What sold immersion to me

Let me tell you a little bit about where I got fully convinced that hands-on immersion was the way to go. It was in Edina, Minnesota (U.S.A.). I spent one school year co-teaching at Normandale French Immersion Elementary School in 2009–2010. There was a team of well-established, permanent teachers, and I was part of another team, of co-teachers arrived straight from France (that team changed every year).

What I witnessed at Normandale was A-MA-ZING. The students were all from American parents, almost all monolingual. They started immersion at age 5, in kindergarten, and by the time they got to me in third grade, they were just as fluent as native French kids!A lot of them had accents, but their pronunciation was as correct as same-age French children, and so was most of their grammar .

I was sold and decided to embark on a journey to master the best practices on language immersion teaching.

So, what magic was operating in Edina? What made the language immersion of Normandale elementary school be so fruitful?

The main answer I want to give you is that school was not about learning French. Oh sure, we the teachers monitored progress, but our teaching goals were focused on other things: math skills, social skills, history lessons, science and what not. It just happened to be all in French. Because our teaching goals were not language focused, language was just naturally and deeply acquired along the way!

I found the same to be true in other places I taught after Edina, for example in Vietnam. I was teaching Vietnamese middle schoolers English, but I wasn’t telling them about grammar and such until they were advanced. Most of the time, I organized projects for them. Look at the picture above: a 12-week project that involved video calls with schools in NYC and around the world, meetings with international businessmen, and collaborations with expats from a nearby international school. It culminated in a big umbrella art show

at a mall (made, organized, led, and promoted by the students). None of that has to do with English, but because it all happened in English, the students’ fluency level skyrocketed.

Today, I offer you the same opportunities through Deep French immersion experiences. Actually, click here to check out this video in English, in which I explain how and why immersion works.

Baptiste Delvallé