All these people talking Chinese, Portuguese would be much easier and more beneficial sooner.

Brazil actually, you know, has resources and ****.

Heh, as long as she's exposed to it often, Japanese is good. I grew up with Japanese/English, but my japanese is definitely diminishing quickly as I get older and am rarely exposed to it. Spanish/Italian wouldn't be as big of a problem in that sense imo.

this

japanese AINEC

It looks like she's wearing a cotton kimono robe. How appropriate.

Here's another picture of her in traditional Japanese garb

As someone who actually experienced one of these programs, my answer would be "the English one". AINC.

Unless your goal is to teach your daughter to hate school. In which case it doesn't matter. They'll all work.

Incidentally, it also left me way behind in my English language skills, particularly spelling and grammar. Fortunately I was always a big reader so that really helped me out a lot. I expect my peers were not so lucky (can't say for sure, I escaped at the start of the fourth grade and never saw any of them again). At the very least you need to be prepared to supplement your daughter's English lessons. While she'll still presumably have an English class, all those Geography assignments or History reports that she would have been writing in English she's now going to be writing in Japanese or Spanish or whatever. Over the course of her school career that makes a huge, huge difference. That is, a normal kid learns and practices reading and writing at least as much in other classes as in the actual English class. Yours won't.

Spanish obv as others pointed out.

Since you've already made the choice, this isn't going to make any difference, but here's my story. When I was growing up I had to choose between French and Spanish (not immersion schools, just what second language to take in school), I really wanted to do French (I can't even remember why). I strongly preferred it to Spanish, and although they told me they thought it would be better if I learned Spanish, they said OK to French because I really wanted to do it.

I studied French for many years to the point where I was almost fluent. Since college, I have pretty much never used the language except for one trip to Montreal and one trip to France. The opportunity to use it never really came up and my French has deteriorated significantly. However, if I spoke Spanish as well as I spoke French, it would have been infinitely more useful and I would still speak it well. At least once a month I wish my parents had ignored me and made me take Spanish.

Aren't you concerned your daughter will fall behind in English?

Why do they need a 90/10 split and not just have a language class to go along with their other classes?

Learning a second language is great. But a second language is far less valuable than mastering English.

I know lots of countries outside the US teach the kids multiple languages. Do they use this method? If not, I'd follow those programs.

I selected Spanish as it's the most widely spoken language and seems to be infiltrating the USA atm. This program sounds like a great idea btw, wondering why German isn't on the list though, Japanese was by second choice. what did she pick?
Also is it definitely wise to give a 4 year old or w/e choice over this. will they not change their mind etc. fairly easily? I don't have kids fwiw

Wait so they teach all subjects in the other language, except for English classes, for 7 years? I would be somewhat concerned about my kid being able to keep up with English later on but I dunno if that is justified or not. Mastery (or close enough) of another language at cost of only being very marginally behind relative to peers in English for a while is probably worth it.

edit: From a few mins of google research it sounds like there isn't much downside at all past age 12 or so. Good opportunity.

Some good concerns voiced here, thanks. Good things to think about.

She is also a big reader/very into books and learning, but I had been thinking that most of the extra work out of school should be focused on the second language. It makes sense, however, for me to make sure she's not falling behind in English. FWIW my wife and I are very involved parents, we don't think that once she's going to school we're out of the teaching/instructing business for good. We understand that if anything it's MORE important to stay deeply involved.

In the 90/10 programs it doesn't stay 90/10, it goes 90/10, 80/20, 70/30, 60/40, then 50/50 for the rest of the time. It Japanese and Korean it stays 50/50 throughout elementary school.

It should be noted that she will have had three years of preschool prior to entering kindergarten and has already learned just about all of the skills kindergarten is supposed to teach - reading, writing, basic numbers, social skills, etc. My biggest concern with "regular" kindergarten is that they were going to simply repeat the stuff she's learned over the last three years.

There is no doubt that I'm projecting my negative memories of school onto this situation. I always thought school sucked because it was never challenging. I can distinctly remember as early as first grade thinking that school was a bunch of horse**** for idiots. My father just sent me all of my report cards/progress reports from when I was very little and they all paint a picture of a bored kid. I'm hoping this experience will be genuinely challenging for all of us and that she'll emerge with something of value, be it the language itself or the skills gathered in the process of learning.

It sounds to me like your daughter will be fine. If she's already reading on your own, and given your level of parental involvement, I think her English skills will be fine. So many of the early years of school are simply devoted to getting the kids just to be able to read, so if she's already there she's just going to be bored anyway.

For what it's worth I live in Canada.

Immersion is nothing new here. I took French immersion from kindergarden through high school and graduated with an Immersion Diploma.

All of my sibilings took immersion in school, FWIW my parents do not speak a word of french between them.

I am very grateful my parents decided to put me into an immersion school rather then just a regualar english school. My fluecncy in french has come in very handy many times throughout my life.

Cry Me A River,

Science suggests you would have done poorly in English regardless then. Kids may have an initial disparity where they suffer at English for a few years, but eventually they catch up and sometimes exceed their non-immersed peers. Considering the other benefits, I think any parent that does not enroll their child in an immersion program is doing them a grave disservice.

I understand she wants to take Japanese, but honestly, I don't see how the choice is anything other than Spanish for usefulness.

You live in So Cal, for gods sake.

So awesome.

I think we're all repeating the same points here (w/r/t Spanish vs. Japanese), but I have to emphasize that picking up Japanese (or any Asian language) is much more difficult to do later in life vs. Spanish or another romance language.

And as was pointed out earlier in the thread - having strong Japanese skills will serve as a good foundation if she wanted to learn other Azn languages.

-Al

The one my brother did was all French for K-2, then about 50/50 for 3-6, and then one period per day thereafter. It is definitely a good idea, but you have to be committed to it. If you bail in 4th or 5th grade, you will probably find yourself behind in English.

Most early schooling is a bunch of horse**** for idiots. I was well ahead of pretty much everyone as a kid and didn't learn anything in school until Jr High. By then I had developed a terrible attitude and terrible habits.


It's great that your kid will have something to challenge her and stretch her abilities.

Brazil has the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan. Sao Paulo.

You've always seemed like a great parent and I am not questioning that. However, reading books is to learning how to write as playing Madden is to learning how to play a football. I'd seriously suggest you emphasize English writing/grammar/spelling at home - maybe a diary or journal? Something beyond the hour a day, or whatever, of writing she's going to be getting at school.

When I switched to an English school I became an instant honours student and after a couple weeks was moved into the accelerated class whereas previously a "C" was cause for celebration. Obv this is very different from LFS' daughter in that I never wanted to be there and it was a horrible four years. I'm sure if the kid is into it there the results will be much better. Regardless, some thirty plus years later spellcheck remains indispensable to me and without it I could pass as a 4lifer. I have no doubt I was robbed of a lot of the fundamentals.

I don't know anything about Japanese grammar. But to imply that Spanish and English share the same or similar grammar is not correct. They share vocabulary, but the grammatical constructs are often quite different and are a major hindrance in learning the language. I studied Spanish in school for four years (and did quite well) and have lived in Argentina since August and I still make mistakes about what order to put words in.

Spanish and Portuguese are mutually intelligible to fluent speakers, so when considering how many more Spanish speakers there are in the world than Portuguese speakers, it makes no sense to learn Portuguese before Spanish.


Also, for those of you saying that Spanish is easy to pick up later in life: how many of you have actually done that?

CMAR,

That's too bad, but your experience does not represent the experience of that majority of immersion students, including myself.

While obviously english is not purely romance in origin, it is still primarily an s-v-o grammar structure, as is spanish/french/italian, while japanese is s-o-v (if you can even really call it a subject - it is often described simply as "topic"). This is a much larger grammatical change and is very hard to grok once you have cemented yourself into an s-v-o structure.

I have studied both spanish and japanese (spanish in high school for a few years, is that late enough in life?, japanese recreationally), along with a formal concentration in french (college), with dabblings in russian, chinese, and italian, as well as having a general interest in the formal study of linguistics. Spanish is way way way way way easier to obtain a basic working knowledge of. The pronunciation is easier, the grammar is easier, it's just easier. The trickiest thing about spanish is that since so many countries use it the slang changes, whereas french has been maintained more consistently historically (yay language councils). But you can still make yourself understood and understand much simpler than with asian languages. If you took an english sentence and maintained the structure and translated word for word into spanish, you would be understood even if it wasn't wholly technically correct. Not the same for japanese.

WTF?

Of course it's harder to learn Japanese grammar than Spanish grammar.

As I said, I don't know anything about Japanese grammar. All I was saying was that English grammar does not follow the same constructs as Romance languages. If I understand it correctly, English took its grammar from Germanic languages.