Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Spanish Immersion

Immersion programs are great to learn another language. I don't think that a HG or even MG kid who is gifted in Math or Science would do any better in an immersion program than the average kid. Because giftedness is not uniform and studying Mandarin or Spanish or French for 50% of their time may or may not help the gifted child. OP, if you feel that languages are a strong point for your child, then this program will help. If not, I would not bother. In our case, my son does speak 3 languages, but his strength is in Math and English. He takes Spanish classes, but is not in an immersion program because I felt that it might be detrimental to his learning style.
My niece and nephew attended a French immersion private school until the 8th grade when they switched to an all english high school. They were grade skipped twice and have DYS level IQs and are very proficient in several fields (she in ballet and violin and he in tennis and debate). But, the transition to mainstream high school was hard for them because they learnt math and science in French. They had Ivy league ambitions and the potential to get there and now they are facing the reality of applying to a state university instead. Their family feels that the immersion program was a mistake for their kids who were interested in the STEM fields.
So, consider your child's strengths and weaknesses before you take the plunge.

My eldest did French immersion for a number of years, starting at 4. I agree that immersion can be a great option for a HG+ kid who will be underchallenged when studying at grade level in his native language.

One concern I have about the program you described is that it's 100% Spanish for two years. DS's school was 80% French/20% English for the first two years (more English later). The English component was mostly reading and spelling (but they had to do math, too). I'm not sure I'd be too happy about zero instruction in English in an English-speaking country. Could you work with him at home?

A point in Bostonian's article reflects our experience, which is that DS definitely had a smaller English vocabulary when he stepped into a full-time English-speaking school. But he is HG or more, and it wasn't a big deal. He caught up without any problems.


This may be true in general (and often more than milliseconds), but it may not be true for everyone. I've noticed a difference in the way my DH and I operate when moving from one language to another. He's bilingual and he does hesitate at times when he's translating a story from German. I don't, even though he's way, way better than I am at German. I describe him as having a box in his mind for English and a box for German, whereas I have thousands of boxes for different words. He has to root around a big box of English to find, say Waage (scales). I don't, because Waage and scales are sitting right next to each other in the same mental box. Okay, this is really oversimplified, but you get the idea. The only occasions where I hesitate are when a term is idiomatic and doesn't have an equivalent in the other language.


That is deeply pathetic.

But isn't what happened to your niece and nephew the whole point of an immersion program. If gifted students are moving too fast then you can slow them down with extra language burdens. It's not just that what happened to your niece and nephew is a forseeable consequence of an immersion program, but rather, it is the intended consequence.

The problem, IMO, is with universities using industrial metrics like GPAs and bubble test scores to measure students, not with double-grade skipped kids who speak French and English like natives and are very good at non-academic pursuits. Admissions to elite schools should be cakewalks for kids like your niece and nephew.

Please see the very end of my last message in this thread.

My point is that you can slow down gifted students with extra language burdens, for sure. But, it need not be through immersion programs. You can send your child to afterschool programs or language schools on the weekend to learn a new language. But, if you teach science and math in another language (French, Spanish or Mandarin) for 8 years and then expect the child to keep pace with the general population who deal with science and math in the English language, then these kids, however gifted they are, tend to be disadvantaged. Unfortunately, it might affect their college prospects direly, as I have seen with my niece and nephew.

Direly? All you wrote earlier is that they were applying to state schools. Even qualified Ivy aspirants should also be applying to less selective schools, unless they get in to their first choice Early Action/Early Decision.

They are not even applying to the Ivies - and believe me, to them, that is a fate a lot worse than death! It is not all dramatics and they do feel badly about it.

Errr... yes and no.

There is a world of difference between becoming bilingual through immersion (and K really is at the late end for doing that), and learning two languages in a school like environment. I learned English at school. I spent over a decade doing all of my recreational reading in English. I have been in the US for nearly 15 years. There is no way you could mistake me for a native speaker.

Except for a few people with exceptional language skills, native-like fluency is nearly impossible to achieve outside of early immersion.

I am not going to try and argue your nephew and niece's experience, although I am a bit surprised that kids whose passion is math/science would have limited themselves to what was taught at school -- or were they able to get all materials for personal investigations in French? (and in that case I want to know who their provider is!) It certainly sounds like the school didn't its job properly (or were they being groomed for the French high school?).

I know our program spends a lot of thought trying to balance the needs of keeping as much Spanish as possible in the curriculum vs. making sure the kids are ready for English-only 6th grade.



Yes, that. It might mean that they won't have any native Spanish speakers in the program, which would be a red flag to me.

Most bilingual programs recommend going sequentially with early reading acquisition, to make sure kids don't mix up the phonetic rules of the different languages.


I think once you have the concept, adding the new word doesn't take much work (especially when a brain works with lots of side by side little boxes, like yours -- have you asked your kids about the way they do it?).

I must say that the quotes from the study the NYT quotes make me think that like most studies of bilingual acquisition in the US, the subjects in the study were mostly low income/education immigrants families, and the confounding factors are... many. Because my kids certainly learned "astronaut" and "rectangle" in French at home before they entered K (I spend a lot of time and money finding and importing books), and their (English-only, private) preschool did cover "spatula" and "squash" in English before they turned 4.

And to answer Bostonian's question about why would anybody want to learn a language other than English... Because some materials you are interested in can be accessed faster, and without being mangled by incompetent translators? Because you want to spend some time in a different culture and it is impossible to do so without learning how to communicate with others? Because it is fun??

People interested by more tangible rewards might want to look at this:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8364

But yes, the US is a big country, and if you are not interested in Russian literature, Japanese manga, or falling in love with a German Swiss you will probably be fine sticking to English

DD only wants to learn English and gets really frustrated when we try to slow her down by teaching her our native languages. She is still exposed to all of her languages, sometimes for hours so hopefully, one day, she'd be interested in learning to speak them.

If we had immersion options, I'd certainly consider them but I have a feeling that DD would refuse to go.

My ds8 is in Spanish immersion. I kinda know he won't be bilingual/biliterate by the time he finishes 5th grade. Many reasons have contributed to that...he didn't start in K but in 1st instead because I didn't know about it. He skipped 3rd so there is another year he missed and the last factor is that he has no one to practice his Spanish with at home. The kids he plays with won't speak Spanish to him...only want to speak English.

So he has great pronunciation, he can read the words at grade level and maybe a bit above...but his comprehension lags behind and he has kinda given up because it is hard. He muscles through everything and does a good job but I don't think he will be bilingual in a year and a half unless we summered in Costa Rica or something this summer.