Foreign Language Immersion Schools - experiences

[espartakus2016]

Hello all - My wife and I have a 3 yo child and we are looking at a bilingual school (immersion type.) Obviously, this is expensive, probably costing at least 25k/yr from K-12th grade.

We are currently paying for day care and it is just as expensive so it is an expense we can continue to have.

We are only having this one kid - tried for more but it didn't work out, so this is it.

My wife recently mentioned we could probably do public schools with a tutor on the side of we want our child to be bi/tri-lingual. I don't think this is the same experience as learning math/history/etc in a different language. I am bilingual and I speak to our child in a non-english language but I'd like her to also experience speaking multiple languages.

I am looking for people who sent their kids to these immersion type of schools - did you like them? Would you do it again? I appreciate any experiences, advice, feedback.

Thanks!

[123]

I do not know about other cities but the public schools in San Francisco have some language immersion programs as part of their regular curriculum.
https://www.sfusd.edu/learning/language ... s-language

Edited to add:

One SFUSD language program is particularly outstanding. It is a Chinese immersion program operating at Alice Fong Yu Alternative School grades K-8. As part of the graduation of the program students take a trip to China http://www.afypa.org/cep.html There is a lot of fund-raising and parental involvement along the way. Public schools can reach extraordinary levels with involved parents.

[Nate79]

We are getting ready to send our child to public immersion school in the fall (kindergarten). Does your public school not have such an option?

[cashheavy18]

Yes! We’ve sent our kids to a private school that had French as the main language (all subjects) , followed with English (reading/writing/math) and Spanish (reading/writing) as additional languages.

Highly recommend, languages are a gift.

If you’re able to stay with the immersive language experience at least through elementary school, you have a solid foundation.

Tutors on the side don’t provide the same results as kids hearing, speaking a different language the majority of the day and a key component - doing so with other kids!

[bendix]

I would say it greatly depends on the language and consequentially the language school you´re looking at. If you´re targeting in a language school mainly visited by the offspring of well off expats from e.g. Japan or Korea or China or France or Germany or so... These might be good experiences. I could imagine a couple of not so great experiences but this is just prejudice and not first hand experience.

[Watty]

Obviously, this is expensive, probably costing at least 25k/yr from K-12th grade.

That is $325,000 over 13 years and the money could be invested and grow a lot. In many parts of the country that is enough to buy a decent house.

For comparison if you invested $25K a year for 13 years that would be more than enough to pay for your kid to go to Harvard and still have enough money left over to mostly pay for graduate school too.

Something else to consider is that translation software is getting better all the time for both written and spoken languages and 20 years from now that might limit the value of spending the $325K to help your kid become multilingual.

If English is not spoken at home as the primary language I would also be concerned that their English might suffer if they learn English as a second language(ESL).

You might be able to find school counselors who you could talk with to help determine the best way to make sure that your kid is fluent in English with whatever you decide to do.

[toddthebod]

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.)

[privateer79]

we've sent 2 kids to a private immersion language school (k-5) due to not living in a very good school district, and having some heritage associated with the language on both DW, and my sides.

we had mixed results... one of our kids (the more social/ outgoing one) totally blossomed and picked up the language easily, and has gotten interested in other languages, as well as generally doing well academically.

our more reclusive kid had a bit of a slower start( and the critical K-2nd grade time was remote due to covid), and does well in math, but tends to not actively engage in the second language which leads to mediocre results in anything that isn't english or map... still doing pretty well overall though.

We were super happy going with a private school during Covid... they actually were actively teaching the kids while our friends in public schools lamented the schools being MIA. (although we naturally missed out a bit on the "immersion" aspect during those years)

[luminous]

Our kids have learned a second language in the public school system and I would absolutely do it again. The older child is now bilingual even though neither of us are fluent in the immersion language. The younger child didn’t take to it as naturally as the older so I wouldn’t say they are fluent, but they still recently decided to continue immersion into middle school. As someone else said, language is a gift.

[halfnine]

Our kids are about 10 years ahead of you. My thoughts:

- Being fluently bilingual (including reading/writing) is more important than being somewhat trilingual.
- Trilingual takes a special child for it to work out. Some kids have it, some don't.
- Expect 15-20 hours per language per week to keep up. Do whatever works for your family whether this is via a parent, nanny, immersion school, etc. or a combination of them all.

[Pitagoras]

I can talk from my own experience, growing up in another country.

The ONLY people I know speaking fluently/accent free a second language, are the ones who learned it as kids. You CAN'T learn pronunciation as a grown up. That is what I experienced and saw it in many other folks.

I was born in Argentina, in a German family. I only spoke German until I was 5 when I started going to school where I learned Spanish. BUT, it was still a German school, immerse, until and including Highschool. Half of the classes were in German (mostly German expat teachers that came for 3 years), half in Spanish (local Argentine teachers). And it rotated every year...so I had Math, Chemistry, History...in German and in Spanish. When I go to Germany they think I am German when I speak. Same in Argentina with my Spanish. This type of fluency is not possible to acquire when you are grown up.

In that same school I learned English...and now living in the USA, it is the language I use the most, and at home I use Spanish and/or German (my wife is also German).

BUT, my son was 7 when we moved into the US. Now 15...he is the ONLY one who speaks English as a native language, accent free, fluently, etc. My wife and I will NEVER EVER have that level of English. Impossible. The GPS does not even understand me! My grandmother moved as a grown up to Argentina...she lived there 40 years, and she could NEVER speak Spanish fluently. A German friend lived 25 years in Latin America before moving to Spain...well, he speaks VERY fluently, grammatically correct, but his accent oh boy....same his wife...

And believe me...accent is important for certain situations....very.

So, with all that story, absolutely do it if you can. Professionally it ALWAYS helps, at least in my experience.

[psteinx]

English is the Lingua Franca of the modern world, especially for a kid growing up in the United States, who is likely to live & work here as an adult.

Second (and third) languages are nice, but frankly, I don't think the ability to speak Spanish/French/German/Mandarin without an accent is all that valuable to an American.

Aside from the cost and family disruption issues, consider whether some of the mental/academic effort that the kid would expend on navigating school in a non-native language might slow/hinder the acquisition of other skills taught in school - math, science, history, and general English reading and writing skills.

i.e. I would prefer my kid to be +5% in the various core academic skills, and accept a -30% penalty (versus an immersion, fully fluent kid) in the foreign language.

[Watty]

I am bilingual and I speak to our child in a non-english language but I'd like her to also experience speaking multiple languages.

The ONLY people I know speaking fluently/accent free a second language, are the ones who learned it as kids. You CAN'T learn pronunciation as a grown up. That is what I experienced and saw it in many other folks.

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.

[pizzy]

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

[Super Hans]

Spanish is the only immersion program available in our public schools in Northern Virginia. I'm surprised by the lack of choices, but getting started with one Romance language seems really valuable. As others have articulated, it becomes more difficult to learn languages with age. And this gateway language should help a lot with French and Italian. In any event, I don't see any down side. Even if the kids don't develop any foreign language skills, I can't see they're missing out on anything else in this exercise.

[miket29]

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 live in a cosmopolitan area and there are immersion schools in languages including Chinese and French (accredited by the French Ministry of Education), some thru public schools and some private. When I was younger I lived in a few larger apartment complexes (eg. 20+ buildings) and these were some of my neighbors. Every one of the kids spoke flawless English they picked up from their friends around the neighborhood. Not the slightest trace of an accent.

[toddthebod]

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.

[pizzy]

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.

[LFS1234]

Hello all - My wife and I have a 3 yo child and we are looking at a bilingual school (immersion type.)
...
My wife recently mentioned we could probably do public schools with a tutor on the side of we want our child to be bi/tri-lingual. I don't think this is the same experience as learning math/history/etc in a different language. I am bilingual and I speak to our child in a non-english language but I'd like her to also experience speaking multiple languages.
...

In order to become fluent in a language, there has to be an obvious-to-the-learner purpose for learning it. Is the non-English language that your daughter now would be learning the same as your other language? Is she exposed to people who speak that language?

I question whether it makes sense for a very young child to learn more than two languages at once. They can pick up additional languages in middle school or later.

I don’t think one-on-one language instruction makes much sense other than for time-constrained professionals with specific goals. In those cases, the student and teacher have lots in common, are social equals, and both embrace the same goals. None of this describes the relationship between an uninterested minor and the teacher they’re stuck with. One-on-one instruction is intense and can be stressful; a class with a good teacher and ten-or-so interested students is likely to be more productive as well as more pleasant. A lot of the best learning, you do from your peers.

For all but a very few people, I don’t think achieving extreme proficiency in a foreign language is worth the time required. According to an internet source, 54% of US adults have a literacy below sixth-grade level (in English!); most of them seem to be doing just fine. You can get very far speaking any language at a 6th grade level. And you can survive, easily, at a 1st grade level. When you need high quality written output, you can if necessary hire a native speaker to edit your work.

I’m reasonably fluent in five languages. Some I learned early; others I laid the groundwork for in middle- or high school, but really became proficient in much later; in my 20s and 30s. I have used all of these languages both for work and for pleasure.

Regarding accents – an accent is proof that you have spent considerable time in more than one culture. This makes you interesting. Our society integrates people from all over the world at its highest levels. Most of us can manage very well with strange foreign accents, including even those from places like the San Fernando Valley, New York and Biloxi.

[runningshoes]

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.

Why do you think this is true? Kids at a young age do a really good job of picking up accents in their local area and easily distinguish between English and Language #2 or #3 along with the accent. English is picked up everywhere - school, home, friends, TV, etc.

[Pacific]

We are in Southern NJ and I don’t know of any. But I may just have my head in the sand.

Then, possibly, one of the African languages would be appropriate.

[eosin]

We looked into this. LA area. At the end of the day, the other subjects (science, math) were not taught well.

Just speaking a foreign language, without concurrent competence/skill set/job skills, isn't sufficient for gainful employment.

Although I agree with other posters (language learning has benefits, is a gift, etc.), make sure the core subjects don't get short shrift.

[espartakus2016]

Thank you everyone for your experiences.
We are in the LA area. There is one public French immersion school near us but it is in the lottery system so in case we can't get in, we are considering a private school.
The lack of rigorous STEM would be an issue if we were to go the private school route.
From my experience, learning a language as a child is invaluable and much easier than as an adult which is why we want to provide this opportunity.
Thanks again!

[DiploInvestor]

Our kids all started school while DW and I were living and working in Italy. We sent them to a private Italian school that was affordable, and they picked up the language within months. Locals thought they were little Florentine kids - I.e., no discernible American accent. At home they spoke accentless English. We let them watch cartoons in English to reinforce that, but at the age they were, accents and pronunciation were not an issue.

Fast forward a few years, and they still understand a little but no longer speak Italian. They have studied some Russian, Spanish, and French in English-language schools since then, but the results have been awful. We tried, but immersion is the only way to really hold onto a language. When their friends speak it, they will learn it fast. Also, some adults *can* learn excellent pronunciation, but perfect accents are much harder after you’re grown up.

As someone said, languages are a gift, so encourage it when they’re young, because it’s a short window of opportunity to be truly bilingual.

[nydoc]

We enrolled and then pulled out for this coming school year from elementary school spanish immersion program. Maths and science were in Spanish and rest English. Language program itself is highly rated but they didn’t seem to prioritize science/maths part which is important for us. Also they didn’t have a clear defined pathway for gifted and talented students in immersion program.

[CyclingDuo]

Hello all - My wife and I have a 3 yo child and we are looking at a bilingual school (immersion type.) Obviously, this is expensive, probably costing at least 25k/yr from K-12th grade.

We are currently paying for day care and it is just as expensive so it is an expense we can continue to have.

We are only having this one kid - tried for more but it didn't work out, so this is it.

My wife recently mentioned we could probably do public schools with a tutor on the side of we want our child to be bi/tri-lingual. I don't think this is the same experience as learning math/history/etc in a different language. I am bilingual and I speak to our child in a non-english language but I'd like her to also experience speaking multiple languages.

I am looking for people who sent their kids to these immersion type of schools - did you like them? Would you do it again? I appreciate any experiences, advice, feedback.

In our opinion, the best way is to move to another country where the kids learn in school surrounded by their native speaking classmates, and the next best way is with native speaking playmates after school and on weekends. Our kids grew up bi-lingual as a result of living and working overseas, and we did send one of them to a French immersion school to boot, so she is tri-lingual.

Was it worth it? Both kids grew up bi-lingual, studied multiple languages in high school, and both double-majored in college to include a foreign language as one of their majors. One works as a senior marketing director for a major global software company that includes using French, German, and English in her daily job. The other utilizes German, English, Italian, French, and Russian in his career.

I am only conversationally fluent in two languages (German/English), my wife gets by in four (French/English/German/Italian). Sadly, I spend a good portion of my working day at this point in my life having to use languages I had no exposure to during the first three decades of my career. I now find myself working for a portion of my week in Portuguese, Mandarin, and Spanish (plus occasional other languages such as Korean and Vietnamese) - none of which I ever studied or spoke. Enter translation applications and translators to get the deals closed.

It's difficult to predict what your three year old child will face in his/her life and career, but we are certainly all for learning multiple languages to open doors and options for the future. Is paying $25K a year to accomplish a second language worth it? Only time will tell if the investment is worthwhile. We actually sent our kids for a few years to an English speaking school so they could learn academic English while living overseas in a German speaking country where they grew up, and paid about $26K a year for a few years.

Only you can decide if the expense is worth the potential return on investment. Lord knows, the world needs communicators that can speak more than one language.

CyclingDuo

[Glockenspiel]

Many public schools in the Twin Cities metro area have immersion programs, either Spanish, Mandarin, or other languages. These are FREE. I’d move to Minnesota and get enrolled in an immersion school for free instead of paying over $300,000 for a private school for K-12. Everyone that I know enrolled in the immersion school loves it.

[rainfallwinterberry]

I know that language immersion schools are popular, but I would heavily caution any family that wants to go into such a thing. I grew up in a third world country, but moved fairly early in life, and I know many immigrant children that were sent to similar schools out of a desire to keep a cultural connection to their country of origin.

1. In the context of immigrant children, language immersion school frequently generates a large amount of resentment towards both the language and the parents forcing the kids to go there. There is a fairly clear split, in my experience, between those who don't really care, and those who really hate it there. The former is fine, but the latter will grow up hating the language and the culture. It may very well backfire.

2. As a corollary, it's of supreme importance, in my opinion, that you anticipate your child actually using the target language regularly. Language attrition is very real, and will erode away your ability to speak even your native language. I was a native speaker of multiple languages that language attrition has taken away over decades on non-use, and I know many in the exact same situation.

3. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism has been subject to much debate over the years. There are mountains of literature arguing both sides, much too complicated for me to summarise, but if I had to try it would be that -- the evidence is inconclusive, children who grow up bilingual *may* develop better, or *may* develop worse, or have no cognitive effect at all.

4. The cognitive effects are very much separate from the *social* effects -- bilingualism (for the right languages, mainly European languages) is a sign of prestige, and immersion schools are filled with students of a higher socio-economic strata, so the peer groups of children attending these schools is of much higher quality than usual public schools. Of course, you can achieve an even better result by attending private schools in expensive areas, which mainly exist to gather high-quality peer groups for your children.

5. Social pressure is a much more effective tool of language acquisition than formal learning (hence immersion). Immersion schools are effective, but less so that moving to a place where the desired language is the native language of your child's peers, and thus to communicate, they are forced to pick up the language.

6. This is not really applicable here, but often immigrant families experience a large amount of estrangement from their children due to the language barrier. Chinese/spanish/etc speaking parents that have children that mostly speak English is the most common variant of this pattern, but be careful that you're not immersing your children in a language that you yourself don't speak fluently.

Thanks for reading my ramblings if you made it this far. If I had a takeaway, it would be this: be very careful about immersion programmes in a language that you yourself do not speak, and which you don't anticipate them needing. They may grow to hate it, and language attrition may erode it away anyways.

[Maverick3320]

Just throwing this out there:

By the time your child reaches adulthood, language translation technology may have advanced to the point of making the additional education a wasted effort. There are already cell phone apps that essentially translate in real time. There may be social benefits to be had, but I would balance that against the $300,000 cost and ask if that money could be better spent elsewhere.

[EddyB]

Just throwing this out there:

By the time your child reaches adulthood, language translation technology may have advanced to the point of making the additional education a wasted effort. There are already cell phone apps that essentially translate in real time. There may be social benefits to be had, but I would balance that against the $300,000 cost and ask if that money could be better spent elsewhere.

My first reaction to this idea *was* to imagine how some of my friendships would work through a translation app, but I suppose anything’s possible. I mean, calculators freed us from learning math, without losing anything.

[Vogatrice]

There have been great comments and personal experiences shared on this thread. I'll add one more.

I raised my kids in Western Canada, where French Immersion is very popular. Even though we lived about as far away from Quebec as geography allowed, our public school district had 4 equally-funded branches: public in English, public in French, Catholic in English, Catholic in French. Along with a variety of charter schools and private schools offering immersion in French, Spanish, German, Mandarin. And schools only for native French speakers, not for immersion purposes. It was a very common choice for parents to send their kids to a public immersion program, especially parents with aspirations for their kids to be high achievers. And, note that in all Eastern-Canada public jobs and many private companies, bilingualism is a hiring requirement. So there are certainly compelling reasons to make this choice.

Despite being multi-lingual myself, I did not choose immersion for my children. After looking around at my friends' children, they were struggling in BOTH languages. Their English spelling and grammar was usually atrocious. As they moved into high school, they lost interest in French proficiency in favour of science, math or sports in English. So they ended up halfway to nowhere, in my opinion. I'm speaking about families where English was spoken at home.

A compromise solution worked for us: my daughters took French as a side subject starting in preschool, attended French immersion summer camps, and were exposed to the usefulness of foreign languages through our travels, where I was able to communicate in a variety of countries and they weren't. One took a gap year in French Switzerland and feels she really has a mastery of the language now.

So there are multiple paths to the same goal, including using a second language at home when the kids are small. My nephews were raised that way, and pushed back - they refused to speak German to their parents, though they understood it just fine.

A final anecdote - I have an Ivy League degree with a major in Russian and East European Studies. Guess which language is my worst/practically non-existent 40 years later? The one I paid the most for...

[EddyB]

.

So there are multiple paths to the same goal, including using a second language at home when the kids are small. My nephews were raised that way, and pushed back - they refused to speak German to their parents, though they understood it just fine.

Certainly. I would encourage the OP (and anyone interested in the topic for their own children) to read some of the literature addressing the topic of bilingual education. There are no “silver bullet” findings in what I’ve read, but for my own kids (one attending a bilingual school, the other attending school in a local language different than what we primarily speak at home), I have found the literature to suggest some ideas for emphasis and supplementation. Unsurprisingly, mastering two languages often requires more work. The amount of perceived additional work likely changes with the method, and there are various degrees of “mastery,” which can be modified to a greater or lesser degree later in life.

There are increasingly strong findings about the benefits of bilingualism on cognitive maintenance as we age to consider, too.

Of course, there’s also the fundamental fact that multiple languages make for more choices in life.

[Valuethinker]

Hello all - My wife and I have a 3 yo child and we are looking at a bilingual school (immersion type.) Obviously, this is expensive, probably costing at least 25k/yr from K-12th grade.

We are currently paying for day care and it is just as expensive so it is an expense we can continue to have.

We are only having this one kid - tried for more but it didn't work out, so this is it.

My wife recently mentioned we could probably do public schools with a tutor on the side of we want our child to be bi/tri-lingual. I don't think this is the same experience as learning math/history/etc in a different language. I am bilingual and I speak to our child in a non-english language but I'd like her to also experience speaking multiple languages.

I am looking for people who sent their kids to these immersion type of schools - did you like them? Would you do it again? I appreciate any experiences, advice, feedback.

Thanks!

If the parent is not a native speaker of the 2nd language, it is *very* difficult to coach your kid. And it needs discipline eg Mum only speaks German at home to the kids.

(if the parents share a common non-English language to speak to each other, that's a huge incentive for the kids to learn it)

Immersion is great but is not advised if the child has other learning challenges (ADHD, dyslexia etc). Or just doesn't get on with it.

French or other European languages are less preferred because it's possible to deal with people in all of those countries, generally, in English. Google translate works wonders. Unless there's a grandparent etc (some of my nieces and nephews speak German). If there's a family tie to West Africa, then French is not a bad option. Portugese if there's a family tie to Brasil or Angola.

To my mind, there's really 2 best options for an American kid:

- Spanish. 1/3rd to 1/2 the population of North and South America speaks Spanish as a first language. Encounters with Spanish-speaking people and culture are quite likely. Portugese (Brasil) or French (Quebec) are less important (in Canada, because of civil service language competency rules, French is tops, for a native English speaker).

- Mandarin Chinese -- world's most spoken first language. Future superpower. Incredibly difficult to learn as an adult.

Other thoughts

- Hindi? If there are family who speak it/ ties to India. Generally India is the most English-language (but non English) place I have ever been, probably. English language newspapers, tv channels. Everyone seems to speak some English.

Japanese Korean etc fit the paradigm of learning an non Indo-European language (ie good) but the case for them is less strong, I feel.

[simas]

I can talk from my own experience, growing up in another country.

The ONLY people I know speaking fluently/accent free a second language, are the ones who learned it as kids. You CAN'T learn pronunciation as a grown up. That is what I experienced and saw it in many other folks.

I was born in Argentina, in a German family. I only spoke German until I was 5 when I started going to school where I learned Spanish. BUT, it was still a German school, immerse, until and including Highschool. Half of the classes were in German (mostly German expat teachers that came for 3 years), half in Spanish (local Argentine teachers). And it rotated every year...so I had Math, Chemistry, History...in German and in Spanish. When I go to Germany they think I am German when I speak. Same in Argentina with my Spanish. This type of fluency is not possible to acquire when you are grown up.

In that same school I learned English...and now living in the USA, it is the language I use the most, and at home I use Spanish and/or German (my wife is also German).

BUT, my son was 7 when we moved into the US. Now 15...he is the ONLY one who speaks English as a native language, accent free, fluently, etc. My wife and I will NEVER EVER have that level of English. Impossible. The GPS does not even understand me! My grandmother moved as a grown up to Argentina...she lived there 40 years, and she could NEVER speak Spanish fluently. A German friend lived 25 years in Latin America before moving to Spain...well, he speaks VERY fluently, grammatically correct, but his accent oh boy....same his wife...

And believe me...accent is important for certain situations....very.

So, with all that story, absolutely do it if you can. Professionally it ALWAYS helps, at least in my experience.

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'.

[simas]

I can talk from my own experience, growing up in another country.

The ONLY people I know speaking fluently/accent free a second language, are the ones who learned it as kids. You CAN'T learn pronunciation as a grown up. That is what I experienced and saw it in many other folks.

I was born in Argentina, in a German family. I only spoke German until I was 5 when I started going to school where I learned Spanish. BUT, it was still a German school, immerse, until and including Highschool. Half of the classes were in German (mostly German expat teachers that came for 3 years), half in Spanish (local Argentine teachers). And it rotated every year...so I had Math, Chemistry, History...in German and in Spanish. When I go to Germany they think I am German when I speak. Same in Argentina with my Spanish. This type of fluency is not possible to acquire when you are grown up.

In that same school I learned English...and now living in the USA, it is the language I use the most, and at home I use Spanish and/or German (my wife is also German).

BUT, my son was 7 when we moved into the US. Now 15...he is the ONLY one who speaks English as a native language, accent free, fluently, etc. My wife and I will NEVER EVER have that level of English. Impossible. The GPS does not even understand me! My grandmother moved as a grown up to Argentina...she lived there 40 years, and she could NEVER speak Spanish fluently. A German friend lived 25 years in Latin America before moving to Spain...well, he speaks VERY fluently, grammatically correct, but his accent oh boy....same his wife...

And believe me...accent is important for certain situations....very.

So, with all that story, absolutely do it if you can. Professionally it ALWAYS helps, at least in my experience.

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'.

[Flashes1]

I was shocked when I met someone from Quebec who said he could no longer speak French very well after living a America for ~15 years. This was an educated guy in his early 40's. I would hate to spend a bunch of time/money on my kid learning a foreign language only to lose it a few years after high school. In case you guys missed the memo, English is the universal language of the world. Chinese/Arabs/Brazilians/Swiss/Russians take English lessons so they can communicate with us.

I do encourage American parents immersing their children in Chinese and Arabic to assist the military and intelligence services in future endeavors.

[miket29]

Our kids all started school while DW and I were living and working in Italy. We sent them to a private Italian school that was affordable, and they picked up the language within months. Locals thought they were little Florentine kids - I.e., no discernible American accent.

I like travelling virtually by reading books by expats and one I read recently is "Kept: An American Househusband in Paris" written by a man whose wife was an American diplomat stationed at the embassy in Paris. Most embassy employees send their kids to an American school but they enrolled their kids in the local schools so they'd learn French. In the book he recounts an amusing story where they're visiting a museum and his son asks an attendant a question about an exhibit. She replies and then he turns to his son and asks what she said. Her eyes widening in surprise as she understood the kid was a foreigner she said in accented English "But he speaks just like a Parisian!"

And in the book "Il Bel Centro: A Year in the Beautiful Center" Michelle Damian writes about her family living in Spello. They enrolled their 3 children in the local schools. They whole family spoke Italian but in an anecdote she recalls a time at a restaurant where they each ordered in Italian. After her youngest son, about six, ordered the waiter exclaimed in surprise "Where did he learn to speak Italian?" and she wondered just what it was everyone else was speaking...

[okie745]

I sent both my kids to a immersion public school. 100% of instruction was done in French, this is at a public school.

If you have any public immersion options, I would use them. I would not worry too much about the language offered unless you have a specific need. Learning ANY second language has TONS of benefits on childrens' learning. A bi-lingual 7 year old with have double the vocabulary of a mono-lingual 7 year old. Just learning ANY second language is good for kids. There are tons of studies proving this.

I would ignore anyone saying that kids only need to learn English or that some non-English language isn't worth learning.

Is there any parent that would really say they would rather their child be mono-lingual, then bi-lingual with English and language X?

If private school is your only option, then maybe send them just K-3. Those first few years of language instruction are the most important. Kids pick it up faster and that is when they will develop the proper accent. Full immersion is better than partial. Don't worry about your kids learning English, they will do just fine.

[DiploInvestor]

I like travelling virtually by reading books by expats and one I read recently is "Kept: An American Househusband in Paris" written by a man whose wife was an American diplomat stationed at the embassy in Paris. Most embassy employees send their kids to an American school but they enrolled their kids in the local schools so they'd learn French. In the book he recounts an amusing story where they're visiting a museum and his son asks an attendant a question about an exhibit. She replies and then he turns to his son and asks what she said. Her eyes widening in surprise as she understood the kid was a foreigner she said in accented English "But he speaks just like a Parisian!"…

+1

I’m familiar with that author. We just listened recently to a podcast where he was interviewed and talked about his experiences writing the book about Paris and another about his time as a trailing spouse in India. It’s the “Embassy Wealth” podcast, if you ever want to check out the interview. The host really likes talking about real estate investing, but she occasionally veers off-topic with some interesting guests.

[Isabelle77]

I grew up near Toronto and french immersion was always an option. While I didn't personally attend french immersion, the general concensus was that bright kids do well in immersion. If your child has any sort of learning issue though, especially in reading, immersion can be very difficult and even damaging.

[rainfallwinterberry]

I sent both my kids to a immersion public school. 100% of instruction was done in French, this is at a public school.

If you have any public immersion options, I would use them. I would not worry too much about the language offered unless you have a specific need. Learning ANY second language has TONS of benefits on childrens' learning. A bi-lingual 7 year old with have double the vocabulary of a mono-lingual 7 year old. Just learning ANY second language is good for kids. There are tons of studies proving this.

The view that bilingualism grants enhanced cognitive benefits is a popular psychology myth that is subject to much scientific debate. The most thorough meta-analysis that I'm aware of (Lehoten et al, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/287608267.pdf) finds that, after controlling for confounding factors, there is little evidence that these cognitive benefits exist. Anecdotally, it seems like half the papers find some kind of benefit, and half the papers refute those very same benefits.

[Unnecessary comment removed by admin LadyGeek]

I would ignore anyone saying that kids only need to learn English or that some non-English language isn't worth learning.

There are a few main motivations for trying to get your children to acquire languages:

1. Cultural: most immigrant families want their children to retain a cultural connection with their culture of origin, and immersion schools of that language tend to have a high concentration of people of the same culture.
2. Dubious congitive benefits: people like you and OP who heard about the supposed benefit of bilingualism and want their children to succeed
3. Communication: "China/Japan/etc is the future" was a popular thing to believe several decades ago, and many parents made their children learn those languages in anticipation of a future that never came
4. Prestige: bilingualism, in the right languages, is a sign of prestige, so improves your social standing, which indirectly translates into future economic success

Each reason thus has different target languages. #1 obviously requires a specific language, #2 doesn't care about the language and thus tries to target a language with a large amount of speakers, #3 almost exclusively targeted Japanese, Chinese, and maybe Korean, and #4 targets high prestige European languages.

Is there any parent that would really say they would rather their child be mono-lingual, then bi-lingual with English and language X?

If private school is your only option, then maybe send them just K-3. Those first few years of language instruction are the most important. Kids pick it up faster and that is when they will develop the proper accent. Full immersion is better than partial. Don't worry about your kids learning English, they will do just fine.

[Unnecessary comment removed by admin LadyGeek]

Public schools find kicking out problematic children much more difficult due to the political nature of the schools themselves, so you're also partly paying for the private school to do the hard work (both politically and socially) of kicking out the problematic children to prevent the other kids from potentially becoming friends with them at all.

[AerialWombat]

I now find myself working for a portion of my week in Portuguese, Mandarin, and Spanish (plus occasional other languages such as Korean and Vietnamese) - none of which I ever studied or spoke. Enter translation applications and translators to get the deals closed.

Are you in technology sales?

[psteinx]

There are a few main motivations for trying to get your children to acquire languages:

1. Cultural: most immigrant families want their children to retain a cultural connection with their culture of origin, and immersion schools of that language tend to have a high concentration of people of the same culture.
2. Dubious congitive benefits: people like you and OP who heard about the supposed benefit of bilingualism and want their children to succeed
3. Communication: "China/Japan/etc is the future" was a popular thing to believe several decades ago, and many parents made their children learn those languages in anticipation of a future that never came
4. Prestige: bilingualism, in the right languages, is a sign of prestige, so improves your social standing, which indirectly translates into future economic success

Each reason thus has different target languages. #1 obviously requires a specific language, #2 doesn't care about the language and thus tries to target a language with a large amount of speakers, #3 almost exclusively targeted Japanese, Chinese, and maybe Korean, and #4 targets high prestige European languages.

Good analysis. I don't think Korean was ever really seen as the language of the future (Korean population too low). Japanese was (had college friend who, in the late 80s/early 90s, studied Japanese for that reason, I think). Chinese more recently (perhaps Chinese has cooled off in the last ~5 years). And, once upon a time, circa late 70s-early 80s I think, Russian was. (Russia was perceived as ~#2 globally, but growing. Russian skills important probably for both intel and commercial purposes). IIRC, our midwestern high school, with no particular population of Russian emigres, offered Russian as one of the few possible languages to study, in that era.

FWIW, the notion that one can pick up fluency in a foreign language, without downside, by going to an immersion school, seems silly. If you expend mental energy translating from French to English in your head, and/or learning French generally, then that's time and energy that could have been spent achieving a bit more mastery in English, and/or various STEM skills, etc. Evaluate what you think will be important for your kid, and prioritize accordingly. Perhaps extra French fluency IS important to you, but it's a tradeoff against other possible skills.

[KFBR392]

Thank you everyone for your experiences.
We are in the LA area. There is one public French immersion school near us but it is in the lottery system so in case we can't get in, we are considering a private school.
The lack of rigorous STEM would be an issue if we were to go the private school route.
From my experience, learning a language as a child is invaluable and much easier than as an adult which is why we want to provide this opportunity.
Thanks again!

Did you look at LILA in Los Feliz? We liked the campus a lot but ultimately decided to go with a public Korean immersion program. Our son starts kindergarten in August.

[Yuen]

If you expend mental energy translating from French to English in your head, and/or learning French generally, then that's time and energy that could have been spent achieving a bit more mastery in English, and/or various STEM skills, etc.

Generally the intent is that in an immersive language learning situation, you put your energy into learning how to to start thinking "in" the new language and not spend your time translating back and forth in your head. Especially in languages that are very different from english in word order, sentence construction, etc where a direct english translation would be considered poor grammar or sound unnatural in the foreign language.

[LadyGeek]

This thread is now in the Personal Consumer Issues forum.

I removed some off-topic comments regarding racial / socio-economic status stereotypes.

[luminous]

Our motivation for putting our children into an immersion program has not yet been captured here. We want our kids to have a good sense that there is a world and culture beyond the small part of the American experience they inhabit day to day. We try to do things that reinforce this, like travel internationally and read multicultural books as a family. Language and (at least in their program) light cultural immersion are a big help. I know they probably won’t retain fluency, and we gave each of them the option to leave the immersion track in middle school: both opted to stay in.

I don’t take a zero sum view of their learning capabilities, but I also don’t think that some tiny potential “loss of learning” when in elementary school is really that important for their success in life. We don’t have to min/max our or our kids’ lives.

[EddyB]

If you expend mental energy translating from French to English in your head, and/or learning French generally, then that's time and energy that could have been spent achieving a bit more mastery in English, and/or various STEM skills, etc.

Or, more likely, playing video games.

[langelgjm]

In order of effectiveness, I think it's something like:

1. attending a local school in a foreign country (or an international school in that country that treats the local language seriously)
2. attending a foreign language immersion school in the US
3. studying a foreign language in a normal US school
4. private tutoring (without some other kind of structure)

No surprise, but this order also corresponds to the raw amount of total exposure to the language (in and out of classroom) a child is likely to get.

For anyone arguing that advances in technology will eliminate the need to learn foreign languages, I question whether such people have ever had more than casual tourist foreign-language interactions. There are so many situations that cannot be mediated by a device. Translation apps may eliminate the need for tourists to make any attempts with phrasebooks, but until we get to the point of "chip in brain" technology - and that for all the participants in a conversation - having to rely on technology to translate for you means you will always be imposing a social barrier on yourself. Conversely, speaking a foreign language yourself demonstrates knowledge of and respect for the place where you are. If you're taking a 2 week vacation somewhere it may not matter. If you are living in a foreign country for years, it does.

[Gradient Descent]

I am bilingual and I speak to our child in a non-english language but I'd like her to also experience speaking multiple languages.

Unless your child is a natural polyglot, being trilingual may be a lot to expect of them at such a young age.

Speaking to them at home in one language and educating them in formal English in school will probably take them plenty far in this world.