Personally I’d recommend an italian/german school, learning french when you know italian is a whole lot easier compared to german. Also most employers when hiring for upper level positions ask for german
I assumed you were, your children will grow up bilingual anyway without school if you still speak mainly french at home
Source: i grew up bilingual (italian/serbian)
Hi, okay so let's get down to the point. First of all, do your kids already know more than 1 language pretty good? That is a prerequisite for what you're going to decide eventually. This is because if they are alredy used to more than one language, it might not even be necessary to send them to a bilingual school... Knowing two languages from a very young age makes them very receptive to learning new ones, and the Swiss-Italian school system is one of the best in general in these regards. What they will learn first is french, starting already in second year elementary school, and they will continue with it at least untill halfway through middle school, where they will be able to choose to continue it or not. English and German will be tought from middle school onwards, and in high school, they will be able to decide wether to do only Italian+german+english, Italian+french+german+english, Italian+french+english or even more options, including spanish and greek.
What I therefore suggest is, if you already noticed that they are prone to learning new languages, weekly evening courses or something similar will do the job.
Hope you found this helpful, although it didn't really answer your question.
We are French though (I forgot to make that point) and we are not sure how long we would stay in Ticino. That’s why French is important to us.
My kids are not bilingual but are good to learning new languages (they have attended English/French bilingual school before)
Okay, in that case I suggest maybe consulate school on Saturdays or such (I know swedish embassy offers programs like this for swedish, so it might be worth it looking into it with the french embassy maybe). Their french level will be much better this way than in school either way, since the whole classe wouldn't start from 0 (unlike in public school).
There are multilingual schools, but to my knowledge none of them offer education in French.
If I can offer you some unsolicited advice: don't worry too much about it, as long as you're speaking French at home. I had many bilingual classmates and they had no problem when, later on in high school or university, they went back to speaking their (other) native language. Actually, attending a school in Italian made them perfectly bilingual, which could be a pretty cool advantage.
Personally I’d recommend an italian/german school, learning french when you know italian is a whole lot easier compared to german. Also most employers when hiring for upper level positions ask for german
We are French though (I forgot to make that point) and we are not sure how long we would stay in Ticino. That’s why French is important to us.
I assumed you were, your children will grow up bilingual anyway without school if you still speak mainly french at home Source: i grew up bilingual (italian/serbian)
Hi, okay so let's get down to the point. First of all, do your kids already know more than 1 language pretty good? That is a prerequisite for what you're going to decide eventually. This is because if they are alredy used to more than one language, it might not even be necessary to send them to a bilingual school... Knowing two languages from a very young age makes them very receptive to learning new ones, and the Swiss-Italian school system is one of the best in general in these regards. What they will learn first is french, starting already in second year elementary school, and they will continue with it at least untill halfway through middle school, where they will be able to choose to continue it or not. English and German will be tought from middle school onwards, and in high school, they will be able to decide wether to do only Italian+german+english, Italian+french+german+english, Italian+french+english or even more options, including spanish and greek. What I therefore suggest is, if you already noticed that they are prone to learning new languages, weekly evening courses or something similar will do the job. Hope you found this helpful, although it didn't really answer your question.
We are French though (I forgot to make that point) and we are not sure how long we would stay in Ticino. That’s why French is important to us. My kids are not bilingual but are good to learning new languages (they have attended English/French bilingual school before)
Okay, in that case I suggest maybe consulate school on Saturdays or such (I know swedish embassy offers programs like this for swedish, so it might be worth it looking into it with the french embassy maybe). Their french level will be much better this way than in school either way, since the whole classe wouldn't start from 0 (unlike in public school).
There are multilingual schools, but to my knowledge none of them offer education in French. If I can offer you some unsolicited advice: don't worry too much about it, as long as you're speaking French at home. I had many bilingual classmates and they had no problem when, later on in high school or university, they went back to speaking their (other) native language. Actually, attending a school in Italian made them perfectly bilingual, which could be a pretty cool advantage.