by T. Navés tnaves@ub.edu www.ub.edu/GRAL/Naves How Successful are CLIL, Content-based, Bilingual Education and Immersion Programmes? Summary of findings from Spada & Lightbown(2002) and Navés (2002, 2009) by T. Navés tnaves@ub.edu www.ub.edu/GRAL/Naves

How Successful are Immersion Programmes? How Successful are Content-based Programmes? How Successful are Bilingual Education Programmes? How Successful are CLIL Programmes?

I. IMMERSION / BE / CONTENT-BASED IN CANADA & USA Selection of edited excerpts from Spada and Lightbown (2002) and Navés (2002, 2009) Spada, N., & Lightbown, P. M. (2002). L1 and L2 in the education of Inuit children in Northern Quebec: Students’ abilities and teachers’ perceptions. Language and Education, 16(3), 212-241. Navés, T. (2002) Successful CLIL Programmes in Navés, Muñoz, C., & Pavesi, M. (2002). Content and Language Integrated Learning for Second Language Aquisition. A training manual. In D. Marsh & G. Langé (Eds.), Foundation Course for Content and Language Integrated Learning Instructors Navés, T. (2009). Effective Content and Language Integrated Programmes. Y. Ruiz de Zarobe. Second Language Acquistion and CLIL. Clevedon, Multilingual Matters.

The goals and degree of success of CLIL –as an umbrella term-- programmes vary a great deal. Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is not new. In recent years, however, integrating the teaching of languages with the teaching of academic subject matter has become more and more popular all over the world. The programme goals vary a great deal as does the degree of success achieved. Source: Navés (2009)

Canada: Immersion, US: BE and content-based; Europe & Asia: CLIL In Canada, English and French have been the target languages of French and English speaking communities respectively. In Quebec for example, English speakers in some schools have been taught almost the entire curriculum in French. In the US, with a multilingual population, the main concern has been to guarantee that all school children can fully function in English, specially, in academic contexts. Because of the increase of students from abroad in North-American universities, content-based programmes have been more and more widely used to help these students cope with the demands of academic objectives. In Europe and Asia, most of the programmes are designed to improve the learning of foreign languages. Source: Navés (2009)

Canadian Immersion programmes: the most successful language learning programmes Canadian Immersion Programmes are by far the most highly acclaimed language learning programmes. SLA researchers, teachers and parents fully agree that the immersion programmes in Canada have been extremely efficient and successful. (Swain, 2000; Swain & Lapkin, 1982). Source: Navés (2009)

Early, delayed and late immersion Early immersion begins right at the start of schooling in kindergarten or grade 1, while delayed immersion does not begin until the middle years of elementary school (ages 9-10), and late immersion after that (ages 11-14). An important difference between early and delayed or late-immersion programmes is that training in second-language literacy precedes training in first-language literacy in early immersion (Canadian Council on Learning, 2007) Source: Navés (2009)

French immersion programmes In total French immersion, all classes are taught in French, usually for the first three years of the programme. English-language arts classes are introduced in the fourth grade, followed by a gradual increase in English instruction for other subjects. In partial French-immersion programmes, a varying proportion of classes (usually 50%) are taught in French. This proportion typically remains stable throughout the programme. (Canadian Council on Learning, 2007) Source: Navés (2009)

4 Genaralizations from immersion programmes First, in order to obtain expected levels of achievement in the subjects taught via the second language, ‘threshold levels’ of L2 skills need to be reached Second, while early total immersion students consistently performed as well as their unilingual, English-instructed peers on content-subject tests, early partial immersion students did not. Source: Navés (2009)

4 Genaralizations from immersion programmes Third, although the early total immersion programme was considered to be the one which would most threaten the development of first language skills, results of empirical research show that this is not the case. In the short run, after just two or three years, immersion students lag behind their non-immersion peers in some aspects of English. After that, however, immersion children perform as well as, or better than, their English-educated peers in all aspects of English language skills [in the long run]. Source: Navés (2009)

4 Genaralizations from immersion programmes Fourth, in general, early and late French immersion students have similar levels of writing skills in French, with both groups performing less well than their francophone peers. Immersion weaknesses clearly relate to deficits in their grammatical competence and vocabulary knowledge, rather than to discourse aspects of performance. Speaking is the weakest of the four skill areas for immersion students. Source: Navés (2009)

US: CBI & BE In the US, the integration of content and language has a long tradition both in what is usually known as Content-Based Instruction (CBI) and in Bilingual Education Programmes (BE). Although Bilingual Education programmes are still controversial for politicians and the media, when properly implemented, research has clearly shown that they are at least as efficient as non-bilingual programmes, if not more so. Source: Navés (2009)

US: CBI & BE Willig’s (1985) meta-analysis indicated that bilingual education programmes significantly enhanced academic achievement in comparison with English instructional programmes. In general, research in the US shows that bilingual education, when well implemented, is the most effective way to enable speakers of languages other than English to learn both English and academic subjects (Cummins, 1984; García, forthcoming; Krashen, 1991, 1997; Swain & Lapkin, 1982) Source: Navés (2009)

US: CBI & BE Thomas and Collier (1997) conclude that at the elementary level two-way bilingual education is the best programme because students develop academic and second language proficiency as well as cognitive understanding through their first language. These advantages are not evident until the sixth grade. Students who are in educational programmes that provide extended instruction in their native language outperform students who only receive short-term instruction in their native language (Genesee et al., 2006). Source: Navés (2009)

EUROPE: CLIL The European Commission’s (2005) report on foreign language teaching and learning claims that an excellent way of making progress in a foreign language is “to use it for a purpose, so that the language becomes a tool rather than an end in itself.” (p. 9). The European Commission, has funded research projects across Europe investigating the use of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) since the early-90s, pulling together the threads of existing approaches such as 'content-based instruction', 'immersion', and 'bilingual education'. All the aforementioned terms were replaced by CLIL, which was launched by UNICOM in 1996. Source: Navés (2009)

CBI and Immersion are the best ways to learn L2 A number of theorists have argued that teaching subject matter in a second language is the best possible way to encourage second language acquisition. It is claimed that using the L2 to teach subject matter is more effective than teaching the language directly, treating the L2 itself as the subject matter (Krashen, 1982). French immersion programmes in Canada are based on this assumption (Genesee, 1987). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Immersion has been very successful Immersion education has been widely implemented across Canada and there are a number of successful experiments with this form of schooling in the United States and in some other parts of the world (Genesee, 1987; Johnson & Swain,1997; Met, 1994; Snow et al., 1989). As an educational programme for speakers of a majority or prestige language who wish to learn a second language better than they would in ‘foreign language’ classes, immersion education has been very successful (Stern, 1984). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Limitations to L2 learning in immersion: more focus on form/s needed However, the question of whether immersion, especially ‘early’ immersion, is the best model for students in all sociocultural and educational settings has not been satisfactorily answered. Some researchers have found that there are limitations to L2 learning through subject matter teaching alone and have suggested that more direct L2 instruction needs to complement the subject matter teaching (Harley, 1989; Lyster, 1994; Swain, 1988). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Limitations (2) complex subject matter In addition, some educators and researchers have expressed concern about how well students can cope with complex subject matter taught in a language they do not yet know well (Cummins & Swain, 1986). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Immersion is most successful for MIDDLE CLASS stds from MAJORITY lang backgrounds It has been argued that subject matter learning in immersion is most successful for middle-class students from majority or prestige language backgrounds. Such students usually bring to the immersion experience a strong foundation from literacy-oriented activities in their L1 and have access to continuing educational opportunities in their L1 (Cummins, 1991;Heath, 1982; Hudelson, 1987). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

L2 use for social interaction much faster than native-like L2 academic competence (BISC vs CALP) Researchers have observed that students in transitional bilingual education programmes may quickly learn to use the L2 for social interaction when they are exposed to the L2 in the environment and in school. However, despite this growth in conversational fluency, it can take many years for them to reach native-speaker age-appropriate levels of functioning in a second language at school. Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

5-10 years for immigrant stds to catch up with NS in academic language abilities (CALP) Collier’s (1987; 1989) research among middle-class immigrant students taught exclusively through English led her to suggest that a period of five to 10 years was required for students to catch up with their native-speaking peers in terms of their academic language abilities Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Late-exit > Early-exit BE programmes In a large-scale evaluation of bilingual education programmes in the United States, the developmental progress of Spanish (L1) and English (L2) in Spanish-speaking children provided support for this claim. While Grade 3 Spanish-speaking students in English-only/ early-exit bilingual education programmes were far from grade norms in English academic achievement, Grade 6 students in late-exit bilingual programmes were beginning to approach grade norms (Ramirez et al., 1991) Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Oral proficiency 3-5 years Academic proficiency 4-7 years Similarly, in an analysis of data from two California school districts considered to be the most successful in teaching English to limited English proficient students, Hakuta and his colleagues (Hakuta et al., 2000) showed that while oral proficiency takes three to five years to develop, academic English proficiency can take four to seven years. Similar findings have been reported for Finnish immigrant children in Sweden (Skutnabb-Kangas & Toukomaa, 1976), for immigrant children in English-speaking Canadian schools (Cummins, 1981) and elsewhere. Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Cummins: BISC vs CALP Cummins’s (1979) distinction between ‘basic interpersonal communication skills’ (BICS) and ‘cognitive academic language proficiency’ (CALP) was developed in an effort: to draw educators’ attention to these data and to warn against premature exit of ELL [English language learning] students (in the United States) from bilingual to mainstream English-only programs on the basis of attainment of surface level fluency in English. In other words, the distinction highlighted the fact that educators’ conflating of these aspects of proficiency was a major factor in the creation of academic difficulties for bilingual students. (Cummins, 2000: 58) Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Academic contexts: cognitively demaning and context reduced Social contexts: cognitively undemanding & context embedded Teachers may assume that when learners have acquired BICS, they also have CALP.2 However, students who can successfully engage in social conversation may be far less able to understand or produce language in cognitively demanding and context-reduced situations. That is, their language skills may be adequate for predictable conversations, where much of what is said can be guessed from the context or fromprior experience. In more cognitively demanding situations, however, where the information being conveyed is new and complex, where meaning cannot be guessed from the context, and where the language that carries the new information is not perfectly mastered, students may experience a sort of ‘overload’. The language which carries the complex informationmay also be complex (e.g. the writing style of science texts or ‘word problems’ in mathematics). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Pedagogical interventions One way of reducing the difficulty for L2 learners who are learning language through content is to provide them with the contextual and linguistic supports to deal with the cognitive demands. Gibbons (1995) describes how this was accomplished in a three-stage sequence used in L2 science classes in Australia. The three stages (i.e. small groupwork, teacher-guided reporting and journalwriting) enabled the students successfully to manage the content by gradually moving from contextualised and less cognitively demanding tasks to decontextualised and more cognitively demanding tasks. Such pedagogical approaches are not always practised,however. Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Pedagogical interventions: TBL Such pedagogical approaches are not always practised, however. In a study of the instructional task sequences in Grade 6 and7 classes taught in English to Inuktitut L1 students in Northern Quebec, Mackay (1992) observedthat theGrade 7 teachers began their teaching with complex tasks and then moved to less complex tasks.3 It was further observed that this task sequence was almost always due to the fact that the students were not able to manage the initial task successfully. As a result, students were not being stimulated or challenged academically as they engaged in only cognitively undemanding tasks. Such a practice may ‘unintentionally trap students into a learning environment which may permanently deprive them of the opportunity for developing the proficiency and skills they need to enjoy academic success’ (Mackay, 1992: 162–3). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

Findings While most majority language children in immersion education are likely to develop academic proficiency in their L1 as well as in their L2, in transitional bilingual education settings, there is often evidence that children fail to develop academic proficiency in either language. Conversational L1 skills may be maintained in the absence of L1 schooling, but high-level literacy skills usually are not developed (Taylor et al., 2000; Wright et al., 2000). Furthermore, after years of education in their L2, many children in transitional bilingual programmes have not developed academic proficiency in the L2 either. This is by no means a universal finding. Students in transitional bilingual education programmes in which sufficient support is given to both languages may acquire CALP in their L1 as well as their L2 (Thomas & Collier, 1995). Source: Spada and Lightbown (2002)

RATIONALE FOR CLIL Most of the arguments in favour of CLIL come from SLA research and show that CLIL (a) creates conditions for naturalistic language learning, (b) provides a purpose for language use in the classroom, (c) has a positive effect on language learning by putting the emphasis on meaning rather than on form and (d) drastically increases the amount of exposure to the target language (Dalton-Puffer, 2007; Dalton-Puffer & Smit, 2007; Navés, 2002). Source: Navés (2009)

Moltes gràcies Thank you very much Muchas gracias Source: Navés (2009)

References cited Genesee, F. (1987) Learning Through Two Languages: Studies of Immersion and Bilingual Education.Cambridge, MA: Newbury House. Johnson, K. and Swain, M. (1997) Immersion Education: International Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krashen, S. (1982) Principles and Practice in Second LanguageAcquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Met,M. (1994)Teaching content through a second language. In F. Genesee (ed.) Educating Second Language Children: The Whole Child, the Whole Curriculum, the Whole Community (pp. 151–182). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snow,M.A., Met, M. and Genesee, F. (1989) A conceptual framework for the integration of language and content in second/foreign language programs. TESOL Quarterly 23, 201–17