Curious about DM Posters thoughts about english immersion?

[dude1394]

Since I have no experience with it I've always wondered about real-world experiences with english-immersion? It logically seems to me to be the best way to come up to speed. Even if it takes a year of school to do it.

English immersion hits home
Spanish speakers fear erosion of culture

By Monica Rhor, Globe Staff, 3/21/2004

Third in a series of occasional articles chronicling one family's experience with English immersion.
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Cindy Umana scrunched her face in displeasure. ``Talk in English. I don't understand you in Spanish,'' the 7-year-old ordered, speaking to the after-school program volunteer whose Spanish was halting and heavily accented.

``In English!'' chimed Jonathan Bejar, 7, one of the other first-graders sitting at a folding table in the basement cafeteria of the Otis Elementary School in East Boston.

[Chiwas]

Americans should try to immerse in Spanish.

There are countries that have more than one official languages, some more than two official languages. Europeans use to talk several.

I'd wish that English was a must in our schools, in our jobs. We have it but not seriously, it doesn't make us speak it well.

Many japaneses talk English. Too many, I think. China is focusing in some similar program.

The North America axis, thought by Bush Sr., and started with NAFTA, should promote English and Spanish for everybody. It would make us stronger.

[dude1394]

How exactly could we "immerse" in spanish? In my trips to japan folks who deal with english speaking people speak/understand some english. But in general most don't. In fact probably not much more than folks who understand spanish in texas.

[Chiwas]

I have seen many Japaneses speaking very good English here and in the US. Too many. And very few Americans speaking some Spanish, having a decent chat, here and in the US.

Maybe the refered "immersion" should be deeper, longer, and wider. The same applies for Mexicans in Mexico about English.

[dude1394]

I've seen quite a few americans that speak every bit as much spanish as I have japanese speaking english? But we sort of get off the point. I was most interested in a discussion of immersion techniques versus bi-lingual education techniques.

I fall on the immersion side as it takes a hit initially but ultimately enables functional english skills to develop.

[Drbio]

dude- I used to live in Japan. Where do you go there?


I immersed myself in spanish during my dissertation research which was performed in Jalisco and Michoacan Mexico. I lived there close to two years. Very few people spoke english outside of the town of Chapala and Ajijic where I lived. I learned a lot of spanish that way.

[dude1394]

Drbio... Usually I spend most of my time in tokyo at shinjuku. We used to have some stuff in shinagawa as well. But I've also been to Osaka and a couple of weeks ago spent a week in Tsukuba. I've found just what you would think, folks who deal with english folks know quite a bit of english. But even in the middle of shinjuku there are many folks who can't understand a word. When you get out to osaka and tskuba it becomes more and more japanese only.

Also interesting to be turned away from restaurants or bars because you are not japanese. Kind of funny actually. [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]