Do you wish to enhanceyour child’s brain development? How about expanding their cultural awareness orto help them think more flexibly? Do you wish for them to have increased jobopportunities later in life? All this is possible with the GIC English languageimmersion program offered at Huamei International School. Children who begin withlittle to no foundation in the English language have excelled in this program.All students in the primary program receive five half days of full Englishimmersion. The earlier they begin the immersion program the more likely theyare to succeed in mastering English. Kids between the ages of 6 months to 10years old are at an optimal age to become fluent in a second language. Bilingualstudents are proven to perform higher academically. Parents who are new to thisprogram may not know what to expect so here is a break down of what happens inthe first few months.

     Anew school, new environment, new friends is already a lot for little kids totransition into especially with a new language the students may be more quietand reserved and you might see tears and tantrums too. Most students willcomplain about not understanding anything in the classroom and this is normal. However,if Chinese is constantly spoken in the classroom the children will continue torely on the translation instead of trying to understand English. To make thisperiod easier the teachers rely on routine to make things familiar to thestudent. Content is added at a slower pace and the focus is more on building theroutine. For example in the first grade classroom students learn the days ofthe week, months of the year, the weather, and the date every day in the firstmonth. Students that don’t understand the language get familiar with theroutine and are able to participate in class.

       In the second month thereserved and quiet children will start to feel a bit comfortable and they willunderstand some basic words and phrases that are used on a daily basis in theclassroom. They can say teacher, yes, no and some more phrases. The studentsare able to recognize patterns in sentences and their visual dictionaryexpands.

       The third month is whenthe students get comfortable and start to fit in. They can follow the classroomroutine and start to participate more in class. They can now communicate basicneeds with their classmates and teachers and start to feel happy in the class. Theirvocabulary starts to increase much faster and they can start to pick up somebasic grammar. The students can put words together to form their own sentencesand they can create sentences using words and pictures together.