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My experiences with language immersion took two forms, both later in life.
In my junior year of high school, I studied in France for the entire school year. The program was School Year Abroad (www.sya.org). In their program, you stay in a local household, which is an invaluable part of the experience, both for culture and for language acquisition. Now they have added several countries that were not available in my day. Their offerings are: China, France, Italy, Spain, Vietnam. They also offer 5-week summer programs.
Between my junior and senior years of college, I went to Middlebury College's Summer Language School (www.middlebury.edu/ls) for Chinese. This is a collection of immersion programs that require you to sign a pledge that you will not speak English during the program. It is very effective: I became very comfortable with the language during the 9-week program, and quickly became more effectively conversant in Chinese than in another language I had studied for four years in college (Russian).
While not my experience, I still think the most effective way for a child to learn two language is to have grandparents who live abroad in a different language and culture. Take them or send them there every summer. This situation avoids the inevitable resistance that arises even in bilingual homes in America as children socialize more and more in the American language and culture and refuse to speak their second language.
Totally agree about the immersion method, Glen. That's the way I learned German in the Air Force. I do believe it was the armed forces who first realized the efficacy of immersion. The only time we were allowed to use an English word in class was if we needed to learn a new word to say what we wanted to say. That would go like "Wie kann ich sagen, immersion?" or whatever. Worked for me.
As a child, we lived upstairs from my grandparents who often spoke German. Actually picked up some of the language that way, but my early education in a second language ended in 3rd grade when we moved. That head start probably had something to do with my choosing German as a second language later. That, and the fact that everyone kept telling me how a degree in any science can benefit from knowing Latin, Russian, or German.
I would LOVE to try learning a language by immersion! Sounds stressful, but I like languages so probably fulfilling too. Never had a great enough need to take time off from work for it, though.
One of the world's greatest linguists, Mario Pei, wrote that he was born in Italy and started with a classical education. Then when he was 12 his parents moved to New York and he continued a Jesuit education there, continuing with Latin and Greek and taking up German. His parents, "at great cost to themselves", insisted on continuing to speak Italian in the home. Thus by his teens he was fluent in several languages, and what with being embarrassingly talented as well he went on to speak something like 26 languages well and lots more not so well. Imagine my vicarious pleasure at the mere thought.
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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