Immersion Education
by Jon Reyhner
The National Foreign Language Center at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa sponsored a symposium and workshop on advancing language immersion education focusing on Pacific perspectives and international applications during July 1998. Workshop instructors included Helena Curtain of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Makalapua Ka'awa of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, and Timoti Karetu, Maori Language Commissioner in New Zealand.
The purpose of the symposium held from July 6 to 10 was to "facilitate the sharing of resources, ideas, and information about all aspects of language immersion education." Over 80 participants from Australia, Canada, China, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States shared ideas about language policy, teaching methods, curriculum development, and assessment. Speakers described foreign language immersion programs teaching English, French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese and mother tongue immersion programs teaching indigenous languages, including Hawaiian, Maori, and Arapaho.
The two-week workshop with 20 participants that followed the symposium had four modules: pedagogy, culture, technology, and materials development. Participants were indigenous, heritage, and foreign language teachers either currently teaching in immersion programs or interested in starting one. They selected and developed "projects to prepare them to meet the challenges of language immersion education and share resources and information with colleagues."
Immersion has proven an effective successor to previous language teaching approaches of traditional grammar translation methods, the audiolingual methods of the 1960s, and communicative methods of the 1970s. The central characteristic of immersion is the teaching of language, content, and culture in combination without the use of the child's first language. Students are taught a second language they initially don't understand through the use of a variety of context clues provided by the teacher. Three hundred thousand students are in immersion classrooms today in the United States. Test scores show that immersion students learn the same academic content as students in English-Only classrooms along with a second language. Immersion students as they proceed together through the grades also develop a strong sense of camaraderie and often form a "values community" that reflects the positive aspects of the language and culture that they are learning.
Immersion language teachers provide ideally at least half-day (partial) immersion for students in the language they are targeted to learn and often students receive full-day (total) immersion. The less students are likely to be exposed to a new language outside of school the more they need to experience a second language in school. The pervasiveness in the broader community of the two languages is also a factor. The lesser the use of a language outside of school the more it needs to be supported in school. In fact, high prestige languages that are omnipresent in the community and especially in the media, such as English, will be learned even if they receive no support in the school.
Math and science are typical content subjects taught through immersion in the primary grades as they are best taught through the use of manipulatives and hands-on activities. In higher grades there is often less time spent in second language immersion and the subject taught is often social studies because of the difficulty of obtaining appropriate textbooks for higher level subjects.
Indigenous mother tongue immersion and foreign or second language immersion differ in terms of the commitment to culturally transforming the student. Mother tongue immersion seeks to transmit the children's indigenous culture while foreign language immersion seeks to create an understanding and appreciation of the culture of the new language.
The Maori and Hawaiian mother tongue language immersion programs are well developed. The Maori began with preschools, their kohanga reo, in 1982. The main tenets of the kohanga reo are that Maori is the sole language to be spoken and heard, no smoking is allowed in the environs, they are to be kept scrupulously clean in the interest of the health, and decisions are the prerogative of the parents who have children in the kohanga along with the care-givers.
Under pressure from parents who wanted their children's Maori education continued in the public schools, the New Zealand government established Maori immersion schools. Three Maori immersion classes have graduated from high school, and there are now five total-immersion high schools. Timoti Karetu, now the Maori language commissioner, was impressed by a visit to Navajo Community College, now Diné College, in 1976 and subsequently helped move his university to offer Maori immersion teacher training.
Learning, from the Maori example, the Hawaiian language immersion program began with family-based preschools in 1983 and in the public schools in 1987 after Hawai'i 's English-Only law for schools was changed. A parent described to me his involvement in his child's Punano Leo, "This is a way of life . . . you have to take it home." He described to me how the Hawaiian immersion brings back the moral values of the culture and how the culture mends families. The English translation of the Punana Leo mission statement reads:
The Punana Leo movement grew out of a dream that there be reestablished throughout Hawai'i the mana of a living Hawaiian language from the depths of our origins. The Punana Leo family initiates, provides for, and nurtures various Hawaiian language environments. Our families are the living essence of these environments, and we find our strength in our spirituality, love of our language, love of our people, and love of knowledge.
There are now ten preschools and 14 schools with immersion classes in Hawai'i. The first immersion cohort will graduate from high school next year, and the University of Hawai'i at Hilo has just begun a Hawaiian immersion teacher-training program to staff new immersion schools. Indigenous mother tongue immersion is in its infancy in the United States, relegated to preschool and primary examples such as the Arapaho language immersion program on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.
Indigenous mother tongue immersion programs are voluntary and require parent involvement. In Hawai'i parents are required to help in the preschools eight hours per month and to take classes in Hawaiian so they can support the instruction given in the schools. A non-profit corporation supports the preschools, provides post-secondary scholarships for the study of Hawaiian, and develops Hawaiian language curriculum and materials for use in the schools.
Many immersion teachers have learned the language they are teaching as a second language, and their speaking ability can be criticized. One indigenous language teacher noted "I don't speak like my grandmother, but I speak the language of my grandmother." Another teacher commented that we need to "Get beyond the notion you can only be smart in English." Sample web-based projects from the summer workshop can be accessed on the Internet at http://www.lll.hawaii.edu/nflrc/