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To Immerse or Not to Immerse: That is the question
Dear Aunt Malkin,
I am wondering whether to enroll my six-year-old daughter in French immersion. I am worried that she will lose out in terms of her English-language skills, and also whether other subjects like math and science will suffer.
Signed, Gary
Dear Gary,
There are two main reasons for choosing French immersion (FI). The first reason is because you want your child to learn French, and the second reason is so that your child will receive an enriched education.
With regard to the first reason, you should be aware that few children emerge from FI with fluent French. For one thing, the vast majority drop out along the way, with only a tiny percentage of students actually graduating from high school with a FI diploma. And even the survivors tend to speak French with a heavy English accent and many ungrammatical Englishisms - partly because French immersion is typically taught using a whole language approach, and partly because most FI teachers are not native French speakers. On the other hand, students with some FI typically understand spoken French well and are supremely confident of their ability to make themselves understood to some extent.
With regard to the second reason, an enriched education, it is true that there are huge cognitive benefits to learning a second language. Furthermore, since the weaker students tend to drop out of FI over the years, most FI classes end up being composed of mainly “gifted” students who can be taught at a higher level than non-FI classes. This is of course great for the survivors, but it is quite hard on the drop-outs, who tend to regard themselves as failures.
As well, the English-language spelling of FI students takes terrible hits, as the students tend to randomly add the letter ‘e’ here and there, nor do they ever really master the concept of double letters. A word like “address” might show up as “addresse”, “adresse”, or “adress”, for example. When it comes to other subjects like math and science, FI students tend to do about the same as or slightly better than non-FI students - but, bearing in mind that surviving FI students tend to be strong students, they probably should be achieving significantly better results than non-FI students in these subjects.
For more background information on FI, read the articles in the French Immersion section of our newsletter archives. The bottom line is that the FI option is deeply flawed but, given that the other options are also deeply flawed, FI may be the best option for some kids.
Signed, Aunt Malkin
>>Furthermore, since the weaker students tend to drop out of FI over the years, most FI classes end up being composed of mainly “gifted” students who can be taught at a higher level than non-FI classes <<
The word of mouth in GTA is that French Immersion is a de facto gifted program.
Different boards set the French Immersion a bit differently, but - based on what I’ve heard - the students accepted into French Immersion are “filtered”.
For example some boards require a recommendation from the kindergarden teacher.
As a consequence, students “with problems” tend to not even get to be accepted into French Immersion.
There is also a self-selection phenomenon occuring. Usually it is only the parents that feel pretty confident about their children abilities and are prepared to help their children along the way try to get their child into French Immersion.
So from the start most children in French Immersion have parents that - on the average - are more committed to their children.
Depending on your luck, sometimes the teachers in French immersion are from francophone areas - like France, Lebanon, Quebec - which means that they may use a more teacher-directed style of teaching and be more rigorous in what they expect their students to know.
Regarding the French, I have the same opinion as Malkin: the French the immersion students speak is not very correct from a grammatical point of view; however the students are fluent and at ease using French.