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Old 03-04-2015, 03:40 AM
 
Location: western East Roman Empire
9,298 posts, read 14,194,465 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by All4edu View Post

I am debating whether its worth my time and money to have my children placed into a Foreign Language Immersion School ? ... "We are in America, speaking another language is not necessary". Any thoughts? Appreciated...
I agree with those who say only if the child has the talent and the motivation.

I did not have significant exposure to a foreign language as a child and I did not begin to study any language seriously until high school, and for personal cultural reasons. Then, despite having no formal multi-year degrees or extensive training in language or linguistics, over the years, contrary to expectations, I have used some seven languages at various levels of proficiency professionally and personally, and for almost 25 years I wound up being a professional translator (written - not an interpreter, which is oral), specializing in technical financial and other business documents and at the peak I was earning around three times the average for translators according to Department of Labor statistics.

But so what? Other people are engineers, doctors, bankers, musicians, business managers, lawyers, rabbis, politicians, and machine operators. And some of them will have had more successful or less successful careers than I had, and more successful or less successful personal lives.

According to research reports that I have read, reports by other linguists and people in general in multi-language environments and my own observations, young children absorb languages by osmosis, so to speak, until around the age of 5 or 7 at most. So the immersion process has to begin at the very beginning (and continue throughout childhood).

Otherwise, a second language is a skill like any other skill, requiring talent, motivation and hard work to master. There are no gimmicks.

Hence knowing foreign languages in the US is not necessary. We live in a society of specialists, including foreign language specialists who do translation (written) and interpretation (oral) at the business, legal and political levels, hired and paid by businesspeople, lawyers and politicians.

That doesn't mean that your idea is not a good one or well intentioned, but it does mean that there is no guaranty that the desired results, at either the career or personal cultural levels, will be achieved, and there could be unexpected consequences, both positive and negative.

Good Luck!

Last edited by bale002; 03-04-2015 at 04:00 AM..
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Old 03-04-2015, 07:35 AM
 
Location: Miami
6,853 posts, read 22,376,790 times
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Moved to the General US forum.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:25 AM
 
Location: Calera, AL
1,485 posts, read 2,229,521 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UKWildcat1981 View Post
Knowing Arabic really well can get you paid nicely in the USA and get you federal govt. positions. I am from the Middle East I would have looked into it but I am working in the health care field instead. I agree with you the Mandarin, China has about 2 billion people in the world and USA does a lot of global business with the Chinese it def can help.
It's actually closer to 1.3 or 1.4 billion. As it is, the number of mainland Chinese learning English is perpetually increasing. In the next 50-100 years, learning Chinese would basically be more for a personal benefit than for business.

And that actually reminds me of Michio Kaku's (an absolutely brilliant scientist every bit as gifted as Einstein and Hawking, but just isn't *quite* as renowned) discussion of the future of mankind. Basically we're on the cusp of becoming a Type 1 civilization (which, assuming we don't kill each other off first) meaning that we'll be able to harness all the energy Earth can provide for us, and that the vast majority of Earth's denizens can be able to communicate with each other in a single language (likely English). The Internet itself is the main reason why the world has globalized so quickly over the past generation; it's the seed that is transforming us from Type 0 to Type 1. We probably won't be around to see it, but our kids (possibly) and our grandkids (more likely) might.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:26 AM
 
14,203 posts, read 11,457,501 times
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I have degrees in Linguistics and am very much in favor of learning foreign languages for personal fulfillment and for the mental challenge. Without a doubt, foreign languages broaden one's horizons, improve understanding of the grammar of the native tongue, and create a degree of flexibility in thinking. You learn that there is not "one way to say something" and the way your native language works is not the only way. When you learn a foreign language, you learn to think differently, and that's valuable.

And, of course, there is the added benefit of being able to communicate with speakers of other languages. The one problem I have with immersion classes and otherwise teaching languages at an early age, is what language to choose. We already speak the one language everyone (that's a qualified "everyone") in the world has learned or is learning. There is no question, if you live in Japan or Germany or Argentina, that your second language will be English. But what language should the English-speakers learn?

We also have family in Germany and they all speak English in varying degrees. My brother-in-law, an American, has raised his two children in Germany and commented on how much easier it is for a German to learn English than vice versa, and it's not just because they start studying English in school in fourth grade. (I think it's fourth grade). All the movies are in English. Popular music is in English. Websites are in English. Everywhere you go in Europe, you meet people from other countries, and you communicate with them in English. In the US, unless you live in an area with a very high population of Spanish-speakers, and there are such areas to be certain, there is no equivalent to this, and it makes second-language learning much more difficult and unnatural.

Some people say that Americans' second language should unquestionably be Spanish. I think that's unreasonable. Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, and various other languages are certainly useful and worthy of study as well. I don't think the particular language that is taught is a reason NOT to choose an immersion school, because there are other many other benefits, but it could very well happen that after all the time and effort to learn Spanish, the language that turns out to be more useful in your child's career is Arabic or Vietnamese. Or, frankly, English. It's something to keep in mind.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:30 AM
 
10,839 posts, read 14,635,070 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by All4edu View Post
Thank you jambo101..Very helpful. I am a linguist myself, speaking four languages. I have always been amazed by how people react every time I tell them I speak four languages: a "wow" factor, usually.
No, I cease to be impressed when people say they speak four languages, largely because those four languages are almost always closely connected, and usually include a bunch of Romance languages that are not vastly different from each other in the first place - let me guess, your four includes Spanish and Italian? I could be wrong about you though. It is even less impressive if one of the "foreign languages" is the one your parents or grandparents speak at home and you grow up listening to it.

Linguists show that it only takes an English speaker 600 hours to be learn Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, 750 hours to learn German, but 2200 hours to learn Chinese, Japanese or Korea.

Language Difficulty Ranking | Effective Language Learning

It is still a great achievement to be able to speak four languages, but keep in mind for an American speaking French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese takes as much effort as to be able to speak a single Asian language, or put it another way, as challenging as for a Chinese/Japanese/Korean to be fluent in English alone. So unless you speak a language that is doesn't use the Latin alphabets, or better doesn't belong to the Indo-European language family, it is really not such a big deal.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:32 AM
 
Location: Miami Beach, FL/Tokyo, Japan
1,699 posts, read 2,137,585 times
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I know 2 languages fluently, and several others functionally. It's not bad.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:43 AM
 
Location: Brussels
504 posts, read 649,803 times
Reputation: 705
the most difficult language to learn is the 2nd language (1st being your mother tongue) because you'll have to learn both the language and how to learn a language (that it is a process in itself).

3rd, 4th, 5th languages are easier to learn because you already know how to learn a language (and also at that point you've eliminated fear, etc) and also because you have a scheme on how languages work, and you can make connections, so if you see something in Italian, for example, you can say "ah, that's like French for ..."

Nevertheless, botticelli, I wouldn't understimate the effort and amount of work (and will) that people make in order to be able to speak a language. Even if the languages are latin languages, it is a considerable amount of effort to be fluent and to feel at ease in one, and often entails having spent some period of time in a country where they speak that language.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:44 AM
 
Location: Calera, AL
1,485 posts, read 2,229,521 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by saibot View Post
I have degrees in Linguistics and am very much in favor of learning foreign languages for personal fulfillment and for the mental challenge. Without a doubt, foreign languages broaden one's horizons, improve understanding of the grammar of the native tongue, and create a degree of flexibility in thinking. You learn that there is not "one way to say something" and the way your native language works is not the only way. When you learn a foreign language, you learn to think differently, and that's valuable.

And, of course, there is the added benefit of being able to communicate with speakers of other languages. The one problem I have with immersion classes and otherwise teaching languages at an early age, is what language to choose. We already speak the one language everyone (that's a qualified "everyone") in the world has learned or is learning. There is no question, if you live in Japan or Germany or Argentina, that your second language will be English. But what language should the English-speakers learn?

We also have family in Germany and they all speak English in varying degrees. My brother-in-law, an American, has raised his two children in Germany and commented on how much easier it is for a German to learn English than vice versa, and it's not just because they start studying English in school in fourth grade. (I think it's fourth grade). All the movies are in English. Popular music is in English. Websites are in English. Everywhere you go in Europe, you meet people from other countries, and you communicate with them in English. In the US, unless you live in an area with a very high population of Spanish-speakers, and there are such areas to be certain, there is no equivalent to this, and it makes second-language learning much more difficult and unnatural.

Some people say that Americans' second language should unquestionably be Spanish. I think that's unreasonable. Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, and various other languages are certainly useful and worthy of study as well. I don't think the particular language that is taught is a reason NOT to choose an immersion school, because there are other many other benefits, but it could very well happen that after all the time and effort to learn Spanish, the language that turns out to be more useful in your child's career is Arabic or Vietnamese. Or, frankly, English. It's something to keep in mind.
I studied Russian several years ago, and your assessment is spot-on. Unless you wall yourself up and focus solely on language mechanics (and why bother with just that?), you learn SO much more than just a language. You learn about the culture that goes with it, which is more readily apparent when your instructors are native speakers, your understanding of your native language increases (and after studying Spanish and Russian, I've noticed English is not nearly as organized as most other Indo-European languages).

And about the second language of choice being Spanish, I can understand the sentiment, but the bulk of Hispanics also speak English (many of whom grew up with both languages) so of course there should be more choices than just Spanish (and it is a very useful language to pick up, don't get me wrong). I also think that 9th grade (maybe that's just a Midwestern thing, it might be different on the coasts) is just too long to wait to study a second language... the longer one waits, the harder it is to learn it. Just like studying music, I really think that mastering a foreign language sharpens one's mind and the earlier one starts, the bigger the benefit.
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:44 AM
 
1,685 posts, read 2,825,043 times
Reputation: 1449
Research shows that learning languages expand the brain, plus if you speak spanish for example YOU'RE AN ASSETT!! I know of a girl who got a job immediately after completing her special education degree because she learned spanish, she was hired by a school district in LA making a pretty decent wage, while her peers had to struggle more to find work, some even had to become substitute teachers!
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Old 03-04-2015, 09:46 AM
 
23,967 posts, read 10,303,770 times
Reputation: 45790
Native speaker level in three languages. Was about to repeat a complete school year due to insufficient grades in one language. It cost everyone involved a lot of time, tears and about 50k to rectify this issue. Benefits? I work and live with it but at home I only use it when necessary; mostly politeness towards guests.
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