I spent 6 months in an immersion school - Defense Language Institute (DLI), Monterrey, CA to be exact. Great experience. There civilian schools as well which allow you to spend time living with a family in a foreign country (like Costa Rica which I highly recommend). My daughter just came back from just a week in Costa Rica living with a family and she was automatically speaking in Spanish at the airport on her return and had to 'shift' to English all over again!



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>>We spent most of the month in Annecy, going to school for 4 hours every day (some mornings and some afternoons), Monday through Friday after taking an initial placement test to see what level we should be placed in. There were 10 groups, with 1 being a beginner and 10 being an expert. I got into Group 3 and Gary was placed in Group 9. We were both surprised, as we thought we'd do worse than that. And we got very lucky because the two groups that we were placed in happened to have the exact same schedule.
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>>I actually learned quite a bit, but I'm still very slow at speaking the language. My vocabulary should be better too ... I'm always searching for the correct word to use. I could also use a lot more practice with verb conjugation, although I've come quite a long way in the past month. All in all, it was a pretty effective way to learn French, in my opinion of course. Now I just need to practice more, because I think Gary's taking me to Nice again for my birthday in November!
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>Bonnie,
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>Thank you for sharing the school experience. This is exactly what I wanted to know. I am thinking of going to an immersion school too (although I am learning Spanish). Maybe some day. And I immerse myself in Spanish every single day anyway: I read magazines, online news, watch CNN in Spanish and TV History channel in Spanish. My problem is that colloquially they speak Spanish so fast that it is hard to understand them. I think French speak much more like normal people <gr&d>.
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>All the best to you in continuing the study. BTW, Gary is a great guy to take you to Nice, you are lucky!