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Your thoughts on French Immersion?

I haven't bothered to read the whole thread, but I took FI in elementary school.

I became fluent. Could speak, read, and write. In grade 5 I left the school because my friends went to different schools. Being away from it, I slowly lost a lot of my French which I now regret. But the thing is I still know it, I just forget words. But when I hear it spoken I know whats going on and I pick it up quickly. I was traveling Europe for a a few months this summer after graduating university and I picked up my French quite a bit being in France for a week.

My grammar has always been good and doing FI certainly did not take away from my English. At that age kids absorb so much and if you speak English to them at home and they get French at school they will be excellent in both.

I would recommend it for sure. Knowing a second language is extremely beneficial later in life.
 
NB Scraps Early Immersion

Interestingly, our only officially bilingual province is scrapping early immersion AND core French programs, see article at http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2008/03/14/nb-french.html

The new French program, which will begin in September, will see students get five months of intensive French in Grade 5.

Students will then have the option of either moving into a more extensive version of the current core-French program or entering a late-immersion program in Grade 6.
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College Francais?

Duchesse said:
If you or your wife speak French, why not consider a French school? My sons went through primary and secondary public French schools in Toronto, graduated from College Francais. One went on to university in English, the other took a trades college diploma, and works bilingually. (In high school your child could get an International Baccalaureate (IB), a very useful diploma.)

You would not have to worry about their English as it is the dominant culture, and they will learn it like catching a cold.
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Two POV in this thread on College Francais: you seem to like it, the other poster called it a disaster. My elder daughter will graduate from Sacre Coeur this year and we'd prefer to send her to CF rather than the hour bus ride to the French Catholic regional HS up on Leslie.

I'd appreciate any feedback you have about CF and whether you would recommend it as a school (we will be torturing our daughters with IB as their mother is from France and believes that without nightmares about the 'Bac' you really haven't graduated HS...)
 
I just wanted to add -
I think the best thing to do in Southern Ontario is to put your child in French Catholic school right from the beginning. It's practically like private school - the enrollment is not as high since not only is it part of the separate board but the french separate school board. My friend is sending their kid to St-Jean-Baptiste in Mississauga - hardly anyone knows of the school. All the kids were academically inclined, there was a strong school community, 15 kids or less in a class.
 
I think that's the general rule for French schools though...

I went to Felix Leclerc in Etobicoke and there were only about 250 students from jk-gr8.

I remember my classes had no more than 13 students with my grade 6 class having only 10 of us!
 
I was in French Immersion from grade 5 to the end of High School and it was a wash for the most part.

When I finally went to France and heard the real thing, I nearly fell over. My Canadian French was so pedestrian and awful. And the real French let me know it. They were always rolling their eyes.

Looking back, I wish I had gone to a Spanish Immersion School instead.

There are very few places where French is actually useful. Spanish, on the other hand is incredibly popular way more fun to speak.
 
Mystic Point said:
I was in French Immersion from grade 5 to the end of High School and it was a wash for the most part.

When I finally went to France and heard the real thing, I nearly fell over. My Canadian French was so pedestrian and awful. And the real French let me know it. They were always rolling their eyes.

Looking back, I wish I had gone to a Spanish Immersion School instead.

There are very few places where French is actually useful. Spanish, on the other hand is incredibly popular way more fun to speak.
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Like my Chinese. Learned from immigrant grandparents and parents of the worst class from the hinterlands of southern China. I thought 'sh*thous* actually meant bathroom until I was corrected by a visiting aunt at an early age. I can still see my parents chuckling about it.:( To this day if there is a word in the back of my brain that I haven't heard in polite Chinese company, I will not use it.
 
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My kids are now in Grade 3 English-only program at the local school. This was definitely the right choice for us, but I still have parents from the French-Immersion program asking what's wrong with our kids. Anyway, that's a long story, but now that we've got a good foundation in English reading, spelling, etc. we have registered them both for the Extended French program at another school starting in Sept. In the Extended program, starting in Grade 4, the kids take language, history and arts in French, and science, math and "English" in English - at the end of Grade 8 the kids receive a bilingual certificate (for what that's worth). This is the exact program I wanted for my kids, an expanded French program, but not at the detriment of their English program. This was important to me as 3 out of 4 FI kids drop out and down to English-only, but when they do they often have trouble with reading, spelling, etc at their grade level.
 
Admiral Beez said:
My kids are now in Grade 3 English-only program at the local school. This was definitely the right choice for us, but I still have parents from the French-Immersion program asking what's wrong with our kids. Anyway, that's a long story, but now that we've got a good foundation in English reading, spelling, etc. we have registered them both for the Extended French program at another school starting in Sept. In the Extended program, starting in Grade 4, the kids take language, history and arts in French, and science, math and "English" in English - at the end of Grade 8 the kids receive a bilingual certificate (for what that's worth). This is the exact program I wanted for my kids, an expanded French program, but not at the detriment of their English program. This was important to me as 3 out of 4 FI kids drop out and down to English-only, but when they do they often have trouble with reading, spelling, etc at their grade level.
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The FI programs in Niagara are grades 5-12, (though the sciences and math are in french as well until grade 10 and a few other options are maintained until grade 11), so this is pretty close to the path I took. Personally, I never found my English skills to diminish because of the focus on french. Perhaps it was because I had the English foundation in place, but once I and my classmates reached grade 11 and were integrated with "english" students, none of us had any problems and often it was the FI students who were the top students in the class. Perhaps it simply had something to do with FI being a strong alternative to a gifted program in Niagara, and so a lot of bright kids were in FI, but the language skills were never an issue. There would be the odd term in something like the sciences that would come up that felt like you were hearing the word for the first time when it was the norm for English students, but it wasn't a problem for anyone really.

I'm also surprised that you say that 3 out of 4 FI students drop out. In my experience, of the 29 kids who started FI in my grade 5 class, 22 of us finished grade 12 in the program. In fact, more than half of those people who didn't finish opted to go to the local Catholic high school instead of continuing with the FI program in the public system mostly for the reason that it was better for tech/computers (they had built the best tech wing in Niagara a couple years prior). I know of at least two of those people who took French in their 4 years at the Catholic school, so I'd imagine they would have followed through with the program if they weren't enticed away for other reasons. That isn't to say your numbers are wrong. They just seem to be the exact opposite of my experience.

I'm also surprised they get a bilingual certificate after just 5 years. You're right, it doesn't mean a lot, and really you could argue that 8 years isn't much better than 5... just seems a bit short to me.

Either way it's a great idea to put your kids in the program. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have found that it's continued to help me today even though it was nearly a decade ago that I took my last french course.
 
jn_12 said:
The FI programs in Niagara are grades 5-12, (

I'm also surprised that you say that 3 out of 4 FI students drop out.
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I was referring to the early immersion program, where you start FI in senior kindergarten. That program in the TDSB has a drop out rate by the end of grade six of 75%, at least that is what the Board's FI director told all the parents at the latest meeting on converting our local school to 100% FI. Specifically she said they need 100 senior kindergarten FI spots to make 25 Grade 6 spots, due to attrition, especially amongst the boys.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
I was referring to the early immersion program, where you start FI in senior kindergarten. That program in the TDSB has a drop out rate by the end of grade six of 75%, at least that is what the Board's FI director told all the parents at the latest meeting on converting our local school to 100% FI. Specifically she said they need 100 senior kindergarten FI spots to make 25 Grade 6 spots, due to attrition, especially amongst the boys.
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oh ok, I misunderstood. That makes sense though. There is a large francophone population in Welland, and so there were half a dozen strictly french speaking schools. However, it was fairly common for students from that program to move to an English program or even the FI program one they got closer to their high school years. Not sure the attrition rate was as high as 75%, but either way, it wasn't uncommon for students to leave the french program.
 
I started out in a French only school in Brampton from kindergarden to grade 4 since my father is French Canadian. At that point, I was very fluent in French, but not so much in English since I didn't speak English at home or at school. The only English I knew was from neighbourhood kids, I couldn't really read or write. We did start learning to read/write in English in grade 4, but it was very basic. Meanwhile I was already reading proper novels in French in grade 2-3. There was also the 1 hour bus ride, since the school was far away, which kind of sucked.

When I was 10, my family moved to Oakville and were going to put me in an English program, so my mom homeschooled me on writing and reading in English and also started speaking to me in English (before we spoke in French or Hungarian). It was difficult at first, but by grade 6 I could read novels and by grade 7 or 8 I was at the same level as my classmates... which is why I transferred into French immersion in grade 7. I would say that the other FI students were a bit more motivated, so you had a situation somewhat like in NB (though less extreme) where the classes were better behaved and less likely to have to go at a slower pace because of weaker students. I definitely don't think they were weaker in English. Also, while there were a few students that dropped out of FI throughout the years, most of the ones that were in FI in grade 5 graduated as FI.

By grade 8 or so, I became more fluent in English, since even though I was in FI, I was much more exposed to English, and books, websites, etc were mostly in English. The students that were in FI graduated with a relatively good understanding of French. Their pronunciation wasn't spot on, and they might make a few grammar mistakes, but they had no trouble communicating and reading in French. If they were to live in a French speaking community, I don't think it would take too long for their pronunciation and grammar to be correct. I think that at least part of the problem is that not all of the French teachers were totally fluent. This was more of a problem in the English program, but still a bit of a problem in French Immersion and even French only. It was mostly a case of teachers who were brought up in an English-speaking environment. 1/6 of my French only teachers, 2/2 of my English only French teachers and 2/4 of my FI teachers were like this.

Another consideration, also related to the shortage of teachers who speak French well, is that you often have the same teacher teaching all of the subjects taught in French while in the English program, you would have different teachers for each subject, so a potential jack of all trade, master of none situation. This was not much of a problem for me, but I think it could be in other schools.
 
Just to clarify, my kids will be taking the Extended French program, which is 50/50 French/English from grade 4 to grade 8. This is different I believe from mid-immersion at grade 4, which is iirc nearly 100% French.

Here's the link for the Extended French program. http://www.tdsb.on.ca/programs/french/default.asp?cat=2
 
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