Language immersion is when a child is taught a foreign language from a very early age. There are different degrees of language immersion, but the traditional language immersion starts at the age of four and continues throughout the entire comprehensive school.
I will be talking about Swedish language immersion, since I have experienced it myself. When the kids start language immersion they are not taught the language in the traditional sense. Instead the kindergarten teachers just start speaking (in my case) Swedish to the kids. The teachers are bilingual so when a kid says something Finnish the teachers understand, but respond in Swedish. First the kids will be a little bit lost, but slowly they start understanding and using Swedish themselves. Surprisingly this is a very painless and a quick way to learn a language.
How I ended up there
Usually the people in language immersion don’t have any ties to that language and are there simply because their parents thought that it might be a good idea.
I ended up there by accident. At the age of four I had two really good friends and their parents had decided for them to start in Swedish immersion - mine hadn’t. This meant that I would have to be in a different group than my friends and I was not okay with that. The stubborn child I was I somehow convinced my parents to transfer me into the same group as them so I ended up in Swedish immersion. And this was the best decision I ever made that I can’t remember making.
How does it actually affects an individual
Language immersion is not the same as growing up in a bilingual family and doesn’t have the same benefits, but it can still benefit you a lot. It is something where you have a language you definitely don’t speak perfectly (unless you have worked hard on using the language outside of school), understand the language very well, might not write it that well, but still remember speaking it as long as you can remember.
It has been proven that learning multiple languages when you are still a kid, benefits you a lot later in life. Language immersion makes this possible for children who don’t come from bilingual families. Personally it helped me learn English much faster and I probably would never even had the courage to apply to the IB if I had’t previously studied using a language that is foreign to me.
Downsides?
Some people claim that language immersion has lots of downsides. The most popular claim is that it can affect negatively learning the student's native tongue. I find this to be completely inaccurate. When comparing my and my former classmates written and spoken skills in Finnish to some students who have studied entirely in Finnish you can’t really see a difference in the results. This can be explained by the fact that the amount of subjects studied in Swedish drops every year resulting in 9th grade being taught 50% in Finnish and us having a lot of Finnish lessons throughout our studies.
In my opinion the only problem is that some people don’t take full advantage of this chance. Swedish immersion students often end up talking Finnish to each other instead of Swedish, since their Finnish is stronger. This means that the students have no one they have casual conversations in Swedish with. Swedish becomes the language you speak with teachers and maybe even avoid using it. It completely depends on the individual if they want to use Swedish actively or not. Unfortunately I know some Swedish immersion students who barely can speak the language simply because of their lack of interest in using the language.
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ReplyDeleteI think this was a good and informative blog post. If I had children and were thinking about putting them into language immersion this post would have helped. You state and explain your points clearly and have personal experiences and insights which in my opinion made this post much more trustworthy and reliable. Also the fact that you discussed both the pros and cons really helps the readers to then form their own opinions of language immersion.
ReplyDeleteThis is a clear and effective post about language immersion - great to read about this from a personal perspective, and you describe your experiences well.
ReplyDeleteFun fact - did you know that a lot of the immersion techniques used in Finland come from Canada?