, it has only been a few years since Québec decided to have their French school students learn English in Grade One, while the requirement that English school students learn French since Grade One is at least 25 years old (based on my own age and knowledge!)
They recognised that there was an advantage to kids learning both, and learning them young, because despite the efforts to keep workplaces francophone, on average it is good to be able to speak the other language.
Some school boards have taken it even further; my mom’s school board teaches Grades One through Six as a 50/50 French/English split for all students (this is an English-language school board). I’m pretty sure kids are coming out of those school more bilingual than the kids who didn’t have this curriculum.
That is exactly what I would like them to do here, unfortunately it’s unlikely to change again for a few years at least. They have, on the other hand, greatly simplified my voting decision for the next election.
Me neither, especially as New Brunswick is the only officially fully bilingual province. This is ridiculous, and certainly doesn’t help convince anyone that francophones aren’t getting the short end of the stick.
Well, Christ Matt, to be honest most of us feel Anglophones have been getting the short end of the stick for quite a while now: especially if you want to apply for a federal job, or as in Ottawa, even a municipal job now. We even have some dipshit suing the city because bus drivers in Ottawa aren’t all bilingual. In fact a lot of the bus drivers are bilingual, but in languages other than French!
Hey, a lot of us in Ontario took French in school and appreciate learning the language. We are sending our kids to immersion, where practical, but for fucks sake we’re sick and tired of the persecuted Quebecois attitude that stipulates the French speaking population are somehow on the short end of the stick! You guys are on the very long end of the stick presently. You want any job in Ottawa, whether its municipal, provincial, or federal, I’m telling you, bilingual language skills in French and English will all but guarantee you a job over anyone else with even greater credentials.
In the mean time, I’m educating my kids in the fact that learning French is good: and it is, but only if you want to get a government job. Do I sound frustrated?
Keeping in mind that we’re in GQ, don’t blame us if your city or province isn’t as unilingual as you’d like. While I think there’s a good reason why the city of Ottawa should be officially bilingual, I and other Quebecers have no say in the matter and neither should we. If you want to make it so you only have to speak English to get a job, do so, and if you can’t manage to do it, don’t come complaining that we’re oppressing you because it’s actually none of our business and we’re barely even looking at you.
Here in CA, there are a lot of Spanish immersion programs that go through 6th grade (I’m not sure about further on). You can start your kid in K, and the classes are 50/50 Anglo/Hispanic kids and taught in English and Spanish 50/50. Some of my friends have done it and are thrilled with the results–in general all the kids end up bilingual. There can be problems when the grade requirements clash with reality, but it seems to work pretty well overall. My friend’s 9yo went with his dad to Central America and interpreted for him.
In Norway, the national curriculum starts with an introduction to English in first grade. This introduction is meant to be in the form of children’s songs, nursery rhymes, and so on; at this stage, exposure is the important thing, and children aren’t expected to understand. They begin really learning English in second grade, and the language will be part of their curriculum at least until the end of tenth grade.
Unfortunately, teaching of other languages has been weakened during the last few reforms. (We have a new school reform every time the government changes in Norway; it’s becoming something of a tradition :rolleyes: ) Our elder son, in eighth grade, has finally gotten the chance to start studying an additional language, and to his school’s credit he had the choice of Spanish, French, or German. But he could have chosen a more “intense” study of English or Norwegian instead of one of these three languages. At least as far as the school is concerned, that is; he would have had a tougher time justifying it to his dad and me!
Oh, poor pooky, you have to know both official languages of this country to work in the country’s federal government, or in its bilingual capital region! And I bet you’d have to learn Spanish if you wanted to work in Madrid, too.
That’s what we call baseline - the normal condition, not some ridiculous putative “advantage” for francophones. We’re talking about the removal of education in the official language of a province, which is not a normal condition.
Unfortunately, our gov’t seems obsessed with tinkering with the education system as well. The system you have though sounds very good though. I especially like the part about the first introduction to the second language focusing more on exposure, that’s the approach I intend to take with my kids but it’s not the way they would have been taught it in school.
What percentage of the day (roughly) do the younger grades spend working on the second language? The system we’re moving from was 80% in the second language, at least that’s what it was when I was young. I would prefer a split closer to 50/50. I’m mainly hoping to get an idea what is successful in other countries to help evaluate the options that I suspect will come along following the next election (when the inevitable tinkering occurs).