This post may be of interest to a wider audience in the United States.   A portion of the followers of this blog are in the U.S.  The U.S. organization “Early Childhood Education Degrees” sent me a very informative and well-done graphic highlighting some impressive bilingual education numbers and student language demographics in the U.S.

The graphic shows the changing multicultural face of students in the United States, and why immersion programs are necessary in this context.  (Thank-you to Patricia for offering this very well-done graph… your organization did a great job with it!)

You can access the graphic here:  http://www.early-childhood-education-degrees.com/immersion-programs/

The information in the graph highlights the facts that:

• 6 million Americans speak a language other than English at home.
  • 62% of which is Spanish
  • 8% of which is Chinese
  • 6% of which is Tagalog (from the Philippines)
• US immersion schools offer 22 languages, with the top three being
  • 45% Spanish
  • 22% French
  • 13% Mandarin Chinese

Spanish Immersion numbers are significant (we hear all the time about how the Hispanic fact is more and more an integral part of the USA’s identity).   But the fact that 22% of all immersion students in the United States are doing their studies in French particularly caught my attention.

I contacted the Embassy of France in Washington and I obtained the following information about French Immersion in the USA from their Cultural Services department:

• The USA has 200 French Immersion schools in 30 states and 116 cities.
• Approximately 40,000 students are enrolled in French Immersion in the United States

The following map shows where those schools are located (on the US map, each dot represents one individual school, whereas on the Canadian map in the prior post, one dot represents one town/city where French Immersion is offered).  Click to enlarge:

You can find the above information on French Immersion in the US on the French Embassy’s website, (including downloads which contains the names, addresses, and contact information for each of the Immersion schools):  The link to the particular page is here.  http://frenchlanguage.frenchculture.org/news/what-200-schools-30-states-and-116-cities-have-common

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SERIES:  FRENCH IMMERSION (4 POSTS)

Public Systems:

• French Immersion across Canada – Some maps (#163) – PART 1 of 4
• General USA Immersion programs, and French Immersion in the USA (#164) – PART 2 of 4
• The significance of Canada’s French Immersion Program – for Québec (#165) – PART 3 of 4
• L’Importance du programme d’immersion française au Canada anglophone – pour le Québec (#166) – PART 4 of 4

Private Systems:

• Montessori has also gone French (#214)