| Immersion teachers need to provide their students
with a structured learning environment that attends
to language development and content-area knowledge development
while consistently using the immersion language. Students
benefit from frequent opportunities to use the immersion
language in the context of teacher use of multisensory
experiences supported by visual aids, gestures and manipulatives.
Successful immersion teachers use predictable instructional
routines and patterned language for transitions. By
developing a variable repertoire of instructional strategies,
teachers can help students understand both language
and content.
Instructional strategies can be broken into four specific
teacher tasks:
- make input comprehensible;
- provide opportunities for language output;
- enhance the comprehensibility of readings; and
- develop a system for providing constructive feedback.
Making Input Comprehensible
Making input comprehensible begins with simplification
of language and using language known as "caretaker
speech" or "foreigner talk" in which
the following are evident: slower speech rate, clear
enunciation, controlled vocabulary/idioms, high frequency
words, controlled sentence length/complexity, and rephrasing
to promote clarity and understanding. While this is
important at the beginning stages of immersion, as immersion
students progress in the language, they need more complex
input so that they develop a full range of language
competency.
Helena Curtain presenting during the
1997 Summer Institute.
Other important strategies to assist input comprehension
include the use of context clues such as body language
and realia. Explicit step-by-step modeling of tasks
allows students to make use of context clues prior to
an activity. Since students may not understand a concept
the first time it is presented, teachers must also build
redundancy into the lessons. Finding student text material
that is developmentally appropriate and interesting
to students is also necessary. Finally, teachers need
to develop a variety of techniques to check student
comprehension. Some suggestions include the use of confirmation
checks (Is this what you're saying?), comprehension
checks (Do you understand what I'm saying?), clarification
requests (What do you mean by that?) and expansions
(restatements, antonyms/synonyms, explanations).
Providing Opportunities for Language Output
Swain (1985) has taken the notion of input one step
farther with her suggestion that students acquire language
most meaningfully when they also have the opportunity
for comprehensible "output." That is, they
need to have a setting in which they are given many
opportunities to produce new forms and to communicate,
as well as settings in which their attempts at communication
are valued and shaped to make them acceptable and understandable.
Students need these opportunities to produce new forms,
so that they can correct and adjust their hypotheses
about the language. Providing opportunities for the
students to produce appropriate language output is currently
one of the major challenges of immersion teaching.
Some recommended teaching strategies for increasing
opportunities for language output include guiding students
from more simple to more complex responses. For example,
one might begin with a question in which the acceptable
student response might be to point, then to answer with
a "yes" or a "no," then a single
word answer to an either/or question, or a single word
answer to a wh- question (who, what, when, where, why,
which), and finally a full sentence answer to an open-ended
question.
Other "output" strategies might include teaching
students prefabricated chunks of language such as in
songs, rhymes, poems and chants. Teachers are often
inclined to do most of the talking in the classroom;
therefore, it is important to focus on allowing students
more opportunities to use the language and extending
wait time to refrain from immediately supplying students
with the answers. Interactive partner and cooperative
learning tasks can also be effectively used to increase
student output.
Enhancing the Comprehensibility of Readings
A third instructional strategy focuses on enhancing
the comprehensibility of readings. Previewing new structures
and vocabulary and helping students make connections
between the new vocabulary/concepts and the old allows
students to draw on their background knowledge to aid
comprehension. Employing techniques such as advance
organizers, story mapping, story grammars and semantic
mapping are also recommended pre-reading strategies.
Taking time to discuss the title and the broader context
of a text including the year and place of publication,
the author, the format, etc. can help students understand
the bigger picture. Based on this wide lens view, students
can begin to formulate questions about the text or make
predictions about the story. Encouraging students to
draw meaning from the pictures in the reading or additional
or related visuals can also help text comprehension.
Following a text in the immersion language with the
text in English may also assist comprehension. Remember
that students enjoy reading what they themselves or
other students have written.
Developing a System for Providing Constructive
Feedback
A common problem in the output of immersion students
is that errors are abundant and constructive feedback,
especially in response to errors, tends to be sporadic
and inconsistent. Swain (1988) attributes this to the
fact that the focus in immersion teaching tends to be
entirely meaning-oriented and does not pay attention
to the form of the message. This problem is exacerbated
by the fact that in the early stages of immersion programs,
immersion teachers are expressly told (McLaughlin, 1989)
that excessive reliance on grammar instruction and error
correction are to be avoided because these techniques
short circuit the learning process. Some recent research
on error correction in immersion contexts has been conducted
by Roy Lyster and colleagues in Canada and will be highlighted
in the next issue of the newsletter.
| The suggestions outlined above are not comprehensive,
many more could certainly be added. Nevertheless,
they offer the immersion teacher a solid overview
of important teacher tasks and instructional strategies
for immersion programs. |
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