French Emersion
 

I would really appreciate some thoughts or experiences of how well children adjust to french emersion. I have two boys aged 7 and 4. I am looking into different school systems such as publicly funded, Catholic system or french emersion. How difficult would it be for our 7 year old adjust to french emersion?
Jenny

Re: French Emersion
 

My eldest (7) is in Catholic FI in Ontario (FI at english catholic board school), and she loves it, but it seems that there are different approaches to it in different areas. BC for example seems to be a lot more "in at the deep end" than my area, here half the classes are still in English, there I hear its different. I expect different school boards within a province have different approaches to it too.

You know your kids best, so its hard for an outsider to say how they will take to it, but the school here is generally supportive, and you can rest assured you wont be the only parent in that "how is it going to go" boat. Worst case you can always transfer out of FI anyway... My kid had the advantage (?) of doing FI from J-K, so its not like parachuting in in grade 2. Offspring #2 (4) likely to be enroled in FI J-K for the fall.

Re: French Emersion
 

If you're looking at Ontario there are four public school systems:

- English Catholic
- English Other
- French Catholic
- French Other

To be eligible for the French school systems a student needs one francophone parent (though there's some cheating). The English school systems offer French immersion but that's a different thing than attending a French school.

Re: French Emersion
 

Our kids are in French Immersion in Calgary. They are in the public system and started with Kindergarten.

It started out as total immersion with only emergency situations in English (and I suppose other things at the teachers disgression). I don't think they had classes in English until grade 4 or 5 - don't remember for sure.

They are both in Jr. High now - there are more classes in English since they take some of their options (woodwork, sewing, band, etc.) with the English kids (or rather non-French Immersion kids). And their English Language Arts of course.

There is the option for late French Immersion which starts in grade 7 if you miss kindergarten. They say that after a year in late immersion you are pretty much caught up with those who started in kindergarten. I can't speak from personal experience on that though.

Re: French Emersion
 

It's a kind of a 'how long is a piece of string' question to be honest.

It depends on your kid. The feeling here is that kids who are academically challenged in any way don't do well in French. They're not set up for it (the FI stream) and they will encourage you to send your kid right back to english, where the english stream is expected to deal with it. :thumbdown:

It depends on the province, and how they deal with French immersion. It varies a lot as others have pointed out. I'm not a fan for various reasons but I would consider late immersion over early.

Re: French Emersion
 

My 11 yr old has just applied for a place at the late entry french immersion school here in Calgary... she is really keen so I hope she gets in there.

Obviously, because of this, I can't give you any real advice but will be watching this thread with interest

Re: French Emersion
 

How would you cheat to get your kid into the French school system? Genuinely interested, as this is something might want to consider in future. Could you claim to be French speaking, and as long as you speak French, get away with it?

Am not convinced by how well immersion works, hence the question - know lots of people here who did it and they don't seem to speak French at all. Think there are plenty of studies on that too.

Alternative in this town is to move to the dark side over the river and get your kid a real French education. But seems a lot of effort if you can avoid it.

Re: French Emersion
 

Thanks for your replies.

Re: French Emersion
 

My kid has been in non-religious French immersion the last couple of years (grade primary and now grade one).

I was a little worried initially as no English is taught at all; they leave this up to the parents or assume the kids will catch up later (when English lessons are added, from grade 3 onwards, I believe).

She seems to like it though and, although we do lots of reading and writing together, as well as a bit of math in English, I don't think she really needs it - more a case of me making sure she knows and understands what I think is important and that she enjoys learning.

Re: French Emersion
 

Personally, through my work, I've seen too many problems with children in FI to offer a recommendation. Often their French is poor, they end being behind when the English portion kicks in and they can be isolated and discriminated against if the FI classes are contained in an English language school. I understand for many parents who don't quite understand the system, it has a certain amount of cache, but if your children have any sort of challenges, FI will only exacerbate them. Secondly, if you do place them, pay very close attention to their progress.

Re: French Emersion
 

Typically the children at the school my children attended, Le Collège français in Toronto, who were not francophone, had parents who had spent some time in francophone countries; as diplomats or sportsmen. A parent had sufficient French for parent teacher discussions and the like without the family being fluent in the language. Arguably this could be a problem in that the parents would be ill equipped to deal with helping with homework and so on but, tbh, by the time the kids were six months into the bac, they were so far beyond me that the language was the least of my worries.

Re: French Emersion
 

Now I'm really curious about what you do...in an interested way

Re: French Emersion
 

We have a very good friend who is a retired elementary principal here in Calgary her last school was FI and regular program and she would echo those comments.

We also had a niece and nephew go into FI on Vancouver Island, the niece pulled herself out of FI in grade nine when she noticed her English skills along with other subjects were lagging behind that of her none FI friends and the nephew was pulled out because he developed behavioral issues because of his own perceived difficulties with the language.

It also important for the language to be spoken at home to help reinforce what is taught in school.

Re: French Emersion
 

I did it, starting @ Grade 7. From that point of view i'd say start at Primary level & ideally a french school-not immersion, or not @ all. It was an isolating experience and my skills at best were only ever "ok" and still too shy/uncertain to approach a French person to speak to them! So for me, it was useless. Once i hit University reality struck and I could not do Chemistry, even though I had just come from advanced Chem, but was taught in French. (I pointed to an object in first lab class "what do you call this in English? the reply " a beaker":blink::blink:)
If your child is shy forget the second language all together.
Just my 2 cents!
nicole

Re: French Emersion
 

Agree with first part of your comment - sound suggestion. Last comment (i.e. late immersion) is nonsense; late immersion students invariably suffer academically with a typically watered down French instruction. I've seen this happen so often it's pathetic = French Immersion instruction at the tragic expense of their primary language.

Absolutely true. Flavour of the month, like IB schools.

If your child does not use French regularly (at home, the mall, with friends at the pool hall, behind the bike shed, with the GF/BF, etc.) and frequently, you're pissing into the wind. Why bother learning French unless you plan to live in a Francophone region/country? I'd be more inclined to have the kid learn (1/2 assed of course) Cantonese. China's gonna be calling the shots soon enough anyhoo . . .

Re: French Emersion
 

The case for French in Canada is that speaking the language is advantageous in terms of employment. My daughter in Vancouver, for example, has a job that was only available to her because she's fluent in that language.

How come no one got picky about "cache" for "cachet", is it obscure French?

Re: French Emersion
 

Vocab aside, you are far from unique in struggling with technical subjects at Uni level, its very common I hear for non private school students, even "Straight A" types, to struggle in year one at Uni with maths, physics etc that private school students have been prepped for. There appears to be a disconnect between where high school expectations end and where Uni standards start, and many kids fall into the gap.

So far FI has been good for my eldest kid (touch wood), she enjoys it, but seems to be pretty smart. I would agree that if you have concerns about your child academically then perhaps FI is not the best path. There have been some issues of course, but the comment earlier about monitoring progress surely applies regardless of what schooling a parent chooses.

We looked at it as an opportunity to try something thats not available elsewhere, with the attitude that if it became a problem we had nothing to lose by changing over at a later time. Perhaps there was a certain amount of looking to the future and the advantage of being bilingual in some jobs, but there was certainly no element of cache about the decision.

My foreign language skills are and always have been pretty woeful I will admit, so it was also an opportunity to give her a grounding in a second language that may have helped me at an early age. Its kind of nice to hear her teaching her little sister french songs on road trips, or reading french stories (as well as english), and she seems to be doing well in all subjects. I think the school here has done a good job of balancing French and English loads throughout though, I would not be so keen if it was true sink or swim immersion.

Re: French Emersion
 

:p

Re: French Emersion
 

What I mean is you can be good at chemistry, understand the concepts etc, but not know the words for things. Not knowing the word for beaker doesnt mean you dont know your chemistry, it just means you havent learned a particular word yet.

The bigger issue is thousands of bright kids head off to Waterloo university and have a torrid first year because high school has not gotten them to the level of understanding that the Uni expects and that private schools prepare their kids too... That's what I've heard anyway, and the experience of friends kids backs it up.

Re: French Emersion
 

My wife went through French Immersion in BC.

It's very useful when we want to buy a croque monsieur in Paris :thumbup:

Re: French Emersion
 

I agree with you totally, loads of kids are unprepared & they are coddled too much in high school.

Re: French Emersion
 

I agree with a lot of this.

Hmm, that's not what I hear (late immersion) so maybe it depends where you are. Again, FI seems to vary by province. As it is I'm not super fussed but I turned down an early FI spot as I wasn't convinced that underneath all the perceived 'cachet' that were was any true advantage to FI (as Oink pointed out). At least not here where no one speaks it.

Re: French Emersion
 

That's another argument for separation right there.

Re: French Emersion
 

Some advantages to speaking French are:

- greater enjoyment of France and the rest of the francomonde

- access to a body of literature

- greater ease in mastering other related languages, such as Spanish.

It's a, like, Good Thing.

Whether or FI results in students who can speak French is, I think, questionable but, if you want to broaden your childrens' minds why not try it? They're not going to learn French by accident.

Re: French Emersion
 

Separation of Vancouver, where she's experiencing the advantage, from what?

Re: French Emersion
 

I dunno, because there are reasons why FI isn't such a great choice? Kid is still going to learn french at school starting at grade 3 - they all do. It's not as if it's FI or nothing. If she's set on becoming fluent, she can always move somewhere francophone later, when it's her choice. That's what the OH and I did.

Re: French Emersion
 

In theory we should have been ideal candidates to try out FI - children do pretty well at school and Mrs jimf is fluent in French & German. However, we decided the risk just wasn't worth the marginal future benefit. I doubt the children would "struggle" as such in FI but I suspect their grades would be lower in FI setting than they would otherwise be sticking with teaching in english.

The people I know from various other countries who speak good english didn't go to an english immersion school they just learnt english at school as a foreign language. My brother's wife is French - her friends/relatives who I've met generally spoke good english - again all though learning english as a foreign language. If the interest and will is there it should be perfectly straightforward to learn sufficient of the language without being taught in an immersion setting.

I do understand there is a perception in some areas that the more academically inclined children will gravitate to the FI system, so it's a sort of informal grammar school system. From what I've seen thats not the case in Calgary.

Re: French Emersion
 

There's a fair bit of snobbery associated with it here. Some parents perceive that it's better because there's less ESL kids :rolleyes: never mind that their kid is FSL.

My daughter is taking Italian with some other kids from her school. They do a few hours a week, learn songs, poems etc. I wouldn't be opposed to something like that in the early grades at school for french, or another language.

Re: French Emersion
 

Not the case here either I think.

Part of our reasoning in trying the kids in FI is that although I did French and German at school, in my case a few lessons a weeks was not enough for it to sink in. Same goes for my canadian educated better half, and shes an ESL teacher by trade, so knows a thing or two about both teaching languages and being immersed in an alien langage/ culture.

French fluency can certainly do no harm in the long term living in Canada, and the old style way of learning didnt work too well for me, not that I was particularly motivated back then.... Rather like emigrating, if you dont give it a go, then you will never know one way or the other...only in the case of FI, its a lot less hassle to take an alternate path if it turns out to have been a bad decision!

Re: French Emersion
 

ESL? FSL?

Re: French Emersion
 

English as a second language.

French as a second language.

Re: French Emersion
 

ESL in that context is probably a nice way of saying foreign (and not British foreign)

Re: French Emersion
 

Your choice, of course, but the benefit is only "marginal" if you assume the child will move on from Canada to a non-francophone country. Speaking French in Canada opens all manner of doors, rightly so, of course, it's an official language and learning it is something a diligent immigrant might be expected to do.

Re: French Emersion
 

I agree it's a good thing to have ability in a foreign language (or two). Even if not for purely economic/functional reasons eg the job market there are cultural aspects etc that make language ability a good thing to have for it's own sake.

Re: French Emersion
 

Exactly! Whether that is through FI or through the French taught in the regular English stream is a personal choice. In the case of our daughter she has certainly picked up a lot of French ability in three years, and as she seldom stops reading or talking I have no worries about her ability in English either!:)

Re: French Emersion
 

One of my clients is French - real French from Bordeaux. When he deals with the government he always ticks the box to communicate in English. He says he can't understand a word of Canadian French.

Re: French Emersion
 

Thats not uncommon, its a language that went its own way 300+ years ago. Its probably a bit like us trying to hold a conversation with Shakespeare!

Hell, even withing Canada the Ontario Francophones cant understand the New Brunswick Francophones...my francophone neighbours chat in English!

Re: French Emersion
 

The point I made was that it is perfectly possible to learn a foreign language without being in an immersion setting. Mrs jimf is fluent in two languages that way. My brother's French inlaws did the same - most of them also speak German as well as English. The benefit of FI is "marginal" if you can learn the language in a non immersion setting anyway.

Re: French Emersion
 

I wonder if the immersion program here was set up for the benefit of francophone parents who wanted some francophone education for their children whilst integrating with Ontairos anglo monoculture, rather than for anglophone parents to inflict french on their children. That would make more sense to me, but I could be wrong:unsure:.

Either way its there as an option, and its working for us so far.


Its probably ironic that if my wife and I excelled in French at school and were fluent, our kids would quite likely be going to english school rather than FI... Im not sure its supposed to work that way!

Re: French Emersion
 

Sorry mate, but that is complete crap. My experience over the last 15 years is that francophones, of any flavour, will stick to their own version when talking to like-tongued people. They can quite easily switch to "typical" French when they need to or want to.