Why take French immersion?

For most of us, it is back to school time. For some people reading, it may be their last year of elementary, or maybe even their first year of junior high. If so, welcome to my blog, I am writing this mainly for you! I’m not going to write the standard back to school/welcome to junior high speech this week. You see, my school is a little bit different. I am in French immersion. I would have wrote about this sooner but this year is a little bit different; not only is it my last year of the program, it is my first year being in the same class as the kids that have been in the program since Kindergarten and that’s a little bit scary. If you take the late French immersion program, as I did, you start off in a small class of kids in the same boat as you. You don’t know much French, just the minimal stuff you learn in elementary school, and take all core subjects in French. So in three years you become fully fluent in the second official language of our country.

You may think I’m crazy, taking math, social, science AND language arts in French!  Well for starters I needed a challenge. School wasn’t very difficult for me in elementary – I wanted to do a little more. I think French is important to know; over 10 countries have French as their official language or one of their official languages, Canada included. And finally the  most important reason: it’s great for your future. Let’s say a university or an employer is choosing between two applications, yours and another person. Both of you are identical, except your competition doesn’t speak French – now you will be chosen rather than them. It doesn’t only just count if you are head to head with just one person; if you apply to somewhere and you speak French, sometimes you are bumped up ahead of all those other people who don’t and maybe even have better grades than you!

I hope you can take all of this into consideration if you are entering junior high next year or you are looking for a change. Grades 6-7 is the only time you can enter the program within junior high; once you are past Grade 7 and you wish to enter, you must take a French test to see if you can fit in with the level  of the other kids. Since it is a very fast paced program, it is extremely difficult, but extremely rewarding. Especially in the long term because let’s face it, how many people do you know that can actually speak French fluently? Wouldn’t it be cool to be one of the few teens who can speak a second language?