Why language immersion

Colorado must educate students who are equipped linguistically and culturally to communicate successfully in a multicultural American society and abroad. Therefore, it is necessary for the United States and the State of Colorado to provide educational opportunities for all students from pre-school through university level to develop and maintain proficiency in English and in at least one or more other modern or classical languages. Competence in more than one language and its cultures enables people to communicate with those of other cultures in a variety of settings and develop insight.

Language immersion provides a host of educational benefits for your child:. Immersion is the most effective method of language instruction in the U. Hosting an international teacher leads to greater global competency among your students and community. Provide students with authentic, immersive instruction from native speakers of Spanish or Mandarin.

Here are a few of their success stories:. Gain international experience. Achieve personal and professional growth. All while uniting our world.

Are you a current or former ambassador teacher who knows someone that could be a good fit for the program? Resources for school leaders to help you support your teachers and implement a successful program. Resources for parents considering dual language immersion programs for their child or supporting a global citizen at home.

At Participate Learning, we believe in the power to unite our world through global education. Our program offerings give students access to an education that prepares them for college, career, and life in a globally connected world. At the heart of this are our language immersion programs, in both Spanish and Mandarin. While there are a few varieties of language immersion curriculums, our programs focus on teaching a second, target language to students for either 50 percent or 90 percent of their school day.

Read on for answers to ten frequently asked questions about our language immersion programs. Beyond achieving high proficiency in biliteracy and bilingual skills, research shows immersion students outperform native English-speaking classmates on standardized tests and have enhanced cognitive skills.

Students also gain interpersonal skills, including increased cultural sensitivity, and are prepared for a global society and marketplace. Being able to communicate and excel academically in two languages also gives students greater self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment. Watch this video to hear firsthand about the experiences of students who finished our language immersion program.

The first number in the ratio for both models indicates the percentage of time in the classroom that is spent teaching in the target language of Spanish or Mandarin. The second number refers to the percentage of time spent teaching in English. For models, the ratio of the target language to English remains consistent throughout the entire program. In models, the instructional time for the target language decreases each year until there is a ratio by the end of the K-5 program.

Do children really learn better in elementary school? Can't they just wait until high school? I do not want to discourage language learning at any age and depending on where you live, high school may be the only option to learn a second language. However, if given the opportunity, start your child young.

While the concept of the "brain soaking up language the younger you are" is a very difficult one to research, an innovative new study shows that indeed, the younger children are, the better at learning a second language.

It shows that there may be a time period where the brain is more sensitive to learning grammar and therefore, younger learners will master grammar rules that older learners will always struggle with. Additionally, as the study points out for younger learners, "the habits of pronunciation and grammar of their first language are less deeply ingrained and thus easier to overcome. There are other reasons as well. Think back to your high school years and what your priorities were — was learning a second language one of them?

Especially when you may have only studied it a couple of times a week for an hour at a time? I bet not. Meanwhile, my son, who began immersion at the age of two and a half, will tell you that he is Chinese because he speaks the language and will one day travel to China — he is fully invested!

He also has the luxury of time that most high school students and adults don't have — it's a focus of half his day. And he isn't afraid to speak Chinese and make mistakes, a carefree attitude that older learners don't usually have. There is also the fact that the more hours you spend learning a language, the higher your fluency will be.

You can't make up for hours lost in your youth, but you can give those hours to your child through immersion. This is one of the most studied topics in immersion language learning. What the research consistently reveals is that students show a temporary lag in specific English skills, such as capitalization, punctuation, spelling, word knowledge, and word discrimination on standardized tests.

But after approximately the fourth grade, they perform better than their monolingual peers on tests in English. There are no long-term consequences to their ability to speak or read English or to their literacy development. And for parents worried about the vocabulary of their bilingual learner, consider this: Their overall vocabulary is actually double that of a monolingual — they know the same word in English and their second language. If you need further proof, new research from RAND compared 27, students over 10 years here in Portland.

The headline of the study is that immersion students outperformed their non-immersion peers in English reading by seven months in fifth grade and nine months in eighth grade.

That is basically a full school year ahead. This study was particularly groundbreaking because the students here are assigned to the programs by lottery, meaning that this was one of the first randomized trials representing students from all different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The RAND study did not show benefits for math and science, but also showed no detriment. In fact, for the Japanese, Russian, and Chinese programs, there may be "modest benefits.

So we can't say yes, but we can't say no, either. This is a very practical concern of parents and one that comes up repeatedly. Teachers are aware that parents are not able to provide the assistance at home that they would if their child were learning in the home language.