<p>A rarely mentioned benefit of bilinguality which is developed at a ‘later age’…
It is often the result of extreme effort and self discipline.</p>
<p>These attributes, which have no particular focal point in the brain, once cultivated are then applied to other endeavors. It is quite remarkable at our school to see the virtual non-English speakers arrive in 7th or 8th grade and emerge as poets, mathematicians and complete scholars as they graduate HS. </p>
<p>Using a language for the purposes of making it your ‘academic language’ is very different than the learning of a language for any other purpose, in my opinion.</p>
<p>“Regarding language proficiency, there are several articles that report that the brain center for language proficiency is the same center for mastering music (such as sight reading music sheets) and the same center used for math. Come to think of it, music and numbers are just another form of language.”</p>
<p>Well I was a dunce at music. I can read music, but have no ear and my fingers aren’t very coordinated. </p>
<p>I was also a dunce at foreign languages in high school - spent a year in France as a gap year which seemed to turn on a switch in my brain. I learned German relatively easily in college. Though I must say I was quite diligent about homework and language lab and spent a month in German while in college all of which helped. I only became truly fluent when I spent a few years there. I studied Italian while I was in German and found it absurdly easy - so easy I’d forget to learn the endings properly as I recognized that most of the verb patterns were like French. Still I could read a magazine after only a semester course. Thinking that I could learn any language I turned to Chinese. And realized, no I’m really not gifted at languages. I couldn’t hear the tones, I found the groupings of words for making plurals illogical and the lack of cognates daunting. </p>
<p>OTOH I was always quite good at math. </p>
<p>I still think learning languages is useful, fun and probably good for your brain.</p>
<p>Yet another important reason to extol the virtues of language learning and to promote bilingualism - according to Canadian researchers being fully bilingual is better for your state of mind and brain health:</p>
<p>Our school district tried integrating Spanish starting in first grade but there were several problems with it. Besides the basic instruction in math, reading, english, social studies and science there were specials - art, music and gym that they rotated through. Kids that had special needs or gifted were routinely pulled out for extra instruction in reading/english and math. They decided to put Spanish into the specials rotation, which meant that it was a two day a week class.</p>
<p>Parents complained that the Spanish class was not productive in teaching Spanish and was taking away time that kids needed for basic learning. The Special teachers complained that it was taking away time from their classes. The instrumental music (strings start in 3rd, band instruments in 4th) teachers complained because it cut back on their time. After trying this for about 6 years it was quietly dropped when two of the three Spanish teachers for the elementary schools moved.</p>
<p>My son’s small elementary school (just under 300 kids) had one Spanish teacher and she was not an especially competent or creative one. After five years of Spanish, my son knew basic words, colors, numbers and some phrases. He said she taught the same lessons every year. Most kids came away not wanting to take Spanish in Middle School. I suggested my son do it in Middle School because the language itself would be very useful and it could not possibly be worse then elementary school. At our MS and HS kids have a choice of Spanish, French or German. This son is now in eighth grade and in his 8th year of Spanish. He is nowhere near fluent and unless he does very well on this midterm and final he will take Spanish I in 9th grade. Because the class is taught just two or three times a week, the kids are not expected to do well enough to go to language II in HS, and most don’t.</p>
<p>It is something that is talked about and sighed over (by the Principal) at several MS parent meetings every year, but nothing changes. I also agree that being bilingual should be standard but learning a language has to be given the same time and respect as any standard subject.</p>
<p>Our school district does have a Spanish immersion program in one of it’s three elementary schools where kids are taught two or three of their classes in Spanish starting in first grade and continuing until fifth grade. In the middle school they have a special immersion Spanish class and a Social Studies class that is taught in Spanish. What I have heard from it is that these kids do become fairly fluent in Spanish but often need extra help in reading English. They are told to read in Spanish and I’m guessing that if they don’t have time to read in English also, they fall a little behind there. I think it all evens out by the time they are in middle school.</p>
<p>Of course, I agree on the benefits of learning more than one language. When I was 12, I was studying four of them (plus English systematically).</p>
<p>My nieces, however, were in a French-immersion grade school in Toronto. It was very popular, highly involved parents, etc., for all the reasons discussed here. I have to tell you, though, their reading skills coming out of grade school were scary: at best, they were reading on what I would consider a second or third grade level, and they both have some academic insecurities that have stayed with them through college. Two girls from the same family isn’t much of a sample size, of course, and it may be them rather than the school. (Their mother is a well-known academic, though, and their house is full of books.) But I always thought the French immersion had a good deal to do with it. (One of them speaks French pretty well now. The other doesn’t.)</p>
<p>Very few children at my school are monolingual. Only the Americans. My son spent his first years in the Rio Grande Valley, of hispanic descent and he has great accents in multiple languages. He spoke English with a Spanish accent to start with but got “fixed up” pretty fast when we moved into an English speaking environment (well kind of…the vocabulary was lacking for awhile). Picking up that second language right away set him up for success in language study. I think it happens when kids are babies.</p>
<p>JHS, yes, there can be problems with vocabulary and reading level for awhile…but watch out. They do catch up and have interesting social skills. Just think, listening to newscasts from France and Spain and know what they are talking about and feel it.</p>
<p>My son’s experience was somewhat similar to kathiep’s son’s. The school he attended for 1-3 grades taught Spanish on a daily basis to all grades. Kids also had Latin class for the 2nd semester of 2nd grade and had the option of continuing it before or after school in higher grades. There was also an after-school French class.</p>
<p>1st grade: My son picks up quite a bit of Spanish and seems to remember what he learns. He gets into the French class and, while he goes to every class (twice a week), he learns absolutely nothing. My experiences with the teacher tell me that she was just a terrible teacher. Native speaker of French, but idiot when it comes to kids (esp. boys - and my son’s not particularly rambunctious). Needless to say, we did not continue with the class in future years.</p>
<p>2nd grade: My son continues to enjoy Spanish, but REALLY loves Latin! The Latin teacher was absolutely terrific.</p>
<p>3rd grade: Different Spanish teacher. My son not only learns very little but forgets half of what he learned the previous years. He continues Latin, though, before school and loves it.</p>
<p>What this tells me is that it’s all about the teacher. Even twice a week, my son learned lots of Latin. But a bad Spanish teacher with the benefit of daily instruction can’t teach a thing. The problem is that there’s a severe shortage of language teachers, especially good ones and most especially those who are willing and capable when it comes to elementary students. Not surprising in a country where languages aren’t particularly sought after.</p>
<p>I have always regretted being monolingual and taking Latin in hs rather than French, Spanish or Russian. Yeah, I still know the first and second declensions because our Latin teacher taught them using nifty songs(the second declentions used “A bicycle built for two”) but big deal.</p>
<p>All kids in Ontario start French in elementary school. In our district, it was in Grade 3. It’s required through high school and yes, the kids do learn. All of my Ds can communicate in French well enough to be understood. None continued the language in university, although it’s a possibility that my youngest will when she goes next year. Her 3 older siblings all studied Spanish and German once they got to university, after starting in high school. It’s wonderful to know more than one language but it is very difficult to maintain a high level in a foreign language if it is not used on a regular basis.</p>
This (babies), of course, seems to be a great time to learn language. I recall some study that indicated that if a person didn’t certain sounds while they were still very young (I think by age 3-5 or so), that they may never be able to form those sounds properly because the appropriate synaptic connections were never made. The study used some languages with unusual sounds but not widespread use such as Basque and that clicking African language from the ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ movie. It also explained why many Japanese will always confuse their ‘L’ and ‘R’ letters regardless of how long they study English later in life.</p>
Although many Europeans and others decry Americans for being mono-lingual, I think the above reason combined with the fact that English is the ‘universal’ language and the language of technology and business impairs many Americans from being very successful or even having an adequate interest in learning another language - i.e. they don’t ‘need’ to. It’s ‘nice’ to be multi-lingual, for some people it’s even necessary due to their jobs, and there may be other debatable ancillary benefits, but for most it’s just not necessary. Having to do it all over again though, I would have skipped learning some German (which I only tried using a few times in the german-speaking areas of Europe but didn’t really need to), studied Spanish, studied much more of it than I did the German to become fluent, and attempt to use it frequently which is actually possible in Southern Cal due to all of the Hispanics here who speak Spanish along with many Spanish language TV channels.</p>
<p>this thread will divide into confusion if there is no clarification of the two different topics. OP started a thread on #1
Starting a second language in the classroom for native speakers. Decades of research shows it helps in other subjects, test scores etc
teaching English as a second language in the public schools. </p>
<p>I sometimes feel so baffled when it seems people are blasting #2 -bilingual education without actually walked into the battle zone - the public schools in town-to see if what they think is true? I have read posts, letters to the editor, magazine articles, heard rants pro and con on the radio and yet most of the people talking have just decided what is true without checking it out for themselves. The “expert” they quote often has not only not checked out the reality of programs, the last thing they want to know is any facts not fitting their own political view either left or right.
In our area schools bilingual education= teach part (1/2 ?) day of focused work only on learning English, then 1/2 day of classes in math, history, science in the native language. this is for the newest students, and lasts the shortest time as I understand it. ESL= the kids go into the regular classroom, working at grade level and leave for an period a day to work on English, skipping an elective such as art.
Can anyone tell me what is so awful about this? </p>
<p>ps - I feel so strongly cause I can’t learn any language except Latin - partly deaf, completely tone deaf, with the kids STILL trying to convince me that merry and mary sound different. (darn north jersey born. yea regionalisms!)</p>
<p>Article in the Sacramento Bee gives a good overview of the Canadian study on bilingualism aka the ““use it or lose it” strategy for maintaining a healthy brain” - benefits that includes greater ability to focus amid distractions, even though, sometimes bilinguals have to grope for the right word.</p>
<p>Talk about learning from TV. My parents and I were immigrants. My mother learned a lot of English from a PBS series to teach English. I still remember attending the banquet for participants in the course with her and sitting at a table with Spanish, Greek and Italian natives. I was able to practice my Spanish (haltingly, since I was only in Spanish II). I was very proud of her! Way to go, PBS!</p>
<p>NY Times reports on a new NYC bilingual public school that will aim to serve a diverse student body composed of an equal mix of students with backgrounds in Arabic language and culture and those without such backgrounds. This bilingual school will eventually serve 500 to 600 students - half of the school’s classes would be taught in Arabic and half in English.</p>
<p>Haven’t been to Scandanavia. The Dutch I’ve met there and here could all get by in English. Not true – despite legends to the contrary – in Germany, in my experience. I had lots of blank stares, but also had fun trying the little bits of high school German I retain. It’s possible that they understood some English, but I didn’t run into a lot of fluent English speakers.</p>
<p>My favorite fish-out-of-water moment was trying to figure out how to get from the Dusseldorf airport to my hotel via the automated train ticketing system. I eventually solved the problem by hailing a cab…</p>
<p>Folks, I’m all for teaching another language in grade school. However, let’s not get caught up in the statistical hocus pocus of the social scientists (who have financial self-interest in thier positions): ‘Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.’ This is a clear case of correlation, NOT causation.</p>
<p>All the CB data really show is that, kids who stick with a foreign language thru HS (3+ years) do better on standardized tests. As Homer Simpson would say, Doh!. I would bet a gazillion cyber dollars that CB data also show a positive correlation between kids who take Calc in HS and high scores on standardized tests, for the obvious reasons: on average, they are the academically stronger students! </p>
<p>At our school, kids who take 3+ years of HS language are typically the Uni-bound kids. Students aiming at Cal States usually quit language at year two, since that is the minimum requirement. Other kids may not even take a language.</p>
<p>The College Board’s 2004 report on College Bound Seniors: A Profile of SAT Test Takers, probably does already focus on college-tracked students many of whom are taking hs calc etc. According to Wake Forest University Alliance for Language Learning, assessments of the profiles of those students that include “long-sequences of world language study consistently demonstrate higher scores on both the math and verbal portions of the SAT than do their non-language studying counterparts.3 The gains are incremental; the more years of world language study, the greater the gains on the SAT Test. These data continue to corroborate previous research confirming the correlation of world language study with higher SAT scores.4”</p>
<p>All the more reason to advocate language study for all - starting in elementary and going on into middle school since “long sequences of study (greater than four years) in secondary schools are essential to the acquisition of second language proficiency.”</p>
<p>Quote:
A Matter of Equity</p>
<p>The College Board is equally committed to equitable access to our AP courses for all students, and to the principle that all students who are willing to accept the challenge of a rigorous academic curriculum should be given consideration for admission to AP courses.1 The Board encourages the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP courses for students from ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in the AP Program. Schools should make every effort to ensure that their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population. For the study of world languages, the Equity Policy Statement translates into long-sequences of study.</p>
<p>Because of the time investment necessary to achieve second language proficiency and due to the demonstrated benefits of world language studies, it is imperative that state policy makers consider the addition of formal, sequential instruction of world languages as essential, beginning in the middle school and even sooner, in order to allow equitable access to everyone. While we know that elementary programs are key to developing students’ ability to acquire a second language and to fostering their positive, receptive attitudes about language and culture, without long-sequence language study of five or six years, second language fluency and success on an AP exam in a world language remain possible for only an elite, select group of our student population. Does the required K-12 curriculum in your state include long-sequences of world language study?
<a href=“Department of Education”>Department of Education;
My son spent his first years in the Rio Grande Valley, of hispanic descent and he has great accents in multiple languages. He spoke English with a Spanish accent to start with but got “fixed up” pretty fast when we moved into an English speaking environment (well kind of…the vocabulary was lacking for awhile). Picking up that second language right away set him up for success in language study. I think it happens when kids are babies.</p>