English Immersion Research Articles

Canadian Immersion and Adult Second Language Teaching: What's the Connection?

OUR EXPERIENCE IN ADDRESSING AMERICAN audiences about Canadian French immersion programs has led us to approach our topic with considerable caution. To a large extent this has been because some American policy-makers and educators (e.g., Baker and de Kanter) attempted to equate Canadian French immersion programs for English-speaking Canadian children with English immersion programs for minority language children in the United States. From the point of view of the creation of a bilingual citizenry, such comparisons are inappropriate indeed (see, for example, Cohen & Swain; Swain: 2 1). That is to say that while a likely outcome of immersing a majority language child in a minority language in school is a bilingual individual, a likely outcome of immersing a minority language child in a majority language in school is a unilingual individual. However, from the point of view of second language teaching and learning, there is much to learn from the research involving Canadian immersion programs. We direct our attention in this paper to aspects of the teaching and learning process. Specifically, we intend to make two points that are strongly supported by the research from Canadian immersion programs. First, older learners may not only exhibit as much success in learning certain aspects of a second language as younger learners, but they can also accomplish this learning in a shorter period of time than can younger learners. This point, we feel, is particularly pertinent to those concerned with adult second language learners. Second, in this era of “communicative language teaching,” it is faulty to assume that one

"Teachers are not Miracle Workers:" Lloyd Dunn's Call for Hispanic Activism

This article refutes Dunn's claims by discussing the existent cultural/linguistic bias in IQ tests for minority groups. It is argued that IQ tests standardized on a "representative" sample assess only knowledge and skills deemed intelligent within the dominant group, and exclude culturally specific ways in which minority children have learned to demonstrate intelligent behavior. The inevitability of bias against minority cultural/linguistic groups in IQ tests as a result of the way tests are developed and standardized is discussed. Dunn's proposal for English Immersion programs is also criticized because he fails to assess research which shows that such programs do not produce high English proficiency and further fails to consider the actual data on bilingual education.

An investigation of the language difficulties experienced by Hong Kong secondary school students in English‐medium schools: I the problems

Abstract The predominance of English‐medium secondary schools in Hong Kong has been under considerable criticism by educationalists who argue that the students cannot learn effectively in a foreign medium. The present study investigates this problem by examining the linguistic competence of secondary school students in English immersion courses. The English and Chinese compositions on the same topic written by 124 Form 4 Hong Kong students in three different groups were assessed by two independent markers, and analysed linguistically. The results show that a significantly greater number of pupils in all three groups did better in Chinese than in English composition writing. Moreover, the majority performed below average in English composition writing while most pupils obtained average grades in Chinese composition writing. Case studies and error analysis of the pupils’ compositions reveal that many pupils lacked communicative competence when writing in English. Hence in addition to problems in composition...

The Effectiveness Literature on CAI/CALL and Computing: Implications of the Research for Limited English Proficient Learners

lessons. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Hernindez-Chaivez, E. (1984). The inadequacy of English immersion education as an educational approach for language minority students in the United States. In Studies on immersion education (pp. 144-181). Sacramento: California State Department of Education. Johnson, D. (1983). Natural language learning by design: A classroom experiment in social interaction and second language acquisition. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 5568.

Comparing Structured English Immersion and Bilingual Education: First-Year Results of a National Study

The U.S. Department of Education commissioned a study to determine the relative effectiveness of programs for limited English proficient students wherein English is the only language of instruction and those in which both English and the child's primary language are used for instruction. This article describes the instructional differences observed in the first of a four-year longitudinal study of three such programs, English Immersion Strategy, early-exit, and late-exit transitional bilingual education programs. This process evaluation confirms implementation of each program through documentation of those factors deemed critical to each instructional model. The study concludes that the programs differ radically in the use of English and the child's primary language for instruction and that these language use patterns are consistent with the instructional model for each program. Little or no differences were noted in the teaching behaviors used among the three programs. These and subsequent process data w...

Perceptual versus mediational learning in a total change concept-shift paradigm.

The experiment investigated the effects of language acquisition by children in Grades 1 to 4 on performance in a concept-shift task in which the relevant stimulus attributes were either the colour of ink in which a word was written or the meaning of the word. Both English stream and French Immersion children served as subjects. The results indicated a developmental sequence from perceptual learning to verbal mediation. This process was demonstrated at an earlier stage in the French Immersion students who formed a more highly selected group, and intellectual or socio-economic explanations for these differences may be feasible. The relative speed of acquisition of intradimensional and extradimensional shifts interacts with the perceptual/mediational process.