Asian Journal of Development Matters
Year : 2010, Volume : 4, Issue : 2
First page : ( 6) Last page : ( 13)
Print ISSN : 0973-9637.

What is immersion program?

Barimani Shaban^¶, Subbakrishna R

Department of Studies in Linguistic, University of Mysore, Mysore, India.

Address for correspondence: E-mail: ^¶Sh_Barimani45@yahoo.com.

Abstract

Second language acquisition (SLA) has always been a concern and a field of interest to the theorists, practitioners, and learners. This concern and interest paved the way for the emergence of a number of methods and approaches such as ‘immersion program’ from time to time which can be classified as traditional, modern, and innovative. Most of these methods are ‘form’ oriented. Maybe because of the type of orientation, the learners attempting to learn a second language through methods other than immersion program were not that successful in most cases. Since immersion program's main concern is delivering meaning rather than form, being meaning oriented, it could gain considerable success where it has been implemented. In other words immersion program opens a new window to teaching an FL or SL. Unlike the former methods which were attempting to teach an SL or FL in isolation and as a subject matter, in immersion program target language is a medium of instruction and it mixes teaching language with teaching content. It can be claimed that through immersion program the learners can get both linguistic competence as the knowledge about language empowering them to use language correctly and communicative competence as the ability to use language correctly and appropriately.

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Keywords

immersion, program, learning, acquisition, SLA.

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