Post 110: Case Study of Submersion Method

Post 110: Case Studies to illustrate different Bilingual Programs

Bilingual education is a term that refers to the teaching of academic content in two languages, in a native and second language. Varying amounts of each language are used depending on the outcome goal of the model.

Transitional Bilingual Programs--A student is temporarily in a bilingual program where content area curriculum is first taught in the students' L1 until the students' L2 (English) is proficient enough for him/her to learn academic content in English. In this case, a transitional Bilingual program serves as a remedial program, as a 'fix' to improve student English proficiency. Students in this remedial program feel like outcasts because they are not learning with their monolingual classmates in their grade. This is known as Subtractive Bilingualism where the goal is for the Language Minority Student to lose their L1 in favor of English. 

Submersion model--This is the traditional 'sink' or 'swim' model where the NNS simply learns the monolingual content area without any ESL or Bilingual ED support. When NNS experiences the submersion technique, his L1 is lost and he acquires L2.This is also a Substractive Bilingual method since the goal is for the Language Minority Student to completely lose their L1 in favor of their L2. The goal of the Submersion model is for the Language Minority Student to assimilate to North American society and forget about his/her ancestral language and customs. Submersion model is illegal but schools with very few NNS may use the Submersion model due to lack of funds, lack of students or simply being unaware that the Submersion Model is illegal. Since the first language is lost, this is considered a Subtractive Bilingual Model leading to negative cognitive effects and low grades if students do not get ESL or L1 support.

My parents are Chinese. I spoke Chinese in the home until the age of 6. When I was in kindergarten, I did not understand what the teacher was saying. I learned the alphabet song, learned to count, but did not understand what that meant. However, I was able to understand what the other kids were saying in English. I remember one little girl told me her favorite activity in kindergarten was to throw spitballs. She used to know how to throw spitballs at kids she did not like. I also remember kids daring each other to look up under the teacher's skirt to see what color underwear she was wearing. 

When I entered first grade, the teacher would talk much harder English that I could not follow. It was a teacher-centered classroom. She would point to the board and want us to copy down whatever she wrote on the board. She never wanted us to speak or talk, which was fine with me since I had no idea what she was saying in English anyway. I also did not understand what she was writing on the board. So I spent my class time looking away from the board and making faces at the other students. All I could understand in English was what the kids said. Everything else, I understood in Chinese.

Because I never participated in class or talked to the teacher like the other kids, the teacher thought I was mentally challenged. She sent me to do many IQ tests, speech tests, and the like. I remember being tested on being able to put a square into a square, match numbers and letters of things that look alike or don't look alike. I thought these tests were fun because they were super easy. I also liked the idea of getting out of a boring class I did not understand. 

When the parent-teacher conference came around, my teacher expressed her worries that I may be mentally challenged and delayed. Instead of sitting quietly, I ran around and played and talked constantly in Chinese to my mother. My teacher was surprised I could even speak and quickly realized that I was not mentally challenged, but instead, I simply did not speak English!

The teacher then told my mother to speak to me in English at home from now on which is what my mother did. In a few months, I learned English. In my day, there were no ESL teachers, no ESL programs, no bilingual programs, at least not in first grade. I had to learn my lessons in English in a mainstream regular classroom.  If my first grade teacher had not realized I had language problems, I would probably have been sent to Special Ed. 

So not having an ESL program in place or a specially trained person in 2nd language acquisition can cause some ELL students to be incorrectly placed in Special Ed. Luckily for me, my teacher did realize I had language problems and told my mother to speak English to me at home. I will come back to this story another time to discuss how I lost my Chinese  once my mother reverted to English in the home.

I went through elementary school learning an English only curriculum in a mainstream classroom because our school did not have an ESL program or a bilingual program for first graders. However, our elementary school did have a foreign language program to help us learn French or Spanish starting in 4th grade. I will talk about FLES ( Foreign Language in Elementary Schools) in another blog post.

I went through the Submersion method of learning English as I transitioned from knowing only Chinese and understanding only Chinese adult talk to English teacher talk by having my parents speak to me in English at home. My English immersion took place in the home and at school. I never had any ESL or bilingual lessons because Bilingual Ed was not established until after I was in elementary school.  As I said before, I was lucky not to have been placed in Special Ed simply because my teacher finally realized I just needed more English at home.  I will talk about how many ELL students are placed inappropriately in Special Ed because many teachers do not realize that some students do not understand the lesson, not because of cognitive difficulties, but because of language difficulties in another blog post.

Do you think the Submersion method is an effective way for ELL to learn English fast? Do you think English Only is the fast way for ELL to learn English?