Language immersion for children?

It isn’t really immersion if they only meet for an hour a week? My daughter studied Indonesian in an immersion program and every class at school (except English) was studied in Indonesian until she got to the final two years of high school. She enjoyed it. It was her choice to study this way (I was quite concerned but respected her wish). She found it very hard at first but after a while got used to it and all the children in that program were dedicated to studying. So it meant her peer group was very committed to their school work.

Yes, an hour is hardly immersion, however, 2 years old is very young. An hour is 50 minutes too long as it is for most 2 yr. olds.

Give it a try, but, don’t get all super babied out on your toddler.
There is plenty of time to learn another language. You can find language books for children and start pointing out objects and animals etc. in the desired lingo.

One hour a day is 23 hours shy of immersion.

What is the language and what do you speak at home?

Perhaps this isn’t exactly immersion but any exposure (at any age, the earlier the better) to another language while you teach the baby a second one is great for the brain, sets that brain up on an excellent trajectory.

Well, the biggest problem will be, even if your child picks it up, if you don’t continue the language ongoing for several years, she will forget 90% of it. Children who come to America at the age of 5 and never use their first language again, lose the majority of it in a fairly short time.

Any exposure to another language is good, I don’t think it is a waste, as long as your child enjoys it. Second languages open the mind.

I agree with @JLeslie and with the others here. However, studies on the subject are being conducted all the time – with new infomation giving us glimpses into how the brain works with regards to communication, especially with babies and toddlers.

This article reminds us that language is not isolated but rather a part of communication – something we often forget when trying to learn a second language – at any age – and why adults find it so difficult and frustrating to pick up a new language – by learning an hour a week. I have a lot of experience with this.

Babies, until the age of 9 months, should be exposed to more than one language – this will help them later on in life – and not only with languages and linguistics – but also with how they approach problem solving.

Two- and 3-year-olds are not only increasing their vocabularies, they’re starting to recognize the speech patterns they’ve been hearing since birth. The earlier you introduce a second language, the easier it will be for your child to pick up its unique sounds. The ability to hear different phonetic pronunciations is sharpest before age 3, and we lose the capacity to hear and produce certain sounds if we aren’t exposed to them early on. So just hearing a television show, listening to music, or learning a few words in a second language will give your child essential tools for appreciating it now and learning to speak it later.

I say go for it – but for the right reasons. Don’t expect a conversation in the chosen language after a two year old has been studying for a year, one hour a week.

As long as your expectations are realistic, I can’t see any harm at all. Do you have to pay for a whole course or can you pay as you go? If you can pay as you go, try it and see how she responds? If she likes it, great. if she doesn’t don’t take her any more. I would be concerned if you have to pay for a whole course though.

No matter what age these kids began to learn a second tongue, they learned it better if they picked it up in their families or communities than if they learned it in a classroom setting. And while bilingual children didn’t learn to speak any sooner or later than single-language kids, they did get one extra advantage besides their added fluency.

“Interestingly, bilingual children are better than [single-language] children in aspects of [thinking] that require them to switch attention,” Petitto says. “Because they are switching attention between two languages, a byproduct is enhancement in activities that use this skill.”

Source

I can pay for this course as I go or for the whole thing up front.

Something to keep in mind, but I doubt it will apply for one day a week. Children who grow up in bilingual environments tend to be a little slower at organizing language well in each language from what I read one time, and it seems to be true from the children I know. But, it always sorts out. It is only a stat related to children who grow up with only one language, it does not impact how well the child speaks each language in the end. By school age it is definitely a non-issue.

Also, I wanted to reinforce what @zensky said about learning to pronounce sounds. The younger someone learns a language the more likely they develop a native accent to the language and can pronounce all the sounds in the language. My inlaws still after living in America almost 15 years have trouble pronouncing th and J in jet.