If the first platform for language is speaking (making audible sounds) and listening (making meaning of those sounds) then the second platform is writing (making a physical representation of the spoken sounds) and reading (understanding those representations). These 2 platforms contain the two functions of language: expressive (speaking/writing) and receptive (listening/reading).

Think for a moment of the ingeninuity of the human race and the development of a diverse array of language systems - more than 6000! Now consider how a child born into one of these systems acquires the ability to speak their ‘mother tongue’. It has long been postulated that a child can learn any language that is introduced in the early months and years of its human development.

In the context of the 1960s French Immersion was fashioned out of a private school initiative by our own Harry Giles who, along with a small group of parents, saw a distinct advantage to being bilingual in the Canada of that day. Eventually, after significant impassioned public debate, in 1985 full funding for public school French Immersion was introduced.