Immersion - Final Reflections

I was inspired by the idea of immersion years ago when I saw what was accomplished by a young Chinese student of mine. I was teaching an advanced composition course (ESL 91) and the student had been placed into a low intermediate class (ESL 332). He refused to accept his placement and by student insistence was allowed to enroll in my composition course.

He put into practice what Kato Lomb (see Aug 16 entry) suggested determined learners do: he signed up for a course far above his actual ability.

How did he do? He turned out to be the only student to receive an "A" in that course that semester.

Here's what he did:

• He refused to speak Chinese during the day. He avoided his Chinese classmates. He stayed at school, studying in the library or participating in campus activities, away from his Chinese family, all day every day. He spent every day immersed in English.
• He wrote an essay in English every single day.
• He came to every single office hour I had to talk about his essays.
• He walked around with an ever-present smile on his face, always seeming happy and friendly, endlessly seeking chances for interaction with native speakers.

This was self-imposed immersion. It worked extremely well for him.

Of course, he was unique (at our college at least) in that he didn't have to work or take care of a family, and as a newcomer he didn't have relationships with Chinese friends that he needed to maintain. He had the luxury to spend all day doing nothing but learn English.

I, too, would be in Korea with no work or family or relationship responsibilities, with the same luxury. What a chance for me to try out immersion.

In the end I was not as dedicated or as successful as my Chinese student, but I did do more than the minimum 10 hours a week of immersion activities I had imposed upon myself for the sabbatical, I did make progress, and I did come up with some conclusions about immersion:

• The time spent in immersion activities - in studying and listening and reading and conversing and practicing in every way we can think of - is when the real language learning takes place - even more than in the classroom. Of course, if the class is conducted completely in the target language, as it was at the Yonsei Korean Language Institute, that is immersion too, but even that is not as good as practicing out in the real world or at home with one's own material at one's own pace. In the class the teacher is in control, and the student's whole attention is focused on pleasing the teacher and meeting her expectations. Outside of class, trying to apply what was learned, the learning feels more personal and memorable. As teachers, we should remember that the work we assign (or inspire!) students to do on their own outside of class is probably more important than anything we say or do in class. It is hard for teachers to release control; we think that as long as we are explaining or illustrating language, we ensure student learning in a way we can't when we release students to learn or practice on their own. We don't know what students are learning out on their own - but the students do, and that's what really counts.

• Finding good immersion activities as a beginner in the language is not that easy! If only I could learn as a baby does, with someone beside me all the time to name the things that I see around me, and repeat those names with exaggerated pronunciation and intonation, and hug me every time I say something right, or cute or interesting. And everything I tried to say would be interesting to that loving person! Alas, such is not to be found. As a beginner, I found it is somewhat difficult to find and sustain immersion opportunities. Finding someone willing to converse is hard. Keeping a conversation going for a long period of time is hard. Effective listening and reading can only be done with simplified materials or extensive use of subtitles and dictionaries, which waters down the "immersion" aspect (not using the native language). Fatigue sets in more quickly as the need to concentrate is so intense at the beginning stages. I think I could not succeed in my immersion practice as well as the Chinese student in part because my Korean was so much more elementary than his English. With that in mind...

• How valuable a language lab would have been for me!! How lucky the ESL students at San Jose City College are! Yonsei Korean Language Institute does not have a language lab. De Anza College does not have a Korean language lab. Adroit College does not have a language lab. There were audio CDs to go with our textbooks at all these schools, which certainly helped, but no aids beyond that. Few teacher office hours. No tutors. No workshops. No supplementary software. No video programs. No conversation groups. I have a new appreciation for what our ESL language lab at SJCC offers students, especially beginning students who have limited opportunities for immersion in the "real world." As I return to teaching at SJCC, I will certainly be emphasizing the extensive opportunities students have for practice in our ESL lab.

• The best immersion activities are those chosen by the students themselves. I think this is something that we teachers in some ways have to resign ourselves to. We cannot control everything in our students' learning. Even though we know the value of immersion activities, we cannot "force" good immersion activities onto students. So much of the success of language learning comes from the students' own internal motivation and analysis of what they need and want to do with the language. A teacher might, for example, design an assignment where students call a movie theater to get information about movie show times. A real-life "immersion" activity. What a great assignment for a student who will really go and see a movie. But for the student with no interest in seeing movies, this activity will be much less memorable and useful. How about assigning students a choice of what business to call? Or a choice to either call or visit a business? Give students a chance to make the assignment as relevant as possible. This again shows the value of the SJCC language lab program, where students are free to choose their activities from among a suggested list. There is currently pressure at the college to require a specific curriculum for each lab course. Our language lab coordinator is resisting this, and I support her. It is fine to have a suggested curriculum, perhaps the best choice for the unmotivated and uninspired student, but once we make it required, and take away choice, we will be limiting the stronger language learners.

• Being required to document immersion activities is not very productive. It is good to think consciously of one's learning activities and reflect on what is useful and not. It is even useful to put this in writing; that forces the thought process to take place. But being required to record every immersion activity, as I have required my students to do in the past and required myself to do for this sabbatical project, has proven to me to be unpleasant overkill. When I required immersion logs from my previous students, it was sometimes like pulling teeth, and now I know why. The effort to remember and record activities each day becomes repetitious and onerous and does not in itself seem to contribute to learning. Often I suspected my students wrote down immersion activities that they never did - or did immersion activities that they never wrote down, as I often did. Students who want to immerse will do it regardless of the log, and students who don't or can't won't (but can easily fabricate a log). In teaching I suspect that indirect suggestion rather than direct assignment is a better way to inspire immersion. Make suggestions, have students brainstorm and share experiences, give students time in the lab - and then, through writing or class discussion, have students assess for themselves what they got out of it - that is enough. I won't be assigning immersion logs any more.

• The best immersion activity I had, both in Korea and in the US, was conversing with a Korean-speaking partner. Through connections I made at Ewha University, the neighboring school to Yonsei University in Seoul, I found 5 different Korean students who agreed to partner with me. Back at De Anza College, I joined Cross Cultural Partners, a program pairing up students who wanted to practice each others' native language, and was paired with 4 different Korean students At both schools, I met with a different student each day of the week. In our sessions we usually spent about 30 minutes using English and 30 minutes using Korean. Wow - 30 minutes using only Korean in a conversation. These conversations represented the main times I felt successful in using the language. My partners and I got used to each other; we took time to explain and reexplain and draw pictures and laugh and drink coffee together; we shared pictures and gave gifts to each other; we used the target language to actually communicate. At SJCC, we currently have no such partnership program. I wonder - could we? I wonder if we could find ways to get native English-speaking students to partner with our ESL students, especially the beginning ones who so desperately need this practice? I had not thought of pursuing such a project before I started the sabbatical, but now... I wonder!

In the end, I only got to stay in Korea for 4 months, so I missed out on the chance for extensive immersion experiences in Korea when my language skills got a little better. But I did pursue opportunities here in the San Jose area. That will be the subject of the next entry.