English Immersion Is Slow Going [... For Teacher Acceptance.]

The Boston Globe ^ | 12/26/2003 | Anand Vaishnav

[johnny7]

Three months after Massachusetts public schools launched voter-approved English immersion classes for thousands of immigrant children, reality is hitting home for their teachers: Many students will have to remain in immersion classes longer than the one-year time limit specified by the new law.

[kittymyrib]

The tower of Babel revisited. Funny how immigrants in the early 1900s learned English without all these state programs.

[mollynme]

students must complete a year's worth of work while learning English.

What would be so bad about holding them back a year to learn nothing but English?

[Will_Kansas]

The school year is one-third over, and they are already admitting defeat? Sounds like the Boston Globe is trying to create the situation where the program fails, so they can say "See! We told you so!".

[AbsoluteJustice]

Shhhhh you might be called an insensitive individual bent on racism :)

[Who dat?]

So in her fifth- and sixth-grade classroom, students read about the Vikings' explorations while also glancing upward at illustrated examples of the alphabet more suited for first grade, such as apples under "A" and fish under "F."

It sounds like someone was pushed ahead into a grade they were not prepared for. My dad was even held back to repeat the third grade – the teacher was his mother.

But anyway, I’ve got a question for someone about the “first grade.” Like what is it?

When I went to school, elementary school was 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Junior high was 6th, 7th, and 8th. High school was 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th. I always wondered what happened to 1st because I never went to one, but I keep hearing about it.

[LadyDoc]

I have two older children who were adopted from South America, so let me put my two cents in.

My youngest was "immersed" in regular classes at age 10, but had two hours a day tutoring in English second language. At home we spoke mixed spanish/english sentences (I speak Spanish, but never "studied" it, so have a limited vocabulary).

My youngest spoke english fluently by six months.

My older child was 15 when he came. In the High School, they had bilingual classes, since we had many kids from (legal) Mexican farm workers. Half his classes were spanish, half in English. After a year, we moved and he was in English only classes. By the third year, he was fluent, but nevertheless had trouble in classes that used specialized language such as biology (he did ok in history and math he passed, but had problems with word puzzles).

Immersion is the only way to go for children. But they need ESL (English second language) classes to make the going faster.

However, older children-- over age 10-- probably need more time.

There are neurophysiological reasons for this. Children who never learn any language by age 2 may never become fluent in any language (which is why sign language needs to be taught to profoundly deaf children even if you later want them to lip read). Children exposed to two languages as small children do worse in each language but later learn other languages with ease. (I suspect the brain grows in the area that processes the pattern of languages, and the vocabulary areas).

However, as one gets older, these areas are slower to expand, and the language is more difficult to learn.

Making "rules" is nonsense. Older kids will probably need three years, but younger ones won't. End of story.

But if you don't really push these older kids, they will never get decent jobs, so you really have to push it.

[SauronOfMordor]

Funny how immigrants in the early 1900s learned English without all these state programs.

1st generation son of Italian immigrants, I didn't learn English until I started kindergarden in the early 60's. Didn't stop me from scoring a SAT verbal score of 710 in high school (along with SAT math of 710 as well)

[Don Corleone]

This program has little to do with teaching kids "English" but a lot to do with finding jobs for more teachers that support the "Union" .

[RedWhiteBlue]

Immersion. That is the way we ALL learned our first language, so I don't understand why it shouldn't be the logical choice for learning a second language.