What immersion education still needs: Views from the Irish Year Abroad experience

Abstract

Immersion education is justifiably acclaimed. This success is achieved in the classroom and relates to language structures. Recent research, however, demonstrates that one area of acquisition lags behind in immersion speakers’ speech; sociolinguistic competence. Quantitative studies show that acquisition of native speaker variation patterns is less successful in the classroom than in situations of contact with native speakers. This paper provides quantitative evidence on the production of Irish students on a year in France, whose rates and patterns of native variation approximate native speakers more closely than those of students whose access to input is restricted to immersion classroom. The paper presents data in French from secondary level speakers at Irish immersion schools and from Irish Year Abroad university learners, comparing them to Canadian immersion students and charts the effect of contact with native speakers. We conclude that an element of naturalistic learning might be incorporated into the acquisition process of immersion speakers at university.