Non-English speaking children pick up on conversational English very quickly and appear to do well in English immersion programs without a lot of help until about third grade. By then the cumulative effect of all they have not understood begins to hit them and many never catch up. The age to look at the success or failure of bilingual programs is in high school, not in second grade. This is why recent score reports of second-graders in California are meaningless.
LDS missionaries generally do very well learning foreign languages by a method having many elements of bilingual education:
1. First learning church vocabulary and concepts and missionary discussions in English in Primary, Sunday School, seminary and the Missionary Training Center.
2. Usually having some type of support in their native language (English speaking companions, etc.)
3. Having plentiful exposure to and use of the foreign language.
As is the case with missionaries, children learn languages faster when they have background knowledge, support in their native language and plentiful exposure to and use of the language. Immersion education focuses on the third point at the expense of the first two.
Quality bilingual education, containing the three mentioned elements of the LDS missionary language program, helps students attain long-term success.
Strict English immersion is a quick fix but has been shown by research to contribute to failure in school later on. Credible long-term research has been largely ignored in order to further a political point at the expense of student success.
Rebekah Martindale
Orem