CANADIAN IMMERSION REVISITED

At the start of this paper, I noted that it was the success of Canadian immersion programs that inspired, at least in part, the movement to start foreign languages early, and to provide all-day immersion experiences. In other words, an early start and massive amounts of exposure were considered by many to be the important factors.

It is clear that immersion has been successful: Students in these programs are far better in the second language than those who do regular foreign language study. But age and amount of exposure are not, in my view, the crucial factors. I hypothesize that the crucial factors are the fact that the methodology is comprehensible input-based and the first language is used in a way that accelerates second language development.

There is good evidence against the hypothesis that age is the crucial factor in immersion: Those who begin immersion programs later, in middle school, eventually catch up to those who do "early total immersion" on most measures of competence (Swain and Lapkin, 1982). Even if this were not so, what is crucial is that late immersion also clearly produces intermediates, students who know enough of the language to improve on their own.

Immersion programs are loaded with comprehensible input: The core of immersion, in fact, is teaching subject matter in a comprehensible way to second language acquirers. In order to ensure comprehensibility, no native speakers are allowed in the classes, and students are allowed to respond in their first language for the first year and a half of the program. Immersion, in fact, was the inspiration for sheltered subject matter teaching.

Successful immersion programs are bilingual programs. They include subject matter teaching and literacy in the first language, and their goal is to develop bilingualism. In addition, in every case reported in the professional literature that goes beyond the earliest school years, students in successful immersion programs were middle class, which means that they had access to a great deal of reading material in the primary language outside of school, and typically developed a reading habit in the primary language. In other words, immersion students had a form of de facto bilingual education (Krashen, 1996).

In other words, immersion succeeds for the same reasons all successful programs succeed.

WHAT ABOUT ACCENT?

As noted earlier, it is true that those who begin second (not foreign) language acquisition tend to acquire native-like accents, but I also suggested that club membership was an important factor. If this is true, what club should our foreign language students join? The good news is that the use of English does not automatically entail loyalty to, or even sympathy with English-speaking countries or native speakers of English. English is now firmly an international language, Star Trek's "standard." The only club EFL students need to join is the club of people who speak English well, citizens of their own country with regular dealings with those from other countries.

WHAT ABOUT WRITING?

In the US, foreign language education has little need to be concerned with writing. For English as a foreign language, the situation is very different. As noted earlier, a large percentage of communications are in English today. Professionals who write in English are expected to write at the native or near- native level.

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