Velma it sounds like your child and family is a goood candidate for the program. It sounds very exciting, and if your child is receptive to it, go for it!
Some questions about getting in to the progarm. Do they screen the kids/families first for any reason. Looking for any learning disability or lack of home support that sort of thing? Also a friend was looking into the immersion programs, she said that if there was a native speaker of the language at home they would not be eligible for the immersion program. Which doesn’t seem fair.
My SIL is French, spoke to her kids in French at home, as did my brother who was conversant. Yet none of the kids retained the language, they didn’t want to speak it always answered in English. But if they were immersed in it at school they may have emerged bilingual with that extra exposure.
My kids do take Spanish at school, but I think it is a bs course, I doubt they’re really learning the language…
Plenty of kids around the world study second or even third languages in school and don’t turn out as drooling idiots unable to communicate in their native languages (“Two languages in one head?! Who can live at that speed!”). I think the immersion school is a brilliant idea.
Something I haven’t seen people bring up is that Spanish is a Romance language, and therefore a gateway to the related languages all descended from Latin: Italian, French, Portuguese, even Romanian! If he’s bilingual English/Spanish, that’ll make learning a related language even easier. Anecdotally (because I don’t know if any studies have been done about this), I’ve heard that people who are bilingual have an easier time learning other languages anyway.
My son does this in Pittsburgh. He started at 3yr old and is in his third year.
He is not behind in anything. He learns letters and numbers. Although the teachers speak Spanish, many of the kids speak English. The difference is that they UNDERSTAND the spanish. My son knows spanish words and from time to time will sing songs to himself in Spanish, but he is learning to read English just fine.
I have only good things to say about the experiencce. From what I understand, learning another language at this age has only benifits. I really can’t see the downside.
I will add that some people that I run into do question why. I ask why not. I have yet to hear a good answer to “why not”.
bolding mine.
I disagree. A preschooler is already faced with an enormous amount of culture shock, and most of them come through it very well indeed. It seems to me that the shock of Spanish only, when you’re at an age when languages are still easy to decode, is a very small shock indeed added to the shock of sitting still in a circle, waiting quietly in a line, eating only when everyone else does, raising your hand to speak, etc. It’s a drop in the pool of the culture shock every preschooler is faced with.
Plus, of course, every other kid in his class will be going through exactly the same thing. There’s strength and solace in numbers.
Again, I don’t think so. Again…look at how many new words, phrases and ideas even an English speaking preschool presents. “Circle time” “Please place your coat in the cubby.” “Criss-cross applesauce!” It might as well be a foreign language already! And most kids do just fine.
Little kids aren’t confused by multiple languages. They just aren’t. They’re still learning so many new words, concepts and grammar even in their native language that their language processing centers are more than capable of learning another language with ease. It’s pretty awesome, actually.
…nursing, plumbing, auto mechanic, clerk behind the window at the check cashing place…
I haven’t seen a Help Wanted sign without “Bilingual preferred” or “Must speak Spanish” in years. Of course, I live in a highly integrated area (north side of Chicago), so the OP may not be seeing that yet, but I’m sure she will before her little one is ready for the job search.
Velma, if you’d like an actual 5 year old’s opinion, my daughter says you should do it. Last week we were discussing her kindergarten experience, what she likes (lunch, recess, “Centers”) and what she doesn’t. The only thing she said she really doesn’t like is that she wishes there was *more *Spanish being taught. “I only know how to count to 10 and some of the colors and animals!” she bemoaned. Which, while more than I knew when I was 5 (and, to be honest, more than I know now), isn’t going to be enough to get her a job in this city! But *she *wants to learn more Spanish because it’s fun, it’s easy (!) and it would let her talk with her native Spanish speaking classmates more easily.
I mean, look at that list. Her favorite things are lunch (social!), recess (social and play!), “Centers” (social and play!) and the little Spanish they do get. Spanish, for her, is social and play, not academic work.
Lots of good comments here. Thanks also for the links!
I am glad to hear everyone’s input. It is becoming clear to me that this would be a good opportunity. I will definitely do more research, find out specifics etc. (like how they can tell if a kid is falling behind). But I am more excited about the possibility now. It seems like the difference between a kid taking the side classes and knowing some Spanish and being bilingual.
This thread is matching what I am hearing from people in my community - I hear misgivings from people who aren’t in the program (not that they should be discarded) but I haven’t yet heard of anyone who has done this who regretted it. I was kind of waiting to hear from someone who has a kid in a program like this and either had a really hard time with it, or had to pull their kid out or something but I haven’t come across anyone like that. I am sure there are kids that will struggle, but they might just as easily struggle in a regular class.
I was thinking about it this morning and how my almost 3 year old is talking so much now just in the last few months without ‘teaching’ him to talk. It makes sense that they can just pick it up. And English is such a hard language to learn with all its crazy rules and exceptions. Spanish makes much more sense so it’s probably easier to learn.
Oh, yes–I lived in Colombia when “Betty la Fea” (the original “Ugly Betty”) was premiering, and it served me well for learning that well-honed art of cattiness a las cachacas.
The show was so prevalent that even the president tried to influence the story-line so that Betty would not abide her boss’s corrupt behavior, and thereby set a better example for the citizens of Colombia. Talk about drama.
Like I said, I think it depends on the kid. My son would probably be incredibly uncomfortable with total immersion, though he does take Spanish and he and I speak it to each other at home. He also speaks Gujurati and Hindi with his dad at home. I’m more or less fluent in Spanish from having lived in South America and speak a few other languages; his dad is from India and spoke Hindi, Gujurati and Tamil in the home, as well as English. So I agree - kids learn very quickly, and bilingualism or multi-lingualism is often easier for younger children. But some children can have a harder time adapting to an uncomfortable situation than an adult would.
Many kids (okay, I’m coming at this from my own experiences, so I shouldn’t generalize - my kid) don’t handle change well. This would be a different classroom and being taught in a different language. A situation like that would cause my son significant problems in the short term, but again, that’s just him.
I think the idea of immersion sounds great, but were I in the same situation, I’d seriously want to consider the potential drawbacks and my children’s or child’s personality, too.
I would like to make a couple of other points to consider:
First of all, I agree that trying to achieve bilingualism doesn’t really have a downside that can’t be chalked up to broader educational issues or societal attitudes. But I’d supplement whatever they’re getting in school with the availability of Spanish in the house – books, videos, foreign-language editions of board games, ect.
Also, on the issue of whether or not it’s faddish to pursue bilingualism, well, obviously that doesn’t make it bad in itself. The benefits justify themselves without recourse to any attempt to be au courant. It would be unfortunate to see support structures disappear in the community when the fad died off, which aside from snark from the usual smartasses (including my own sort) is the only reason to fear the stigma of “faddish”. But to see this as an emergent trend of a certain social class is a narrow understanding of what’s going on here. I submit that the interest and awareness of bilingualism is a by-product of the blossoming of the academic study of bilingual first-language acquisition over the past 30 years. Among other things, it has pretty much put to rout a lot of the myths that used to prevent people from pursuing this otherwise obviously useful pursuit – that it causes language delay, that children get languages mixed up, that it retards learning in general, ect. The facts are now getting out about bilingual education, and people are responding.
In Canada, you can’t rise to the top of the hierarchy without making at least an attempt to be bilingual French/English, and most politicians are making the effort to learn the other official language. In a country where 21 percent have French as their home language, and only 66% have English, it only makes sense to learn both languages if you want to operate on a national scale.
In the United States, I don’t think Spanish has as large a percentage of speakers as French is in Canada, but Wikipedia says that 34 million people in the United States speak Spanish. Seems that would be very useful indeed to speak it.
I don’t think I would have been laid off if I was a bilingual (French/English) tech writer…
So there are more Spanish speakers in the United States than the entire population of Canada. Definitely useful, as it would seem one is more apt to run into a Spanish-speaker than a Canadian.
Do you think your kids are going to continue to speak Spanish outside of the immersion environment?
I’ve got friends who did the French immersion thing here in Canada, but being from Saskatchewan, they just kind of regressed back to basic ‘Where is the washroom?’ type of knowledge. You just don’t speak it enough here on a daily basis.
OTOH, I’ve got a friend whose first language/home language is Spanish and she went to French immersion, but since she speaks Spanish with her family all the time and English with everyone else she’s sharp in those, but again, since her siblings in French immersion are the only people she speaks French with (and rarely, just to say things they don’t want their parents to know) her skills are getting rusty.
I got so excited today when I was at my daughter’s school for a meeting (about her gluten intolerance, not about language) to see a huge table out in the hallway with “Bilingual Education” signs behind it! Sadly, they weren’t there promoting English speakers learning in another language, but for immigrants to learn in English. In fact, they seemed quite taken aback when I asked if there was any room within their organization for promoting teaching in Spanish to native English speakers.
I have two kids in spanish immersion schools, and aside from all of the other benefits others have mentioned - I find it makes the world a little bit bigger for them. It’s a little easier to get them to see that the world is more than just our little piece and that it can be accessible to them.
Both of my kids knew only Dora the Explorer level spanish before starting immersion in the 1st grade (age 6). The oldest is 13 now and fully fluent in conversational, “kitchen” spanish and the formal language. The other just started this year and is coming along nicely in subjects in both languages.
There have been parents through the years who have pulled their children out of the immersion program because their kids just didn’t want to do it anymore - most during the transition from elementary school to the middle school program. A lot of those, though, were families who spoke spanish at home so they didn’t really need the immersion program to be fluently bilingual.
I would, because around here we think more language is better. My kids are bilingual Dutch/English and are learning French for kicks, having found Rosetta Stone on the computer.
Reading turns out in our experience to be mostly a non-issue – as they learned to read in one language they learned to read in the other. Eldest had some trouble with vowels in Dutch, because vowels in Dutch are consistent where they are not in English – an “a” always sounds the same, they do not have the cat/car problem. But it went away without any special attention. Spelling is an issue, because the same letters do not signify the same sounds – Eldest wrote me an email once that said “Ij love you sow maht”. But this also goes away by itself. The best thing that ever happened to his spelling was when we got him an email account.
I do not think I would want my kids to learn a language I could not understand, but this may be because my sons are, um, well, my father calls them The Cossacks. I have no doubt that they would immediately think of some way to profit from any such advantage – in much the same way their father and I used to speak French if we wanted to talk about something in front of them.
But even if you forget a language learned in childhood, I think it makes it easier to learn other languages down the road. At least that has been my experience.
Or at least, getting out to general public without all the hand-wringing. It was nearly fifty years ago when the first serious look at bilingual students in Montreal came out (Peal, E. and Lambert, W. E. ‘The Relation of Bilingualism to Intelligence’,. Psychology Monographs: General and Applied, 1962, 76, 1-23.). However, because there are so many different contexts for bilingual education (Are both languages actually used outside of the school?, Do the parents employ both languages?, etc.), and there are so many different ways to implement bilingual programs (additive, etc.), that’s it’s only been in the last two decades that research has considered all the parameters.
The biggest confusion and controversy is whether we’re talking about immigrants who are getting some instruction in their native language for content as opposed to students such as that of the OP.
But even with immigrants, I can say one thing from extensive personal classroom observation with regard to Prop 227 (CA): The largest district in California (LAUSD)–and the second largest in the nation–was NOT really implementing true bilingual education for its immigrant students correctly, so any conclusions drawn from that district (and really, most of California) cannot usefully inform us, and all of the references to that system as an example of bilingual education are meaningless. What LAUSD was doing was just simply having any teacher with a high school level of Spanish explain things in Spanish (with no training about how various subjects are verbalized in Spanish)–and with no transition or over-arching curriculum planning. It was pathetic. Any English mono-lingual teacher could take some courses in Spanish, and then an easy district test which would suddenly qualify him or her as a “bilingual teacher,” and which would bestow upon him or her a “BCLAD” certificate, which really just meant a raise in pay grade. There was little over-all programming or planning for the integration of the students.
If it had been done correctly, it would have provided the largest, most informative data pool for understanding bilingual education ever. And part of doing it correctly would have meant that students such as the OP’s child would have been–at least part of the time–in the same Spanish-language content classrooms and as immigrant Spanish speakers–and vice-versa.
But *she *wants to learn more Spanish because it’s fun, it’s easy (!) and it would let her talk with her native Spanish speaking classmates more easily.
