Language Immersion Education Research Articles

First and second language use in an early total one‐way Chinese immersion classroom

AbstractChinese immersion programs have been increasingly popular in US schools. However, we have insufficient data on young English‐speaking children's acquisition of Chinese as a second language in these programs, and specifically on social contextual variables systematically promoting or hindering Chinese language use. Taking a variationist sociolinguistic approach, this mixed‐methods case study identifies interlocutor and task as central social variables that most significantly condition the use, and therefore the acquisition, of Chinese by second graders attending an early total one‐way Chinese immersion program in the United States. The idiosyncratic social roles learners played with different interlocutors in carrying out classroom tasks and activities help account for their use of Chinese or English, with implications for future research on second language acquisition and pedagogy in one‐way language immersion education.

Language Immersion Education: Concepts, Practices, and Reflections—Summary of the 8th Annual Conference on Language Immersion Education

Language Immersion Education: Concepts, Practices, and Reflections—Summary of the 8th Annual Conference on Language Immersion Education

Progress, challenges, and trajectories for indigenous language content-based instruction in the United States and Canada

AbstractIndigenous language content-based instruction in the United States and Canada is primarily known as Indigenous language medium or Indigenous language immersion (ILI) education. In spite of huge barriers, it has grown over the past decade. Programs have emerged from concerns about language loss and a desire for language revitalization. Language revitalization takes several generations since it seeks an outcome where the Indigenous language is primary with high, but secondary, proficiency in the nationally dominant language. To establish a trajectory to reach such an outcome, the majority of schooling until high school graduation should be through the Indigenous language. Indigenous language medium schooling also seeks to produce sufficient mastery of academics and English for access to English medium higher education. Where a sufficiently strong model has been implemented, as in Hawaiʻi, those results are beginning to be produced. At present, the models being implemented elsewhere in the two countries are at varying stages of development, with minimal government support.

Majority language vocabulary and nonword repetition skills in children attending minority language immersion education

AbstractThe present study examined nonword repetition (NWR) and comprehension/production of single-word vocabulary in the majority language (English) in six- to eight-year-old English-Gaelic emergent bilingual children attending Gaelic-medium primary education (GMPE) (primary years 2 and 3). GMPE is an immersion education model found in Scotland where the minority language, Gaelic, is the language of instruction, whereas English is the majority community language, not supported in school in the first three years of primary schooling. All children spoke English as their first language (L1) and had varying exposure to the second language (L2) Gaelic outside the school setting. We investigated how individual factors, such as age and frequency of exposure, and psycholinguistic factors, such as task modality, word class (for vocabulary), frequency, length, and prosody (for NWR), influenced performance. Later exposure to Gaelic and higher nonverbal IQ were contributing predictors of performance for English vocabulary. For NWR, participants with earlier and longer exposure to Gaelic who also used both languages at home more performed significantly better on this task. These results suggest that minority language immersion education differentially affects majority language abilities; later L2 onset benefited L1 vocabulary learning, whereas earlier L2 onset boosted L1 NWR skills in these bilinguals.

Language immersion and student achievement

ABSTRACT Language immersion education uses a non-English language for a significant portion of instruction. One goal is to develop bilingual students, which many argue provides cognitive benefits. Using data from school choice lotteries, I estimate the effect of random assignment to a language immersion school on achievement in math and reading. Winning the lottery has a statistically significant positive effect on math scores, and a positive but statistically insignificant effect on reading. Several peer and school characteristics are ruled out as non-language based alternative explanations for the higher math scores of lottery winners.

Language Immersion and Student Achievement

Language immersion education uses a non-English language for a significant portion of instruction. One goal is to develop bilingual students, which many argue provides cognitive benefits. Using data from school choice lotteries, I estimate the effect of random assignment to a language immersion school on achievement in math and reading. Winning the lottery has a statistically significant positive effect on math scores, and a positive but statistically insignificant effect on reading. Several peer and school characteristics are ruled out as non-language based alternative explanations for the higher math scores of lottery winners.

Principals’ attitudes towards the suitability of Irish language immersion education for children with dyslexia

This study explores principals’ attitudes towards the suitability of language immersion education (LIE) enrolment for children with dyslexia in Ireland. It also aims to examine the challenges faced by those in LIE settings working to include children with special educational needs (SEN), specifically dyslexia, in their schools. Participants include primary school principals working in Irish LIE settings across Ireland. The study follows a mixed methods approach including a focus group interview and a self-completion online questionnaire. Results indicate that principals believe that LIE enrolment is suitable for children with dyslexia and that these children can benefit from being placed in such a learning environment. However, the Irish immersion system faces considerable challenges in its aims to support children with dyslexia, namely the lack of an appropriate assessment system, the lack of sufficient research and training and negative attitudes held towards the Irish language.

Bilanguaging Love: Latina/o/x Bilingual Students’ Subjectivities and Sensitivities in Dual Language Immersion Contexts

Dual language immersion (DLI) education opens possibilities to leverage Latina/o/x bilingual students’ borderlands subjectivities and sensitivities. Yet persistent hegemonic discourses and the instantiation of linguistic and ideological borders in schools denigrate these sensibilities. By drawing on the concepts of bilanguaging and bilanguaging love (Mignolo, 2012), in this study the researchers examine the embodied epistemologies and knowledges a group of Latina/o/x students made visible as they participated in elementary two‐way DLI classrooms. Their analysis reveals first that bilingual students were aware of the linguistic, cultural, and racial and ethnic borders that shaped their Mexicana and Latina identities, but in reifying these borders these Latinas also embodied Spanish, English, and bilingualism in ways that their White peers did not. Second, the researchers analyze relationships, ways of being, and knowledges Latina/o/x bilingual students employed as they supported their peers through the challenges and discomfort around being between languages. These findings challenge views of bilingual students as Other, particularly those of Mexican and Latina/o/x backgrounds whose subjectivities are shaped by modern and colonial projects seeking to manage linguistic difference. Drawing on bilanguaging love as an equity‐oriented guiding principle, the authors argue that DLI can counter these oppressive conditions by elevating these students’ borderlands epistemologies and knowledges in schools.

Language as an including or excluding factor in mathematics teaching and learning

This article explores the power of language to either include or exclude certain groups of students from genuine opportunities for mathematical sense-making. The substantial increase worldwide in the number of students learning mathematics through a language other than their primary language makes this a particularly urgent issue. This paper focuses on the South African situation, where, because English is widely perceived as the language of opportunity, it is, by grade 4, overwhelmingly the chosen language of learning and teaching. The epistemological and pedagogical consequences of this choice are evidenced in the poor performance of the country’s students on national and international assessments of mathematical proficiency. Drawing on research literature around language immersion education models and the extent to which these align with certain key principles of second language acquisition, this position paper motivates for a stronger and more sustained commitment to providing students, particularly those from marginalized and vulnerable communities, with opportunities for becoming both bilingual and biliterate. Empirical data from two South African grade 4 mathematics classrooms are used to illuminate aspects of the mathematical sense-making challenges students and their teachers face without such commitment.

Is native-speakerism impacting the Dual Language Immersion teacher shortage?

Abstract Although Dual Language Immersion Education is growing in popularity in the United States, staffing these programs represents one of the greatest challenges for school administrators. Ironically, this is the case even for Spanish-English Dual Language Immersion programs despite the fact that the United States has the second highest number of Spanish speakers of any country in the world. What barriers hinder Spanish-English Dual Language Immersion schools from filling their teaching positions? This exploratory article suggests that native-speakerism may be part of the problem. Drawing on literature from the field of English Language Teaching, this article goes further to suggest that notions of who is the ideal Dual Language teacher, unless carefully considered, may exacerbate the linguistic marginalization of U.S.-born Latinxs, a group whose Spanish-speaking abilities are too often stigmatized.

Self-esteem and Cultural Identity in Aboriginal Language Immersion Kindergarteners

ABSTRACTIn gauging the success of Aboriginal language immersion education, the focus is often placed on measuring language acquisition and academic achievement. Although useful, these metrics only tell part of the story; to achieve real school success, it is also vital to develop high personal self-esteem that results in a positive concept of oneself as a learner, and high collective self-esteem, or attitude toward one’s heritage, family, community, and school. This article describes the impact of Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) immersion education on the personal and collective self-esteem of kindergarteners, and discusses their concept of ethno-cultural identity, as compared to previously studied cohorts of Inuit learners in immersion and mainstream language schools. The results give important insights into not only the self-esteem of children in this immersion school as part of a measure of its overall success, but also the school experiences of Aboriginal children in different cultural, geographic, and educational contexts.

Teaching Strategies to Develop Inquiry and Literacy Skills: Languaging in Foreign Language Immersion Education

Author(s): Husbye, Nicholas; Dorner, Lisa M. | Abstract: One-way, or foreign language, immersion schools face unique challenges as they seek to support the literacy development of their students. This manuscript draws on sociocultural theories of literacy development and the concept of languaging, the process of using language to make meaning. Working with two classrooms over one semester, we asked: How were fifth-grade students using language to make meaning and develop new skills during literacy activities? Where and when did students apply their learning? Teaching the strategies in English, the authors posit, provided students with moments of languaging, or talk about language, that allowed them to transfer certain strategies to target language instruction. Examples from our work demonstrate how explicit languaging about literacy strategies in English helped students to develop new research skills, which they later applied to inquiry projects completed in their school’s immersion language. However, while we witnessed students’ languaging in reference to literacy strategies, we rarely observed translanguaging, or students drawing upon their range of linguistic repertoires (English, Spanish, Bosnian, African American vernacular, and so on) to make meaning. We conclude by highlighting the potential of languaging to develop new literacy skills in language immersion education, as well as the need for future research on translanguaging in such contexts.

Samoan Language and Cultural Continuity at an Early Childhood Centre of Innovation

This paper summarises research literature on language immersion education in the early years, with a particular focus on Pasifika educational and language contexts. It outlines innovative practices related to Samoan language immersion at an early childhood Centre of Innovation, and describes the centre's action research process, including the observational approaches and interviews used to generate data. There is a discussion of key findings on language and cultural continuity. During the three-year research project, learning increasingly took place in Samoan, teachers took on more study in immersion and bilingual education, and interactions between teachers and children challenged the children to communicate confidently and competently in Samoan.

Second Language Acquisition and Form-Focused Instruction in Immersion: Teaching for Learning

While research on language immersion education has highlighted a multitude of benefits such as<br />cognitive skills, academic achievement and language and literacy development, some studies have also<br />identified challenges to its effective implementation, particularly as they relate to language acquisition.<br />It has been suggested that the less than optimal levels of students’ immersion language “persist in part<br />because immersion teachers lack systematic approaches for integrating language into their content<br />instruction” (Tedick, Christian, & Fortune, 2011, p. 7). Students’ interlanguage has aspects that are<br />borrowed, transferred and generalised from the mother tongue and differs from both the immersion<br />language and the mother tongue. After a period of sustained development, interlanguage appears to<br />stabilise and certain non-target like features tend to fossilise. Research has long suggested that<br />effective immersion pedagogy needs to counterbalance both form-oriented and meaning-oriented<br />approaches. This paper reviews the literature in relation to the linguistic deficiencies in immersion<br />students’ L2 proficiency and form-focused instruction is examined as a viable solution to this<br />pedagogic puzzle. Key instructional elements of form-focused instruction are unpacked and some<br />pedagogical possibilities are considered in an attempt to identify and discuss strategies that will enable<br />immersion learners to refine their grammatical and lexical systems as they proceed.

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, Third Edition

Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching, Third Edition

Narratives in Manx

The purpose of this paper is to show linguistic strategies used in constructing a narrative task by the first children acquiring Manx Gaelic in a language immersion education programme. The children in the study were approaching the end of their third year of the immersion programme. It was expected that the children would use their first language (English) as a resource for their second language production in terms of lexical and semantic transference. It was also expected that the small number of children in the study who had other Manx speakers in their family would show some advantage in terms of language production over those who did not. The findings discussed in this paper show that in addition to using their first language as a resourcethe children were also able to use their knowledge of the target language productively. Any advantage in language production shown by children with Manx speaking family members was slight, and only became apparent when diversity in verbal noun usage was taken into account. The Manx of second language adult speakers, and that of the last native Manx speakers, which shows some interesting parallel usage with the children’s language is referred to as a point of comparison.

Language immersion education

Language immersion education

Student outcomes in one-way, two-way, and indigenous language immersion education

This article examines international research on student outcomes in one-way, two-way, and indigenous language immersion education. We review research on first and second language competence and academic achievement in content areas (e.g., math) among both majority and minority language students. We also discuss the relationship between bilingualism and student outcomes and whether more exposure to the first or second language is associated with better outcomes. In addition, we highlight student background, methodological, and assessment issues and concerns, and suggest additional avenues of research on student outcomes

“¿Cómo se dice?” Children's multilingual discourses (or interacting, representing, and being) in a first-grade Spanish immersion classroom

At the Spanish Immersion Elementary School (SIES), most students speak only English at home, but they soon speak Spanish—and other new discourses—at school. Taking a socio-cultural approach, this qualitative study used critically oriented discourse analysis to examine: how did first-grade students at SIES appropriate multiple languages and discourses during classroom activities? In turn, how did they support each other and their teachers in creating new discourses? Data included weekly field notes and six hours of video from four months of participant observation. Analyses demonstrated that teachers’ structured, whole-group activities fostered children's Spanish while small groups fostered diverse language use. In whole groups, students appropriated ways of interacting, representing, and being that resembled teachers and translators. In contrast, students wrestled with multilingual, identity discourses in small groups. This pushes the field of language immersion education forward by moving beyond the quantification of language use, production and achievement. Highlighting how youth scaffold language development, appropriate new discourses, and create speech communities in multilingual contexts has implications for the design of language education.

Honouring the Voices of the Ancestors - A Personal View of the Effect of Māori Language Immersion Education in Aotearoa-New Zealand

Many studies have been undertaken which focus on identifying factors which impact on the participation and achievement of Māori students in post compulsory education and factors contributing to Māori success in tertiary education. (Jefferies, R. 1997; Tiakiwai, S.J. 2001; Nikora, L. W., Levy, M., Henry, J., & Whangapirita, L. 2002; Greenwood, J., & Te Aika, L. 2009), One of the factors identified as an institutional barrier is a lack of recognition of Māori culture and language. This article discusses the importance of university Māori language students being able to write their assignments, dissertations and theses not only in the Māori language, but in their own tribal dialects. Using a case-study approach of the authors’ personal experiences of primary, secondary and tertiary education, the case-study will focus specifically on the place of the authors’ tribal identity and dialect in this process. Dialect will be illustrated through samples of work submitted for the authors BA (Hons) dissertation, MA and PhD. This will also demonstrate the importance of writing in the community language, when conducting research on a topic related to that community, and this will be discussed in terms of reflecting a commitment to the survival of that community language and to increasing the corpus of work being produced in the Māori language.
 
 This case-study, adopting a narrative approach, will demonstrate a positive outcome for both a university and a Māori student when a) the university provides the right pathways, policies and processes to empower Māori students to write in their native tongue; and b) the student has the courage and tenacity to continue writing in the Māori language and in their dialect, as a minority in the institution.