| Early immersion in school (starting between 3 and 6 years) was developed in Canada (Québec) in the sixties. A group of English-speaking parents decided to request that their children be taught in French starting at Kindergarten level so that they would acquire a real mastery of the language and avoid the inefficent language-learning of the secondary level. The experiment was a remarkable success and more than 300’000 children are currently enrolled in immersion programs all over Canada.
Early immersion is the most efficient way to learn another language, as recent research on the development of the brain has shown. The brain of early bilinguals develops differently from late learners and becomes more efficient at language learning in general. The learning stragegies are intuitive and highly productive.
The late learner of a second language, on the other hand, must resort to intellectual stragegies to acquire grammar and vocabulary and needs to translate constantly while speaking, a particularly challenging task. Late learning is difficult and usually works only partially, and this only for very motivated students. Early bilingualism, on the other hand, is the natural way to acquire a language and is accessible to all children. |
