Career Options

What can your child do after they graduate from an immersion program if they do not plan on living abroad?

Being bilingual offers potential employment benefits. It offers a wider choice of jobs in various fields. Bilingual graduates have access to more prosperous career opportunities in the retail sector, transport, tourism, administration, secretarial work, public relations, marketing and sales, banking and accountancy, translation, law and teaching.

High School Language Education in CMS

Full language immersion programs end by high school in the CMS system. Once the child graduates middle school they have two options for advanced language education: South Mecklenburg High School and West Mecklenburg High School.  While all high schools offer the entry level language courses in both French and Spanish, these magnet schools offer French, Spanish, German and Japanese.  At the schools, children who come from the immersion schools are grouped together and put in special immersion classes to help develop their grammar and continue improving their conversational fluency. 

A Study on Reading in Native Language

Students in immersion programs were studied while learning to read. The study examined children's development in target (foreign) language reading abilities first and then native language reading abilities. The parents consented that reading education in native language would begin the third grade. At first, parents had a very hard time accepting that their child would have delays in their English skills. Many feared that the children would have permanent delays if the students did not learn how to read in English as well as the target language. However, the results showed that all children were able to read at grade level by the end of the third grade year. The study concludes that waiting to teach children to read in their native language has no harmful effects.
Read more on the study here:

http://www.carla.umn.edu/immersion/acie/vol6/Feb2003_Reading.html

A Brief History of Language Immersion

Today there are over 300,000 American students enrolled in immersion programs, but where did this all begin?  In the 1960s Canadian parents were worried about the state of French education in schools.  The parents proposed an experimental immersion program that taught students Canadian French for half the day and English for the other half.  The students were taught to appreciate their French heritage and speak both of the official languages of Canada.  The program was so popular that it expanded all over the country and eventually fed in to the U.S. In Louisiana there was a fear that Creole would disappear if the newer generations did not learn it.  Thus, Louisiana also adapted the immersion program.  Other unique immersion programs include Gaelic in Ireland and Hawaiian in Hawaii.

Do you want to check your child's proficiency?

How can you tell if your child is progressing in a language you can't understand? A great way to assess your child's ability is through a proficiency test.  The test, give by American Council on the Teaching Foreign Languages (ACTFL), assesses the proficiency in speaking and writing.  Speaking is assessed through a phone interview or a face to face interview that will last 20-30 minutes.  The written portion is a standardized test using questions off of a rubric.  The speaking portion is graded by one person, while the writing portion is graded by two.  
For more information on having your child tested, visit this website:


http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3642

Oaklawn in Charlotte Parent

Oaklawn Language Academy was featured in the latest Charlotte Parent Magazine.  This is an excellent article to visit if you are interested in the school. It offers information about the school itself as well as language immersion in general. Waddell and Collinswood Academy are also mentioned.  Here is the link:
http://www.charlotteparent.com/articlemain.php?Early-Language-Immersion-A-Window-to-the-World-2564

Language Immersion Myths

Myth:  Kids in immersion programs don't learn English as well as kids in standard programs.

Fact: Immersion students may experience a slight lag in English skills up until the third grade, after this they will catch up to and even outshine their peers in the traditional programs.

Myth:  An immersion program would be too hard for an already struggling student to handle.

Fact:    Immersion students, regardless of academic ability, reach the same level of academic achievement as their peers in standard programs.  A child in an immersion classroom has no choice but to learn the language.  A child who learns math in French, who is fluent in the language, would have the same success rate, if not better, on a test as a student who learned math in English.

Myth:  Kids can learn a second language just as well by taking an elective in middle or high school.

Fact:  Immersion, especially at a young age, is a completely different way of teaching language.  Traditional high school programs will not be an immersion classroom and will proceed much slower through the lessons.  A student in the third grade at an immersion school will already know more than a high school student in his/her second year of French.