02.08.11

Language Acquisition and Language Learning at ISI

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY IMMERSION?

• In an immersion program, teachers teach a significant part of the normal school curriculum in the target (foreign) language.
• This allows students to ‘acquire’ the new language almost effortlessly, and at the same time, develop the full range of academic skills normally expected.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY ‘BILINGUAL’?

• When used loosely, people associate this term with almost perfect proficiency in two languages.
• In linguistics, the term can be used for any appreciable level of proficiency in more than one language.  Used in this sense, the majority of the world’s population is bilingual.
• When a school talks about educating children bilingually, there is a commitment to achieving high levels of proficiency in two or more languages.
• Upon graduation, for example, a student might be capable of studying at college level in either of two (or even more) languages. In practice ambilingual (equally proficient in two or more languages) people are quite rare.
• Most people who we would describe as bilingual will probably have a preferred and slightly stronger language, but will still be very proficient in other languages.

ISN’T BILINGUALISM HARMFUL?

• No.  Studies suggest that the brain is outstandingly predisposed to learning several languages simultaneously or successively without mixing them up.
• Bilingual people tend to be ‘smarter’, not necessarily as measured on IQ tests, but in the way they approach new situations.  They have a greater repertoire of critical thinking skills and strategies to address challenges.
• There is research evidence that bilingualism helps keep the brain alert and slows down the onset of brain deterioration in old age.

WHY DO YOU OFTEN USE THE WORD ‘ACQUISITION’ INSTEAD OF ‘LEARNING’?

• ‘Learning’ is better used to describe the typical classroom situation in schools and night classes around the world, where students get a few hours a week of teaching of the target (foreign) language.  There’s a high chance that the teacher will not be a native speaker, and will spend much of the lesson explaining in the students’ first language rather than communicating in the target language.
• To be a successful learner in these types of lessons you need to have a very analytical brain and work in a very disciplined way.  Even so, you may end up knowing a lot of grammatical rules, and be very good at talking about the language, but you may not actually speak the language very well.  The teacher may measure your progress by giving you grammar and vocabulary tests, rather than by getting you to use the language for real communication.  (This might sound familiar to many of us from our own school days.)

• ‘Acquisition’ describes the perfectly natural way that we learn our own first language.  Typically, parents do not teach their small children grammar; they do not teach their children lists of vocabulary; they rarely correct their small child’s language, unless the child is saying something that is factually wrong.  In spite of this lack of specific teaching, all small children master their own mother tongue at remarkable speed.
• Small children make rather predictable errors as they start to use their mother tongue, but automatically self-correct as they continue to recognize patterns in the language and build proficiency naturally.
• Immersion programs make use of the brain’s natural capacity to learn languages in much the same way as we learn our mother tongue.
• Many factors are involved, but the key one is: we acquire language when the focus is on meaning (and not on grammatical form).

SHOULDN’T CHILDREN MASTER THEIR MOTHER TONGUE BEFORE THEY LEARN A NEW ONE?

• No.  It is not necessary to postpone starting additional languages.  The children will still develop their mother tongue as long as they receive regular input, for example from their parents and family, if it is not one of the languages taught at school.
• However, we do need to distinguish between spoken and written language.  Even children with quite severe learning difficulties can develop oral (spoken) fluency in multiple languages.  Literacy skills, however, as in reading and writing, require higher order analytical capability.
• When we use the word ‘master’ we need to be specific.  Realistically, we only master literacy in our own language after many years of school-based teaching.

WHAT CAN I EXPECT TO SEE IN MY CHILD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE IMMERSION PROCESS?

• Children who are especially confident and extrovert might try using the new language immediately, and be very proud of showing off new words and phrases.
• Most children, however, may appear unable or reluctant to use the new language.
• The brain naturally goes through a ‘silent period’ at the beginning of the acquisition process.  The child may appear to be inactive, and not participating, but there is in fact a lot of activity going on within the brain.  Think of it as an essential period of incubation.
• It is important to recognize and respect this silent period, which can last many months in some cases.  There will be no particular advantage in trying to force the child to speak, and in fact we may do more harm than good.
• In the early stages of language acquisition a child will understand far more than he or she can say or write.  In other words perception or understanding is always far in advance of production, or active use of the language.

WILL MY CHILD EXPERIENCE A FORM OF ‘CULTURE SHOCK’?

• Yes, he/she might.  People are familiar with the term ‘culture shock’ when we go to live in a new country.  The symptoms of culture shock can be very subtle, and are easily confused with other issues.  In many ways, entering a language immersion program will involve some level of culture shock, but also ‘language shock’.
• Add to this all the challenges of entering a new school, and fitting in with a new group of children.  All these factors bundled into the first few weeks can have quite a drastic effect on the child’s psyche. The child can appear sad, angry, unsettled or moody.
• The good news is that these symptoms are normal and temporary, our teachers and counselors are skilled in dealing with them, and our children emerge from the experience greatly strengthened in many ways.

SHOULD I TRY TO SPEAK THE TARGET LANGUAGE AT HOME WITH MY CHILD?

• No!  One of the most precious things you can give your children is a strong foundation in their mother tongue.  Keep using your mother tongue as normal, and ensure that the child has as much authentic exposure to the mother tongue as possible.
• If your home language is not one of the school’s languages, this may mean making an extra effort to find suitable children’s books, DVD’s, recordings and so on, and extra efforts to keep in touch with the wider family by letters, cards, email, telephone, webcam and so on, so that the child continues to develop both spoken language and literacy in the mother tongue.
• Occasionally in a family the mother speaks one language and the father speaks another.  The situation will vary from case to case, but the best advice is that both parents should use their own language with the child.
• The child’s brain is perfectly capable of acquiring several languages at the same time.  Do not be upset if the child is reluctant to use the target language with you.
• Languages have strong emotional ties, and it may just not feel right for the child to speak to you in French or Spanish or Mandarin, if this is not the language you normally use.

WON’T MY CHILD BE BEHIND OTHER LOCAL CHILDREN IF SHE IS EDUCATED IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE LIKE THIS?

• A lot of schools that offer immersion programs like ISI observe that the youngest students in these programs may score below other monolingual English-speaking students that take the same standardized test in or around Grades 2 and 3.
• However, most schools also report that by around fifth grade the immersion students catch up and begin to outperform their peers.
• There are several reasons for these observations.  Firstly, standardized tests are designed to measure apples with apples, and are calibrated for the most part on children being educated in the national system entirely in English, and following a math curriculum in a specific order.  Such tests can be a hurdle for children who have not been educated in English up to that point, and are not particularly helpful in measuring any additional skills that children in immersion programs such as ISI’s are acquiring. Secondly, there may indeed be some temporary delay in the development of certain academic concepts caused by having to learn the actual language of instruction at the same time as learning the academic content. Thirdly, studies frequently show that many children being educated bilingually will derive a significant academic advantage over and beyond their monolingual peers, and that this becomes evident in the later elementary grades.
• We also need to keep a sense of perspective.  The OECD (Organization for Economic Development) conducts international comparisons of student achievement, and consistently lists Finland’s 15-year-old school students as the top achievers in literacy, math and science.  However, Finnish children do not begin formal schooling until the age of 7.
• This should tell us not to attach too much importance to early standardized testing.  It also teaches us that education today is about being globally competitive, and not simply keeping up with or outperforming the neighbor’s children.
• Parents need a long term perspective and a long term commitment to bilingual education. Ultimately it is far more powerful than a monolingual education.

MY 3RD GRADER SEEMS PRETTY FLUENT IN FRENCH NOW.  WOULDN’T THIS BE A GOOD TIME TO PUT HER BACK INTO THE LOCAL SCHOOL SYSTEM?

• No. It’s easy to mistake this level of fluency for something much deeper.
• Jim Cummins, a highly respected Canadian researcher who conducts research into the Canadian French and English immersion programs, talks about the difference between BICS and CALP.  BICS are basic interpersonal communication skills.  Typically these come quite easily and fairly rapidly.
• CALP is a much deeper cognitive academic language proficiency. For the child to be able to use any language for a sophisticated purpose in her future career she needs CALP.
• This only comes after quite a few more years developing the kinds of skills involved when you are learning science, humanities, math etc in the target language and dealing with challenging, abstract topics.
• Parents who move a child out of immersion before the CALP process is well established will almost certainly waste the early progress the child has made in the target language, even if they employ a tutor to work with the child at home, and they risk placing the child in a situation where the receiving school may not value previous immersion learning.

This entry was written by Alastair Kay, filed under Academics - Lower School. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.