Immersion programs: The Irish experience

Abstract

The continuous decline for over 30 years in the number of Irish immersion schools might suggest that the Irish home-school language switch program has been less successful than its more recent North American counterpart. In fact the Irish experience has often been used to illustrate the potential dangers of bilingualism in education. The present paper examines the evidence for negative effects associated with Irish immersion education and concludes that even in earlier immersion schools, many of which operated with minimal parental support, there is little evidence of detrimental academic effects. Present-day immersion schools are very different from many of the earlier immersion schools in that parents are strongly committed to Irish. The available evidence suggests that in these schools, as in immersion schools elsewhere, children achieve fluent L2 skills at no cost to their L1. Many Irish immersion teachers emphasized the need for a supportive home environment if children were to succeed in an immersion school.