Student Language Use In a One-Way Mandarin Immersion Classroom

Abstract

This research describes language use by four first-grade students during mathematics and Language Arts instruction in a one-way 50/50 Mandarin immersion classroom. The urban public school was situated in the heart of an African-American community in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Participants were video- and audio- recorded while wearing lapel microphones for 56–75 minutes per week for five weeks, followed by a semi-structured focus group interview. A total of 3,090 speech turns were coded and analysed under five categories: number of speech turns, vocabulary, grammar, linguistic functions, and other themes that emerged from the interview. Overall, students used Mandarin 61% of the time. Data indicated that multiple factors may impact student target language use, including motivation, learning strategies, social identity, linguistic background and pedagogy. Implications for changes in immersion curriculum and instruction, as well as calls for future research on trilingual education are shared.

The role of technology in language immersion: a systematic literature review

“…With the myriad benefits offered and the parents' wishes, responsible stakeholders need to consider many different aspects that can support language immersion success as shown in Table 1. Highly intensive daily contact and interaction [3], [8], [19], [31] Integrating language majority and minority learners in two-way immersion [14] An equitable language environment [32]- [35] Language input and output [3], [15], [36], [37] Enjoyable learning environment [22] Teacher Knowledge [38], [39] Instructional skills [22], [39], [40] Language and content integration [25], [39], [41] Pedagogical planning and practice [22], [38], [39], [41], [42] Teaching material [39], [43] Language skills [39], [ [10], [48] First of all, the advantages that language immersion offers to language learners come because language immersion provides highly intensive daily contact with the target language in various situations, including academic and everyday communication [8]. Intensive contact and communication with the target language from the surrounding environment can also provide input to participants regarding language use and then train them to construct, remake, and apply the target language to their interaction [37] This intensity is an important aspect of language immersion because intensive communication, although not fluent, can improve the quality of interactions, lead to stronger relationships and enable them to gain knowledge of the target language and a more authentic and rich experience [31].…”

“…Other language immersion variants are total, partial, and two-way immersion [5]. These diverse language immersion variants have widely implemented and brought positive impact to language learners, be it the aspect of linguistic [7] and cognitive [8], [9], language use [10] and proficiency [11], [12], phonological awareness [13], faster language development [14] in a shorter time and better result [2], provides a unique contribution to receptive and expressive language skills [15], multilingual attitude [16], multicultural identity [17], [18], and intercultural competence [19].…”