I recently interviewed a multilingual friend who is originally from Spain but grew up in the Brussels area where she still lives now. She arrived there as a young child in a Catalan-only speaking family and would go back to Spain to visit family several times (including summer holidays) each year. With her parents and sisters she will always speak Catalan, except to accommodate a non-Catalan-speaking third person (like me, for instance). Here she tells me about her schooling:

I speak Catalan at home (but never studied it). I’m not a home-bilingual.
I went to the European School at age 4 and through all my schooling, in the Spanish section. That means that my lessons were in Spanish, with Spanish teachers. I learned it in 2 months…kids are amazing.

At age 6 (1^er primaire) we started having L2, French for me. One hour per day, I think, until reaching secondaire (there was also tv, whose influence was also important). I’m now bilingual in that language. We had language trips, with the L2 class, in which we had no other option than to use it.

There were also European Hours, where the class was divided in two or three, and we shared an artistic lesson with another country section.

When reaching secondaire (12 years old), we started having complementary classes (art, music and gymnastics) in L2…Not exactly: professors had to talk in English and French, but used mostly the one they were better at… I had that teacher who just talked in English while I had never had one lesson. Luckily I had friends whose L2 was English.

In 2^ndsecondaire (13 years old) we started L3, English for me (3 hours per week, or something like that). I was in the less advanced level for all my years. Was not really good at it… well, yes, compared with some of my fellow students I was pretty good.

We also had at that time History and Geography in L2 (French). (Some took the option to study a 4^th and 5^th language, but I never did that. I also didn’t take Latin lessons.)
And the fact that we were forced to talk first (try playing baseball with a group of Danish girls), then really had friends whose language we didn’t speak forced us to use our L2 and L3.

There was the option in 6^th and 7^th year secondaire (17/18 years) to take classes in L2 that had not enough students in your own language, like difficult maths or physics. I think that it shows that the level was pretty good…

That’s all, I think. It’s a peculiar case, I know. But the school formula works pretty well.

And to end with my story on languages, I had the occasion to travel to Oxford for a 3 weeks language course, where I had the occasion to see that even if I’m not fluent, I can certainly communicate in English.

To complete this, I asked her how her linguistic experience compares to those of her sisters (she is number 2 out of 4):

I started studying French at 6 years old in school, but by the time I got there, I knew already a lot of it, thanks to TV and life in general.
The ‘little’ sisters were born here. They went to a daycare center in French as toddlers, and learned French there.
With the first one of them, we (the older sisters) were so happy about her knowing it that we liked to talk to her in French, and the result was that by the holidays, she had forgotten how to talk in Catalan. A problem with grandparents and other family members who understood nothing of what she said. On the contrary, she understood everything of what they told her. We were told to keep to Catalan, and in no time she stopped using French. She kept using occasional words, but nothing disastrous.
Things of life, she is the one who has done most life in French, be it studies, friends, boyfriends (he is learning Catalan, mind you! on prevision to have bilingual kids with a disadvantaged language ) or work.
With the other we had already learned the lesson, so we talked with her directly in Catalan. She knew French too, but did not use it at home. She was not talkative, but that was more because she was the 4th than a language problem…
When they got to school in Spanish they kept the three languages separated.
English was learned much later in life.