The French School of Austin, École Jean-Jacques Rousseau, provides a bilingual education in French and English to children aged 3 to 13 years. The preschool program at the French School of Austin, École Jean-Jacques Rousseau, offers total French immersion, while continuing French language instruction features throughout its curriculum.
Research shows that when children engage in immersion education in a second language, they develop cognitive skills that are comparable to their peers who become bilingual at home. These skills include a heightened metalinguistic awareness, which presents as a knowledge of different elements of language, such as words and syntax, and the ability to verbalize this knowledge.
Immersion education also allows children to develop more ease in their learned language. Students who begin such programs with command over one language develop second language comprehension and fluency skills that are comparable to native speakers. Meanwhile, these children develop a heightened awareness of their own native language and its components.
Additionally, children who learn in immersion environments develop improved executive control, or executive function, a crucial set of mental processes that includes control of inhibitions, flexibility of thinking, and command over working memory. Studies reveal that they are more able to decipher complex problems with contradictory information as compared to their monolingual peers, largely because they show a greater facility to attend only to the information that they need.
Children in immersion programs also become increasingly adept at speaking to people from different language and cultural backgrounds. They show greater sensitivity to the needs of their listeners and can learn new languages more quickly. These skills can make a child not only more adept academically, but also more in-demand as a professional in a multicultural world.
