<p>College query - My point exactly. She saw an opportunity to practice and jump on it. In all fairness to other students, including my son, perhaps the “passion” to learn a second language is not there, therefore minimal effort is put into the “task”.</p>
<ol>
<li> Back when our kids were little, we had European au pairs living with us for a number of years. They were generally 18-19, mostly women, and the ones we had came from Scandinavian countries, Germany, and the Netherlands. Now, anyone who has done something similar knows (and anyone else can guess) that the kids who do this are not usually the sharpest tools in the shed. (There are exceptions, of course, usually with some interesting story behind it.) If they were good students, or well-motivated, they would be in university, not taking care of toddlers in another country. Almost all of our au pairs had struggled in school. They also tended to come from small towns, and solidly middle-class families; they were not sophisticated, and their schools had been basic.</li>
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<p>Nevertheless, they all spoke, heard, and read English quite well on arrival, much better than 99% of AP Whatever high school graduates in this country can get along in Whatever. (This was pre-internet, too.) I was always impressed at how kids who were below-average, academically, had been able to achieve very functional competence in a difficult foreign language. And, of course, that gave them a great base to become truly fluent while they were here, despite spending much of their time with children who barely spoke English themselves.</p>
<p>Somehow, these kids’ school systems had done an excellent job of teaching a foreign language to kids who were not good students. I often wonder why we can’t teach foreign languages even to good students.</p>
<ol>
<li> starbright, my Canadian nieces had French immersion from K on, too. I was interested, because I had grown up with the folklore that dual-language kids had trouble learning. I think that is now regarded as a myth, but I have to say that I was shocked at how slowly their reading skills developed. In 5th grade, one of them could barely read me a children’s book in French (the language of her reading instruction), and her English reading skills were not better. (And this was not a girl without reading support in her home. Her father, a technician, had also edited a small magazine for years, and her mother is a university professor. Her house is full of books.) She developed competence, of course, and graduated from university with decent grades, but she has never been an enthusiastic reader or writer. She does speak French really well, although part of that is attributable to working for a French company for three years, where the everyday language was French, and having a Francophone boyfriend. Her younger sister, who did not continue immersion through high school, is somewhat better as a reader and writer, but not so much as a French speaker.</li>
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<p>I guess I remain a little skeptical about early immersion.</p>
<p>It’s always hard to say, and I think it varies based on the individual. let’s face it, many people in this country have great difficulty with English, spelling, and grammar. I don’t mean an occasional spelling error, or an occasional typo in a quick post in this forum. I mean real trouble and I’m not referring to foreign-born immigrants.
My S(24) had 2 yrs of H.S. Spanish, and he remembers less than I do from when I took Spanish in the same high school. Yet he took 1 sem of German in college just for fun and loved it. He learned a good deal for his first ever course, and has continued with it. He had a German immigrant as his teacher.</p>
<p>I guess all of our experience in this family brings me to the conclusion that there are so many variables that one cannot make more than only the broadest of generalities. I imagine that helps very little.</p>
<p>^We now have an immersion program in one of our elementary schools - I think they do half days of Spanish and half days of English. It’s composed of half native English speakers and half native Spanish speakers. I have heard nothing but praise from parents, I think I’d have heard if kids had reading delays.</p>
<p>I agree with you 100% that for the most part Europeans, even those in the “lower tracks”, speak excellent English. I’d love to see what they are doing in their language classes. I think to some extent it’s just more serious expectations. My kids had foreign language instruction starting in K, but every year they learned the same three songs, the colors and counting. They didn’t know any more at the end of fifth grade than they did at the end of K. It was very disappointing.</p>
<p>The French immersion elementary school my s attended has the highest state test scores among all the charters in the city (and higher than most if not all of the school district schools). In science, math, social studies, all of which are taught in French and tested in English. Their English test scores are high, too. There may be many reasons for that, one being that kids at that charter are placed there by involved parents, but it seems apparent that the immersion program is not holding the kids back.</p>
<p>These many variations here are interesting to read. I know some of your kids have even attended what is regarded as really fine K-12 school systems too. I venture to say that some CCers would never opt to send their kids to a rural public school system such as ours, where 66% go onto college, or the HS doesn’t hardly have any courses with the AP designation. </p>
<p>Yet, my kids were getting French lessons at our public elem starting in K. Also, some here talk of starting foreign language in ninth grade and I can’t imagine at least having it in middle school. Again, our middle school (gr. 7/8) had either Spanish I or French I that spans two years to get one year of HS level French, though my own kids accelerated further which was not the norm here. As I wrote earlier, my kids reached French 5 in junior year and then one graduated and the other did supervised Indep. Study French 6 as a senior. She also assistant taught French at the Elem school as a senior. She traveled with her French class to Quebec and to France as well. When she was 16, she was on a tennis tour summer program in Europe and was the kid helping everyone with the French communication. </p>
<p>When she graduated, she was pretty competent in French, but not entirely fluent. But even coming from our no name public school system and no AP French, she placed out of several levels of French when she got to Brown. By senior year at Brown, she was a TA for French (this was not a major or minor for her, by the way). By age 18, she had a summer job in France in an English immersion program for children (a summer program for middle school age kids away from their homes). She was traveling around France by herself and using the language. By 20, she had a summer job in a firm in Paris where she lived alone and was very competent with her French. And this past summer at 22, she was working in France entirely in French (no English ever used). I believe that the fact that she can speak French fluently (due to her studies in our public school and further at Brown) has been an asset on her resume and has enabled her to get jobs overseas. It also helped when she picked up Italian readily though she is not fluent in that language, but can get by orally in Italian when the situation arises. She also has traveled a great deal independently in various foreign countries where being able to speak French or Italian has come in handy (for example, in her recent trip to Morocco and also I was with her in Switzerland, where she did all the communicating for us with complete ease). </p>
<p>And yes, all her friends from Europe (she has made many given her summer jobs there), had to learn English in their schools. It obviously can be done. It’s an important skill. </p>
<p>I’m surprised not more of your kids are competent in another language actually. However, I agree with the person who said that part of it is also one’s motivation with the subject and my D loved it. But even my other D got up to French 5 as a junior in HS and was very good at it too but just did not continue on at her college given the type of college program she entered.</p>
<p>To show how North America (US and Canada) is so behind other countries as far as second languages go. 30 years ago, I took a one month trip to tour Greece. I travel with a bag pack, and stayed at hostels. I met tons of Europeens. Even back then, I was the only one who only spoke one language. Everyone I met had knowledge of 2,3 or more languages. Even small villages in Greece taught a second language. Back then, it was English for males, and German for females.</p>
<p>I do believe our children are at a dissavantage in this global world, and with immigration. Seems everyone speaks 2 or more languages nowaday. Does it make it easier for those to find employment?</p>
<p>I agree with eucalyptus. All my D’s friends from other countries speak more than one language. I’m glad she is proficient at two and has some basic use of a third. I also think it is an asset on her resume. And she surely has been able to get work in other countries and being fluent has helped. And even for work in this country, they can see her international experience and that she can speak more than one language.</p>
<p>I think a second language should start in elem school. I’m glad our elem school had a French class once or twice per week. And I’m glad my kids were studying French in middle school.</p>
<p>It is an asset on a resume even if the specific job one applies to does not require a second language, because it shows an individual ready to go beyond what is required. In today’s work place, employers welcome employees wanting to continue to grow.</p>
<p>mantori:</p>
<p>My broader point was that I don’t consider AP level “fluent” in any sense of the word – even a 5 on the AP test.</p>
<p>“Fluency” may be an over-ambitious and unrealistic goal. I would settle for “competence”, for the ability to read a newspaper and know what it is saying (and perhaps to be able to identify the paper’s position in its country’s political spectrum), to read a short work of classic literature in the language and have some idea what’s so great about it, to hold a substantive conversation with a peer about topics of general interest, to listen to the radio and know what they are talking about at a decent degree of accuracy, to write a simple letter, like a thank-you note.</p>
<p>I know my daughter didn’t get there with four years of classes through AP at what are generally regarded as good schools. Maybe in college she did, but by then her attitude was so bad it didn’t matter. I taught a 10-week course once on Contemporary Latin American Novels to a class consisting mainly of high school seniors taking Spanish 5, on their way to very good colleges, and I expected that at least a few of them would attempt to read one of the two main books we studied in Spanish. No dice! The only one who tried was a native speaker, and he gave up after 20 pages.</p>
<p>But how many are even “competent” (a better more accurate word) after 4 years? I would think that they should at least be able to carry on rudimentary conversations with locals. </p>
<p>Lets focus on those that take it for the first time in HS. Its great if you were able to start in K or 3rd grade, but seems that is not the norm, thought it probably should be.</p>
<p>How many that got 5s on the AP, or even just took 4 years have rudimentary or competent skills? And why do so many quit after three years, doing the perceived minimum to get by?</p>
<p>At my Ds school there was one french teacher, and she was not greet. How many schools have jsut one teacher and if the suck, how many just don’t bother anymore?</p>
<p>And how do you get a B if you can’t carry on a conversation?</p>
<p>interesting question, Ilovetoquilt. According to CB, the goals for AP French (typicall HS level 5) are:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not sure what CB’s definition of “command” is, however. :)</p>
<p>Our HS language teachers were at least good. But still, most kids drop after completing two years, which is the minimum UC-Cal State requirement for admission. OTOH, kids aspiring to Cal, UCLA or top private school do continue on to a 3rd and 4th year.</p>
<p>I think being able to read French novels without a dictionary gives a reasonably good sense of the command level desired. I know in my AP French class we read Stendhal, Baudelaire and Ronsard, Corneille and other stuff I don’t remeber. We were long past The Little Prince. Despite the fact that my French was pretty bad (I didn’t bother to take the AP as I knew I was off to France,) I was still able to have conversation with the French family I lived with. They didn’t speak a word of English to me.</p>
<p>Its kind of sad to me that something as valuable as language, while it is encouraged and taught, seems to be taught so poorly and many schools.</p>
<p>My D may go you an eastern european country for a semester. I am sending her berlitz or whatever so she can get some rudimenary phrases down.</p>
<p>kids who took 4 year of language in HS and CAN SPEAK FLUENTLY are the ones who are using this language at home. There are no other way. D. took 4 years in HS with Spanish 5 the last one, test higher than highest score on placement college test at her school, very successfully completed Foreign Language college graduation requiremnt by taking third level class based on her placement test, was able to communicate on her 3-week trip to Spain senior year of HS, has 3 other languages (total 4 with one of them English). She does not speak Spanish fluently, nowhere near, and sh is not sure if it is her strongest after English (I am not sure either). She started taking HS Spanish in 6th grade.</p>
<p>"ow many of your kids who took all four year in school, how many actually can speak the language fluently?</p>
<p>How many can read it well enough to say read a magazine or novel?</p>
<p>How many plan on continuing with that language in college"</p>
<p>WOuld your D have preferered a different language and which one?</p>
<p>Why did student pick the HS language?</p>
<p>And for those with kids in college:</p>
<p>Is the way the lanugage is taught in college better/worse than HS? Is it more/less effective?"</p>
<p>H is linguistically gifted, fluent in 3 languages and was a German major undergrad and in grad school. He says that he didn’t learn how to fluently speak German until he sent a year in Germany in grad school. He says that kind of immersion experience has been key for everyone he knows who’s fluent in a foreign language.</p>
<p>Older S took 4 years of h.s. French. He can read it well, and can understand French TV and radio, something that he routinely did when living near the Canadian border. He can’t speak it well. He has never lived abroad.</p>
<p>Younger S took 3 years of h.s. Spanish, 1 year of college Spanish. From what I can figure out, he can’t speak it nor comprehend it. He may be able to read it if the material is relatively simple.</p>
<p>After taking the equivalent of 2 years of college French as an adult, I spent 3 months in France, also taking French there, and can now understand French reasonably well, and (when I’ve been in France recently) can speak well enough to be understood, but can’t discuss complex subjects. The immersion experience was key for me, too.</p>
<p>The difference between how languages are taught in high school and college is that they are taught faster in college. That doesn’t mean they are taught better. For instance, although the French teacher I had at my local public university was a native French speaker, she refused to speak French in our class because she said the students didn’t like it when she spoke French!</p>
<p>D’s class had native Spanish speaking teacher (from Cuba) and he was speaking only Spanish in class. The same was true in her other foreign language. the fact is that you can understand perfectly, but speaking is all together a different higher level skill that you can gain only by speaking a lot and by realizing that you cannot use any other language communicating what you need to communicate.</p>
<p>I took French for 4 years in HS and Spanish for 1 year in college and although I don’t remember much, I still have a rudimentary grasp of it. In NYC where I live, it’s not hard to feel immersed in Spanish so I can understand a good bit. </p>
<p>I am now learning a new language (Japanese) in my ripe old age and boy, is it challenging! I am hoping that my brain can create some new cells and synapses because the memorizing is just killing me. (Not only remembering grammar, vocab, but a 2000+ character system which has multiple readings for each character.) I’ve noticed that different people have radically different styles of language learning. Some are grammar geeks and like learning the various structures and breaking down every single point. And some are all “ear”. I’m somewhere in the middle, I find learning the grammatical points helps with understanding. Receptive language is a whole lot easier than speaking though.</p>
<p>I highly recommend learning a new language in your 50’s!</p>
<p>^ Yes, as I pointed out, understanding is much easier than speaking fluently, which was OP concern. If one is thown into foreign speaking environment without any initial knowledge, undestanding can come literally in few weeks and very good understanding in few months. The same person will not be able to speak until he absolutely has to do so.</p>