Language acquisition for children happens in stages: first understanding, then one-word utterances, then two-word phrases, and so on.

Students learning a second language move through similar stages: Preproduction, Early Production, Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency, and Advanced Fluency.

Generally speaking, for children who begin at Caminito as toddlers when, developmentally speaking, language skills are emerging, the introduction of a second language is seamless and allows for a much higher rate of acquisition and fluency.

In their first six months of immersion, children have limited comprehension and low verbalization.

Within six months to a year, children are increasing comprehension, growing a vocabulary base, and producing one- to two-word phrases using present tense verbs.

As they move into their second year at Caminito, children have excellent comprehension, produce simple sentences, and feel very comfortable navigating within the full immersion environment.

In years two and three, children have excellent comprehension, can frequently respond in Spanish to the teachers, and often use Spanish in their natural and spontaneous play and interactions with each other.