Pathways to Multilingualism: Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Education (Bilingual Education and Bilingualism): 66 - Softcover

Tara Williams Fortune

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847690351 ISBN 13: 9781847690357

Publisher: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

In this volume an international roster of scholars offer theoretical perspectives, research reviews and empirical studies on teaching, learning and language development in immersion education. Editors clearly define the term immersion and bring together research from three distinct branches, including foreign language ( one-way ), bilingual ( two-way ) and indigenous immersion programs. This collection aims to facilitate cross-context dialogue and knowledge exchange.

About this title

About the Author

Tara Williams Fortune, Immersion Projects Coordinator for CARLA, one of several language resource centers in the U.S., is engaged in the preparation and continuing education of language immersion professionals. Her research examines the dynamics of language use and peer interaction in second language mediated learning. Diane J. Tedick is associate professor in Second Languages and Cultures Education at the University of Minnesota. She is a language teacher educator for immersion and bilingual education, foreign language education, and ESL. Her research focuses on the pedagogy required for balancing language and content in instruction.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Pathways to Multilingualism

Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Education

By Tara Williams Fortune, Diane J. Tedick

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2008 Tara Williams Fortune and Diane J. Tedick and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-035-7

Contents

The Contributors ix, 
Foreword, 
Donna Christian, xiv, 
Acknowledgements, xix, 
Introduction to the Volume, 
1 One-Way, Two-Way and Indigenous Immersion: A Call for Cross-Fertilization Tara Williams Fortune and Diane J. Tedick, 3, 
2 Dual Language in the Global Village Fred Genesee, 22, 
Part 1: Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Pedagogy, 
3 Paying Attention to Language: Literacy, Language and Academic Achievement Myriam Met, 49, 
4 Integrated Language and Content Teaching: Insights from the Immersion Classroom Tara Williams Fortune, Diane J. Tedick and Constance L. Walker, 71, 
5 Diversity Up Close: Building Alternative Discourses in the Two-Way Immersion Classroom Deborah K. Palmer, 97, 
Part 2: Evolving Perspectives on Language Development in Immersion Classrooms, 
6 Lexical Learning Through a Multitask Activity: The Role of Repetition Merrill Swain and Sharon Lapkin, 119, 
7 Instructional Counterbalance in Immersion Pedagogy Roy Lyster and Hirohide Mori, 133, 
8 Teacher Strategies for Second Language Production in Immersion Kindergarten in Finland Margareta Södergärd, 152, 
Part 3: Evolving Perspectives on Social Context and its Impact on Immersion Programs, 
9 Language Development and Academic Achievement in Two-Way Immersion Programs Kathryn Lindholm-Leary and Elizabeth R. Howard, 177, 
10 Developing a Critical Awareness of Language Diversity in Immersion Diane Dagenais, 201, 
11 Restoring Aboriginal Languages: Immersion and Intensive Language Program Models in Canada Merle Richards and Barbara Burnaby, 221, 
12 Late Immersion in Hong Kong: Still Stressed or Making Progress? Philip Hoare and Stella Kong, 242, 
Synthesis for the Volume, 
13 Concluding Thoughts: Does the Immersion Pathway Lead to Multilingualism? G. Richard Tucker and Deborah Dubiner, 267, 
Index, 278, 

CHAPTER 1

One-Way, Two-Way and Indigenous Immersion: A Call for Cross-Fertilization

TARA WILLIAMS FORTUNE and DIANE J. TEDICK

If names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.

Kung Fu-tzu Confucius (551–479 BC), Chinese Ethical Teacher – Founder of Confucianism

Foreign language immersion. Two-way immersion. Indigenous immersion. Early double immersion. Early total immersion. Structured English immersion. One-way partial immersion. Dual language immersion. What do these names actually mean?

Coming to terms with terminology can be difficult. When discussing schooling experiences in language and culture education on a global scale, the naming task becomes even more daunting. Public schools as dynamic social institutions are inherently messy places. They and the language immersion programs that exist within them welcome all students and families and develop in response to local needs and sociocultural contexts. Because of these pre-conditions, educational programs, in particular those that teach two or more languages through content, do not lend themselves well to simple categorization or labeling. However, given researcher interest in disseminating program-specific findings and educator interest in replicating successful models, labeling programs accurately and ensuring that program design and implementation cohere with the elected program's key characteristics become critical.

The challenge of assigning names to program models that exists for many bilingual and immersion educators and researchers is hardly surprising. Consider, for example, the following complexities:

• global exportation and proliferation of the Canadian French immersion program model and other forms of bilingual education, and the need for context-specific adaptation;

• use of public monies for school-based maintenance of minority languages and cultures, and the impact of local and national legislation and political agendas;

• vernacular use of the term 'immersion' to describe a teaching and learning methodology as opposed to an educational program model with distinct characteristics, and the confusion that naturally arises from such doublespeak; and

• negative connotations that evolve over time with labels such as 'bilingual' and 'English immersion' education in the US, and the misinformation that results.

To facilitate a clear use of terminology in this edited volume, we begin this introduction by briefly offering a literature-based, research-friendly description of 'immersion education.' We aim to ground this description in what immersion researchers have reported in earlier investigations and to explicitly identify defining core characteristics as well as acceptable programmatic variations. Such practices support accurate use of program labels and this, in turn, upholds the integrity of research findings published under the name of immersion education or as we suggest, its 'research-friendliness.' Within this section, we also present background information on the three types of immersion programs discussed within this volume: one-way foreign language immersion, two-way immersion and indigenous immersion. As volume editors, our characterization of immersion education delimits use of the term to programs that adhere to specific goals as well as well-defined program design and implementation features, which we identify. We then go on to articulate our rationale for bringing these various strands of immersion education together in one research-focused volume. Finally, we preview the contents and organization of individual chapters by section.

Immersion Education: A Literature-Based, Research-Friendly Description

The programs discussed in this volume were modeled after and inspired by one of two grassroots language education efforts, both of which emerged on North American soil in the 1960s: St-Lambert, Quebec's French immersion program in Canada (Peritz, 2006) and Miami-Dade County, Florida's Spanish/English bilingual program in the US (Ovando, 2003).

Canadian French immersion education

Canada's foreign language immersion program model originated during conversations among a small group of disgruntled English-speaking parents. Concerned about the growing importance of French/ English bilingualism in their community and motivated by a desire to bridge the cultural divide between Canadian Anglophones and Francophones (Lambert, 1995), they determined to create a more effective way to develop their English-speaking children's bilingualism and biliteracy. Engaging the expertise of a few local academics, this visionary parent group designed an elementary 'language bath' program alternative to the traditional 'Core' French program, lobbied hard and after two years launched the French immersion program with 26 English-speaking kindergarteners at Margaret Pendlebury Elementary School. The words 'language immersion' were adopted in October 1963 because the words 'language bath' did not seem sufficiently sophisticated for schooling (Peritz, 2006).

The first French early total immersion classrooms in Canada offered all subject matter instruction in students' second language (L2), French (Lambert & Tucker, 1972). Content instruction in French only continued through grade 3, and French was the language of initial literacy as well. Beginning in grade 3 or 4, programs introduced some subject matter instruction in English, gradually increasing the time allotted to English to 50% by grades 5–6. At the time, one of the key criteria identified as essential to this program's success was the language background of incoming students. All students entered the program with limited to no proficiency in the immersion language (IL) (Lambert, 1984). Researchers pointed out that this design feature facilitated teachers' ability to make appropriate modifications to their IL use and instructional practices for increased comprehensibility among learners.

Having a linguistically homogeneous student group also meant that all students were moving together in one direction towards proficiency in French. In this volume use of the descriptors 'one-way' and 'two-way' references the linguistic background of the target student audience. 'One-way' foreign language immersion programs, modeled after Canadian French immersion programs, serve a majority language group in the process of acquiring the same second language (e.g. Japanese immersion in the US or English immersion in Hong Kong).

Miami-Dade County's two-way bilingual program

While Canadians experimented with French immersion education for English-speaking children, to the south of Canada Cuban parents exiled from their home country and living in Florida worked together to establish the first two-way bilingual education program at Coral Way Elementary School in Miami-Dade County. Believing that their situation was only temporary, these parents were interested in maintaining schooling support for their children's native Spanish as they acquired the new language, English (Ovando, 2003). The model they adopted with the support of Coral Way school officials brought together English-speaking Spanish learners and Spanish-speaking English learners in one classroom. The instructional day was divided between the two languages and subject matter was taught in both languages with the goal of developing bilingual, biliterate and bicultural children. The success of this program model spurred the development of similar programs in Florida and elsewhere in the US.

Thus, in contrast to one-way immersion programs, two-way programs serve a linguistically heterogeneous group. In these programs students speak one of the two languages of instruction and are in the process of acquiring the other as their 'partner' (Lindholm-Leary and Howard, Chapter 9 this volume) language. Thus, two-way students are moving in two distinct directions, towards the native language of their linguistically-different peers.

National and international growth

Since the birth of these two forms of bilingual education in Canada and the US, both program models have spread within their countries and around the world. Canadian Parents for French (CPF, 2006) reports a total of 300,628 French immersion students as of 2004–2005, with immersion students in every Canadian province except for Nunavut, where no programs are offered. Immersion programs have also been implemented with Canadian Aboriginal languages such as Mohawk (see Richards and Burnaby, Chapter 11 this volume). In addition to in-country expansion, a 2003 CPF report details exportation of the Canadian immersion program internationally to countries such as the United States (1972, Spanish immersion in Culver City, California; 1974, French immersion in Montgomery County, Maryland), Finland (1987, Swedish immersion in Vaasa, Finland), Germany (1996, English immersion in Kiel, Germany), Spain (1983, Catalan immersion in Catalonia, Spain), and elsewhere. In most of these countries, as in Canada, the languages being acquired in immersion programs are few. However, in the US one-way immersion programs exist in 18 different languages including the more commonly taught (e.g. Spanish, French and German), the less commonly taught (e.g. Arabic, Mandarin and Russian) and indigenous languages (e.g. Diné, Ojibwe and Yup'ik). Lenker and Rhodes (2007) report awareness of 310 one-way foreign language programs spread across 33 states and 83 school districts.

Compared with the one-way immersion model, growth of the two-way bilingual program model has been relatively recent and as a public school program is still largely limited to the US context (for a more in-depth discussion of similar bilingual models around the world, see Baker, 2001). In the mid- to late-1980s, US interest in the two-way immersion model grew as a result of factors such as increased attention on research-supported educational models for minority language and majority language students and the availability of federal and state funding (Christian, 1994). During the 1990s the number of two-way immersion programs swelled from 41 in 1990 to 284 in the year 2000 (CAL, 2006). Today the Center for Applied Linguistics' two-way immersion directory reports some 338 programs in 29 states across the US, including the District of Columbia. While Spanish/ English programs are by far the most common, there are also eight other languages partnering with English such as Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean, Navajo, Japanese and French.

As decades have passed both one-way foreign language immersion and two-way bilingual immersion models have adapted themselves to better meet the needs of the local school and community contexts they intend to serve. For a discussion of programmatic variations in one-way foreign language immersion, see Chapter 2 by Genesee in this volume, and to read more about two-way immersion program variants, see Lindholm-Leary and Howard's Chapter 9.

Immersion education: A category within dual language education

The dramatic increase in two-way bilingual program numbers during the 1990s was accompanied by a similar increase in program labels. For example, some researchers referred to 'two-way bilingual immersion' or simply 'two-way immersion'; others used identifiers such as 'dual language' or 'dual language immersion.' As anti-bilingual education legislation gained momentum and was adopted by a few states, e.g. California (Proposition 227, in 1998), Arizona (Proposition 203, in 2000) and Massachusetts (2002), the tendency to more systematically replace the term 'bilingual' with less-politically-charged labels such as 'immersion' or 'dual language' grew stronger.

Today, the term 'dual language education' is increasingly used by US and Canadian educators and researchers as a categorical term to differentiate a subgroup of bilingual and immersion programs whose goals, fundamental principles and basic design and implementation features are largely similar. Among the first to name program models that merit the dual language education descriptor, Cloud et al. (2000) include the following three: one-way foreign language immersion, two-way immersion, and developmental or maintenance bilingual. Writing from an international perspective, Swain and Johnson (1997) and Baker (2001) identify these programs as falling in the bilingual education category. Baker (2001: 194) does, however, group these same models together and refer to them as 'strong forms of education for bilingualism and biliteracy.'

According to Cloud et al. (2000), dual language programs support 'enriched education' by adhering to the principle of additive bilingualism and providing content-based instruction through the medium of a second language (L2) for a minimum of 50% of the instructional day preK–5/6 (from prekindergarten to grades 5/6), while offering sufficient schooling support for the continued development of students' first language (L1). Within this book the descriptor 'dual language education' is used in this manner (e.g. see Chapter 2 by Genesee and Chapter 9 by Lindholm-Leary & Howard).

Departing slightly from Cloud et al.'s identification of dual language education models, we argue for the inclusion of indigenous immersion as a fourth stand-alone branch within dual language education. Indigenous immersion programs are dedicated to cultural and linguistic revitalization for Native or Aboriginal groups around the world. Their design and implementation practices meet and in some cases exceed the critical criteria for dual language education outlined above (e.g. preK–12 Hawaiian in the US and preK–12 Maori immersion in New Zealand). In other cases, however, programs struggle to adhere to the defining features outlined below. See, for example, some program models described by Richards and Burnaby in Chapter 11 of this volume. As culture and language revitalization programs intended for entire Native communities, indigenous immersion targets a broader learner spectrum beginning perhaps with preschoolers, or elementary age students and, in certain communities, with adults. Because of the unique needs of these diverse audiences and the profound challenges confronting these programs, some indigenous immersion efforts employ the term 'immersion' to describe culture- and language-driven programs that may at times incorporate more traditional, grammar-based language teaching. This contrasts with the academic content-driven, less analytical immersion model referenced elsewhere in this publication.

Currently immersion programs serving Native students in the US are designated as one-way foreign language or two-way immersion programs depending on the make up of their student population. Linguistically similar to the one-way immersion student audience, one-way indigenous program audiences primarily comprise majority language speakers. However, unlike most one-way foreign language immersion programs, indigenous immersion places significant emphasis on developing student understanding of cultural practices and perspectives for a particular Native group and may withhold the introduction of English until the upper elementary grades or later (Wilson & Kamanå, 2001). Furthermore, in some indigenous immersion programs, English is only taught as a subject and is not used to teach other academic subjects. The same holds true in two-way indigenous immersion settings. Thus, given the expansion and importance of indigenous immersion programs as a means of revitalizing Native language and cultures around the world, we believe these programs merit inclusion under the dual language umbrella. Moreover, given the unique challenges they face and the myriad ways those challenges are addressed in program design and implementation, we believe they belong in a category of their own.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1847690351
• ISBN 13: 9781847690357
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248
• Editor: Tara Williams Fortune, Diane J. Tedick