CATALINA FOOTHILLS SCHOOL DISTRICT

Immersion education is an excellent choice for parents who want their children to learn to understand and speak more than one language as they are building conceptual understanding in the areas of math, science, and other academic content. Since young children develop language skills naturally through play, there’s no better time to enroll in VVELC’s play-based prekindergarten program where children learn content and language through discovery and exploration.

Parents who choose immersion education for their children are giving them the gift of bilingualism. As teachers nurture pre-kindergarteners’ ability to communicate in Spanish or Mandarin Chinese, children reap many benefits:

• Learning another language becomes a normal part of life.
• Children learn to be flexible thinkers.
• Children learn to interact compassionately in an environment where they strive to understand and be understood.
• Exposure to another culture and use of the immersion language broaden your child’s view of the world.

Sources:

Brain Research: Implications for Second Language Learning
Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

Research shows that bilingualism has many life-long advantages:

Bilingual children . . .

• Demonstrate increased abilities in the areas of concentration, analysis, spatial reasoning and multi-tasking as compared to monolingual peers

• Demonstrate high levels of creativity and problem-solving due to the agility of the bilingual brain
• May learn to read sooner than their monolingual classmates

Sources:

Could Bilingual Education Mold Kid’s Brains to Better Resist Distraction
How the Brain Benefits From Being Bilingual
Six Potential Brain Benefits of Bilingual Education
The Superior Social Skills of Bilinguals

Bilingual children . . .

• Enjoy an increased sense of self-worth and identity as a result of being able to communicate in two or more languages
• Tend to have positive attitudes about both the majority language (English) and the immersion language
• Show more acceptance and understanding of others as a result of being exposed to different cultures
• Adjust more easily to environmental changes
• Can use their language skills to preserve family heritage
• Have greater resistance to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia later in life

Bilingual children . . .

• Perform at or above levels of monolingual peers on standardization tests
• Are able to transfer core skills and learning strategies developed in one language to the other language (i.e., learning math in Chinese will support math skill development in general and learning to read in Spanish will support literacy development in general)

• Tend to develop more accurate pronunciation and intonation in the immersion language as compared to those who start later

• Are well-positioned to reach the highest levels of proficiency in the immersion language by the time they graduate from high school

• Enjoy a competitive advantage later in life as compared to monolingual peers in the workplace due to their ability to interact effectively with counterparts from other cultures