r2i forum

:confused:

All,
My son will be going to 6th grade at Vibgyor. This is a new admission, we recently moved to Bangalore. I was told last week that they do not offer French as 2nd language. At the time of admission they gave us the option of Hindi or French. I am planning to go and talk to the principle this week regarding this. I would like to know if anybody (especially new admission) is taking French this year at Vibgyor.

Finally I met with the coordinator last week. I was told that they do offer French. We are still debating between French and Hindi. Not sure which one to opt.
So far our exerience with Vibgyor is extremely good.

We moved last year to Bangalore from US, our kids study in Samhita Academy, my son is in 5th grade now and from this year they added French as a third language, Hindi is the second language. So my son is learning both Hindi and French. You could give it a shot in this school.

brave;392377Finally I met with the coordinator last week. I was told that they do offer French. We are still debating between French and Hindi. Not sure which one to opt.
So far our exerience with Vibgyor is extremely good.

back2desh;392411We moved last year to Bangalore from US, our kids study in Samhita Academy, my son is in 5th grade now and from this year they added French as a third language, Hindi is the second language. So my son is learning both Hindi and French. You could give it a shot in this school.

Why is this fascination with French with NRIs? You have to live in France or Quebec to practice French. I enrolled my kid for Kannada(third language) though it is not our mother tongue. If you plan to live in BLR it is better to learn the local language. Our elder kid learnt French and it is a waste of time - without practice it is no use learning a foreign language.

OP,

Do you know French? What language have you found the need for greater? Hindi or French?

I find that perhaps for a very short duration in my life, the knowledge of French would have been helpful when I was travelling. Other than that, I have found that lack of knowledge of Hindi would have been a tremendous handicap, much more than the handicap, if any, from lack of knowledge of French.

To me, learning French is about as useful as learning the Armenian or Hungarian.

Comprenez-vous ce que je dis (do you understand what I am saying)

Actually, none of these languages be it Hindi, or Kannada or Tamil is any useful. I am talking about the language being taught in high school, not the spoken language. How many of you use Hindi or Kannada high school grammar? Are we talking shayaris of Tulsidas and dissecting it part by part for dailylife communication? I did not study Hindi in school but I had no problem living in North India. I could speak Hindi. Spoken language is different from the grilling one has to go through studying language as a subject. French is taken by students to ace the 2nd language. The language content is supposed to be easy in French subject compared to Hindi or any other language. Just wanted to give a different perspective. Other than that it is individual choice.

OP, if your kid has moved from abroad and starting 6th grade, French will be easier for him than any Indian language. Starting Hindi at 6th grade and moving fast enough to dissect a poem in a few yrs on par with students that have already studied the language for 5 more yrs is hard on the R2I student. On the other hand, French provides a level playing field. Besides, the French teachers go easy on the students because it is not their mother tongue as well.

PS: I am not for or against any language. My post is to enable a successful R2I for a parent with middle school level kid.

Grading of exam answer papers and awarding of marks in languages like French and Sanskrit is often more generous than that of of Hindi papers. So, French would be a better choice between Hindi and French. Of course, parent could be the kind who doesn't care about marks & grades, and only wants child to explore, enjoy and learn... then it is a different story. :)

Mandarin would perhaps be the bestest choice. :)

It is a pity that Spanish is not one of the languages in the syllabus. (or is it ?) While that one-child policy is going to come back and bite the chinese in the "future", the latinos are increasing in numbers. May be I'd been following J-Lo' too much ?
Many (including certain Tamil Loving members of the forum) had said that French is the way to go to get the overall grades up. Learn Hindi or whatever on your own....watching just too many bollywood flicks help in getting the required vocabulary for grownup-hood.

There is no fascination Old-Spice2, I studied Hindi thru-ought 12th grade, after that never ever touched or read a single Hindi book, moved down south to do my engineering and since then it's only the english language that I have used in 20+ years. Already my son is struggling with Hindi and I did not want him to struggle more with Kannada so I have enrolled him for French as it will be easier for him to learn and how knows it may be of some use to him as not many prefer to learn foreign language.

Old-Spice2;392449Why is this fascination with French with NRIs? You have to live in France or Quebec to practice French. I enrolled my kid for Kannada(third language) though it is not our mother tongue. If you plan to live in BLR it is better to learn the local language. Our elder kid learnt French and it is a waste of time - without practice it is no use learning a foreign language.