
Unraveling how children become bilingual so easily - dpurp
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090721/ap_on_he_me/us_med_healthbeat_bilingual_tots
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furyg3
I remember a while ago there was a debate raging about how California public
schools should deal with young ESL children. Should they immerse them in
English-only courses (good for English-learning, bad for 'everything
else'-learning and putting them at a disadvantage) or should they start in
Spanish and slowly transition them to English-only courses? It was an
interesting discussion, but was (understandably) framed around the idea that
the children were part of a growing problem which badly needed a solution.

Simultaneously, I (a native English speaker) was sitting in a required high
school Spanish course (two years), which was progressing at turtle-like speeds
and effectively useless unless you were in AP Spanish.

For the life of me I can't understand how these two 'problems' can exist in a
school system and administrators can't put two and two together. Now at 28 I'm
_actually_ learning a second language, and I can see both how useless those
high school courses were, and how much I would have benefited had I learned a
language when young, while surrounded by other children who were 'native'
speakers of that language.

My kids will most definitely be raised bilingual, and I hope to expose them to
a school which facilitates language learning from the get go.

