Language immersion

There are different types of language immersion that depend on the age of the students, the classtime spent in L2, the subjects that are taught, and the level of participation by the speakers of L1.

Research has shown that such forms of bilingual education provide students with overall greater language comprehension and production of the L2 in a native-like manner, especially greater exposure to other cultures and the preservation of languages, particularly heritage languages.Bilingual education has taken on a variety of different approaches outside the traditional sink-or-swim model of full submersion in an L2 without assistance in the L1.

Children whose parents emigrate to a new country also find themselves in an immersion environment with respect to their new language.

Another method is to create a temporary environment in which the target language predominates, as in linguistic summer camps like the "English villages" in South Korea and parts of Europe.

Study abroad can also provide a strong immersion environment to increase language skills.

However, many factors may affect immersion during study abroad, including the amount of foreign-language contact during the program.

The method of implementation is crucial to the success of the program, as the RAND Institute has concluded that the final result of these programs is positive, but only so long as implemented correctly, meaning consistency and strict adherence to the curriculum in the classroom.

[19] Students who study foreign languages also tend to have increased mental capabilities, such as creativity and higher-order thinking skills (see cognitive advantages of bilingualism) and have advantages in the workplace, such as higher salary and a wider range of opportunities, since employers are increasingly seeking workers with knowledge of different languages and cultures.

[20] Bilingual immersion programs are intended to foster proficiency or fluency in multiple languages and therefore maximize these benefits.

Several observed outcomes of bilingual education are the transfer of academic and conceptual knowledge across both languages, greater success in programs that emphasize biliteracy as well as bilingualism, and better developed second-language (L2) literary skills for minority students than if they received a monolingual education in the majority language.

[22] Language immersion programs with the goal of fostering bilingualism, Canada's French-English bilingual immersion program being one of the first, initially reported that students receive standardized test scores that are slightly below average.

[28] There are challenges to developing high proficiency in two languages or balance in bilingual skills, especially for early immersion students.

The program was taught strictly in Hawaiian until Grades 5 and 6, when English was introduced as the language of instruction for one hour per day.

[23] A study by Hamel (1995) highlights a school in Michoacan, Mexico, which focuses on two bilingual elementary schools in which teachers built a curriculum that taught all subjects, including literature and math, in the children’s L1: P’urhepecha.

That has created challenges for educators because of the lack of tools and underdeveloped bilingual teaching strategy for Māori.

[10] A study by Williams (1996) looked at the effects bilingual education had on two different communities in Malawi and Zambia.

One result showed that there was no significant difference in the English reading ability between the Zambian and Malawian school children.