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The Catalan immersion program
Abstract
The wide range of languages and purposes now served by immersion worldwide is illustrated by case studies of thirteen programs. Immersion, a relatively new approach to bilingual education, originated in Canada. It uses the target language as a medium of instruction in order to achieve "additive bilingualism" -- a high level of second language proficiency. The wide range of languages and purposes now served by immersion worldwide is illustrated by case studies of thirteen programs presented and discussed in this paperback edition. The introductory chapter defines immersion education theory and practice and shows how this approach differs from other forms of bilingual education.
... Eso sí, es importante recordar que el programa debe implementarse bajo unas condiciones favorables (apoyo claro por parte de todos los estamentos educativos) y siempre teniendo en mente un objetivo realista: un nivel de conocimiento de una L2 aprendida en un contexto formal como es la escuela. Siempre que se den unas condiciones de bilingüismo aditivo, es decir, cuando el aprendizaje de la L2 no suponga ningún riesgo o rémora para el normal desarrollo de la L1, las diferentes investigaciones realizadas demuestran que este tipo de enseñanza produce ventajas cognitivas, culturales e incluso psicológicas en contextos tan diferentes como el canadiense (Genesee, 1987;Swain y Lapkin, 1982;Johnson y Swain, 1997), el catalán (Artigal, 1997) o el vasco (Lasagabaster, 2000a(Lasagabaster, , 2000b(Lasagabaster, , 2000c. En cualquier caso se precisa de más estudios en el contexto finlandés que ayuden a determinar tanto los aspectos positivos como los negativos del mismo, ya que la actividad investigadora se encuentra todavía en un estado embrionario y debe dar aún mucho más de sí misma, puesto que con el apoyo de datos concretos se puede proceder a actuar en la misma clase y a mejorar la formación del profesorado (Björklund, 1997). ...
... The results obtained so far (Björklund, 1997;Buss & Mård, 2000) are very satisfactory. These results are in line with those obtained in studies carried out in a variety of different contexts, such as: Canada (Genesee, 1987;Johnson & Swain, 1997), Cataluña (Artigal, 1997) or the Basque Country (Lasagabaster, 2000 a ). Immersion programmes provide a very good solution when faced with the need to provide students with a multilingual education to prepare them for a future Europe in which extraordinary linguistic complexity will prevail. ...
Este artículo pretende introducir al lector en los programas de inmersión que se desarrollan en Finlandia, ya que tan sólo existe un artículo en castellano sobre dichos programas y hace referencia a los primeros estadios de su puesta en marcha. Para ello, y tras una pequeña introducción sobre el contexto sociolingüístico en el que se desarrolla esta experiencia de aprendizaje, se procede a la definición y caracterización de este tipo de programas, antes de pasar a analizar su establecimiento en la región de Vaasa (en un principio, ya que el éxito obtenido ha conducido a su extensión por otras regiones del país). A continuación se examinan los resultados obtenidos tanto en la L1 (finlandés) como en la L2 (sueco), puesto que consideramos que pueden resultar de interés para todas aquellas personas inmersas en la enseñanza de segundas lenguas y en la educación bilingüe. The aim of this article is to introduce the reader to immersion programmes currently being implemented in Finland, as only one article has been published in Spanish and it dealt with the early stages of these programmes. After a short introduction to the sociolinguistic context in which this learning experience takes place, immersion programmes are defined and described, and the reasons for setting them up in Vaasa are analysed (due to their success immersion programmes have spread to other Finnish regions). Next, the results obtained in both the L1 (Finnish) and the L2 (Swedish) are discussed in the belief that they can be of interest to all those involved in second language learning and bilingual education.
... Initially designed for children from Spanish-speaking families, the early total immersion programme established Catalan as the medium of instruction from the beginning of schooling in order to develop bilingualism. The bilingual education programmes in Catalonia have been widely regarded as successful, as various studies showed that immersion students achieve similar or slightly higher results than non-immersion children in academic performance (Artigal 1997;OECD 2009;Serra 1990;Vila 1995). This success has been partly due to the favourable attitudes and support expressed by a considerable part of the population, regardless of their Catalan or non-Catalan background (Hoffmann 2000;Huguet 2007). ...
Language attitudes have become more relevant than ever as a result of the considerable number of immigrant students enrolled in the Catalan educational system and the challenges this entails in terms of promoting social integration and language learning. Therefore, the objective of the study is to increase our understanding of language attitudes formation by analysing how origin (autochthonous or immigrant) influences (a) the attitudes towards Catalan and Spanish and (b) the effects of several demographic and sociopsychological variables on these attitudes. Additionally, it aims to identify the most important determinants of these language attitudes. For this purpose, 1156 secondary education students from 10 schools across Catalonia completed a language attitudes questionnaire, a sociolinguistic survey, and two language competences tests. The results showed that, generally, self-identifications and language uses were the most influential. Furthermore, origin moderated the relationships between attitudes and their determinants, indicating that the models traditionally used to explain the attitudes held by autochthonous students need to be revised to take into account the particularities of the immigrant population.
... There are currently approximately 5.3 million Catalan speakers living in Catalonia, where they constitute 71 % of the population (Idescat 2007). Catalan is the main medium of communication in media, publishing, administration and education, and its revitalisation, following a decline dating back to the eighteenth century and exacerbated during the Franco period , is attributed to successful language education policy established in the 1980s, particularly the decision in 1998 to make Catalan the normal 2 language of education in the region (Petherbridge-Hernández 1990b; Artigal 1997). It should be noted that many of those who do not currently speak Catalan are recent immigrants to the region, principally from other parts of Spain or from Latin America. ...
Education through the medium of a minoritised language is widely regarded as a critical component of language revitalisation initiatives. Given the demographic and social position of many minoritised languages, however, it may not be easy to find teachers who are fluent and literate in the language, confident about using and teaching it, and prepared for the demands of working in classrooms where the language is the medium of instruction. This article presents findings from a comparative study of teacher education programmes adopted in Catalonia, the Basque Autonomous Community, Wales and New Zealand, to prepare teachers to teach through the media of Catalan, Basque, Welsh and Māori respectively. The research was conducted to inform new professional development initiatives in Scotland, designed to enable qualified teachers to transfer from English-medium to Gaelic-medium education. The findings have wider relevance for other contexts in which the recruitment, professional development and retention of teachers to work in minoritised language medium education represent a challenge.
... The integration of language and content teaching in FL settings is most often defended on the basis of the well-documented success of L2 immersion programmes all over the world (Artigal, 1997;Arzamendi & Björklund, 1997;Genesse, 1987Genesse, , 1997Lambert & Tucker, 1972;. In immersion education the regular school curriculum is taught through the medium of the L2 according to the belief that 'children are able to learn a second language in the same way as they learned the i rst language: (a) by being exposed to authentic input in the second language and (b) by needing to use the second language for real, communicative purposes' (Snow, 1990: 111). ...
... The 1983 reform introduced language immersion programmes in primary and pre-primary schools (Arnau and Vila, 2013;Artigal, 1997). These were targeted to schools whose students predominantly (more than 70 percent) came from Spanish-speaking families, which tended to be settled in areas where Catalan had very little presence. ...
We exploit the 1983 language-in-education reform that introduced Catalan alongside Spanish as medium of instruction in Catalan schools to estimate the labour market value of bilingual education. Identification is achieved in a difference-indifferences framework exploiting variation in exposure to the reform across years of schooling and years of birth. We find positive wage returns to bilingual education and no effects on employment, hours of work or occupation. Results are robust to education-cohort specific trends or selection into schooling and are mainly stemming from exposure at compulsory education. We show that the effect worked through increased Catalan proficiency for Spanish speakers and that there were also positive effects for Catalan speakers from families with low education. These findings are consistent with human capital effects rather than with more efficient job search or reduced discrimination. Exploiting the heterogeneous effects of the reform as an instrument for proficiency we find sizeable earnings effects of skills in Catalan.
... Frisian are just a few of the many indigenous languages currently involved with revitalization and reversing language shift (Artigal, 1997;Arzamendi & Genesee, 1997;Fishman, 2001;Lie, 2003). History for adult indigenous immersion programs is still being written and will hopefully add to the understanding of reversing language shift and revitalizing languages in danger of extinction. ...
... For example, Basque-medium schools in the Basque Country were originally created as a language maintenance program for native speakers of Basque, but are now regarded 'as both total immersion programs for native Spanish-speaking students and first language maintenance programs for native Basque speakers' (Cenoz, 1998). Catalan immersion programs in Catalonia were designed for native speakers of Spanish but, for a school to be designated as an immersion school, as many as 30% of its students can have Catalan as their family language (Artigal, 1997). Similarly, in the case of Wales, 'A Welsh-medium school usually contains a mixture of first language Welsh pupils, relatively fluent second language Welsh speakers, plus those whose out-of-school language is English (i.e. ...
This article serves as the introduction to this special issue of Language Teaching Research on content-based language teaching (CBLT). The article first provides an illustrative overview of the myriad contexts in which CBLT has been implemented and then homes in on the five studies comprising the special issue, each conducted in a distinct instructional setting: two-way Spanish—English immersion in the USA, English-medium ‘nature and society’ lessons taught at a middle school in China, English-medium math and science classes in Malaysian high schools, English-medium history classes in high schools in Spain, and ‘sheltered instruction’ classes for English language learners in US schools. In spite of such divergent contexts, the five studies converge to underscore the pivotal role played by teachers in CBLT and the concomitant need for professional development to support them in meeting some of the challenges specific to CBLT.
... to emerging problems. Immersion has spread to many other places around the world and is often employed for language support and revival e.g. in Hawaii, Catalonia and the Basque country (Slaughter, 1997;Artigal, 1993). Johnson & Swain point out that immersion differs from other forms of bilingual education as a consequence of factors such as the role of the second language as a medium of instruction, the nature of the immersion curriculum, the level of support available for the L1, the attempt to achieve additive bilingualism, the fact that L2 exposure is largely confined to the classroom, the student's limited or non-existent L2 proficiency on entry in to the program and the bilingual status of the teachers. ...
... For example, Basque-medium schools in the Basque Country were originally created as a language maintenance programme for native speakers of Basque, but are now regarded 'as both total immersion programs for native Spanish-speaking students and first language maintenance programs for native Basque speakers' (Cenoz, 1998). Catalan immersion programmes in Catalonia were designed for native speakers of Spanish, but for a school to be designated as an immersion school, as many as 30% of its students can have Catalan as their family language (Artigal, 1997). In Wales, Baker (1993) writes, 'A Welsh-medium school usually contains a mixture of first language Welsh pupils, relatively fluent second language Welsh speakers, plus those whose out-of-school language is English (i.e., "immersion" pupils)' (p. ...
The present study was carried out in French immersion classrooms in an urban Quebec school board that is increasingly characterised by the heterogeneity of its French-dominant, English-dominant, and French/English bilingual student population. The study explored the extent to which a bilingual read-aloud project would (1) raise teachers' awareness of the bilingual resources of their students, (2) encourage students' cross-linguistic collaboration, and (3) promote teachers' cross-curricular and cross-linguistic collaboration. The participants were three English and three French teachers of three classes of six- to eight-year-old children. The French and English teachers of each class read aloud to their students from the same storybooks over four months, alternating the reading of one chapter in the French class and another in the English class. The data consist of (1) video recordings of the read-aloud sessions and discussion about the stories, (2) interviews and stimulated-recall sessions with the teachers, and (3) student focus-group interviews as well as a student questionnaire administered at the end of the project. Results are reported in terms of the enthusiasm of both students and teachers for the project, the opportunities it created for teachers and students to focus on both language and content, and the extent to which teachers collaborated to do so.
This study investigates perception and production of the Catalan mid-vowel /e/-/ɛ/ contrast by two groups of 4.5-year-old Catalan–Spanish bilingual children, differing in language dominance. Perception was assessed with an XAB discrimination task involving familiar words and non-words. Production accuracy was measured using a familiar-word elicitation task. Overall, Catalan-dominant bilingual children outperformed Spanish-dominant bilinguals, the latter showing high variability in production accuracy, while being slightly above chance level in perception. No correlation between perception and production performance could be established in this group. The effect of language dominance alone could not explain the Spanish-dominant participants’ performance, but quality of Catalan input (native vs. accented speech) was identified as an important factor behind familiar-word production and the inaccurate representation of the target contrast in the lexicon of the bilinguals’ less-dominant language. More fine-grained measurements of experience-related factors are needed for a full understanding of the acquisition of challenging contrasts in bilingual contexts.
We estimate the wage effects of bilingual education for the first time using a reform that introduced bilingualism in Catalan schools. Variation across years of schooling and birth cohorts provides identification. We find substantial effects of bilingual education, which increase baseline returns to education by about 20 percent. Robustness checks show that effects stem from exposure to the language-in-education reform and are neither a consequence of unobservable determinants of educational attainment nor an artefact of education-cohort specific trends in wages. The reform was mostly beneficial for individuals of non-Catalan background from low parental background, thus achieving its goal of levelling the playing field in a bilingual society.
Most studies on panethnicity have focused on the United States, leaving researchers with little understanding of how it becomes institutionalized in areas with different racial politics and histories. Drawing on fifty-two in-depth interviews with Latin American immigrant leaders, political party operatives, and bureaucrats, in addition to fourteen weeks of participant observation, I examine the establishment of panethnic Latino coalitions in the Barcelona, Spain, which has witnessed a sharp increase in Latin American migration. I argue that unlike in the United States, in Spain political parties play a critical role in establishing panethnic coalitions. They do so by enabling the development of panethnic civic organizations that they hope will be politically loyal to them. Latin American immigrant leaders respond to these efforts by cooperating with parties while also resisting political pressure. Specifically, immigrant leaders forge networks with one another that cross party lines, use media to promote the nonpartisan aspects of panethnicity, and construct cultural and instrumental narratives about panethnic unity. These strategies help immigrant leaders weather political shifts and make panethnicity seem to have arisen organically. Panethnicity is forged as a strategic, cultural, and experiential form of community identification precisely through this interaction between parties, immigrant leaders, and media. Implications for understanding how panethnicity becomes institutionalized and avenues for further international research on panethnicity are discussed.
Do languages matter beyond their communicative benefits? We explore the potential role of preferences over the language of use, theoretically and empirically. We focus on Catalonia, a bilingual society where everyone is fully proficient in Spanish, to isolate linguistic preferences from communicative benefits. Moreover, we exploit the language-in-education reform of 1983 to identify the causal effects of language skills. Results indicate that the policy change has improved the Catalan proficiency of native Spanish speakers, which in turn increased their propensity to find Catalan-speaking partners. Hence, the acquisition of apparently redundant language skills has reduced endogamy. (JEL C26, C78, I28, J12, J15, Z13)
This article provides the first cross-national assessment of Latina immigrant fertility trends. Specifically, we compare Ecuadorian women in Spain (EiS) to Mexican women in the United States (MiUS). We focus on these two groups because they (1) have similar socio-economic profiles and (2) are the largest Latina subgroups in their respective host countries. We show that since 2001, the fertility rate of EiS has declined substantially more than the fertility rate of MiUS has. Drawing on census and administrative data in both countries, we assess four factors that might explain this difference: economic cycles, linguistic affinity, labor market participation, and education. We argue that labor market and education factors can best help to explain Latina fertility patterns. We conclude by discussing the findings with regard to contemporary arguments about Latino culture and immigrant fertility, and by describing the study's policy implications.
This chapter gives a concise overview of research results with regard to immersion teaching in preschool and primary school. After disentangling some terminological issues concerning, notably, the usage of the terms immersion and CLIL, the authors go on to discuss different forms of immersion programs, results of L2 attainment, content learning, competence in the L1, cognitive skills, and the attainment of so-called at-risk learners. In the second part of the chapter, practical, methodological and didactic considerations for the implementation of immersion programs are discussed. The authors conclude with making a case for intensive bilingual education.
What kinds of bilingualism should be developed through education in different social contexts? What kinds of bilingualism can be developed in and through education? What languages should be promoted within the foreign language curriculum and why? What medium of instruction policy should be adopted in multilingual settings? Should regional vernaculars be used in teaching and learning in postcolonial settings along with national and official languages? Should minority languages be included in the curriculum within a national education system? Should some form of bilingual education be adopted? If so, how should it be organized and in what sectors of education: at pre-school, primary and secondary levels? At college or university level? In adult basic education or literacy programmes? What are the consequences of such educational interventions in multilingual settings? For well over half a century, questions such as these have surfaced over and over again in public debates about language in education in bilingual and multilingual settings. They have been posed by researchers, educational practitioners, parents, journalists and language activists in relation to very different forms of language education provision, in very different historical conditions.
One need not look far into history or, for that matter, the burgeoning academic literature on nationalism, to find that Europe has provided us with the model of the modern nation-state as we know it today. The French Revolution of 1789 and its aftermath created the precedent for a form of political organisation not countenanced before — a polity represented and unified by a culturally and linguistically homogeneous civic realm (May 2001). Previous forms of political organisation had not required this degree of linguistic uniformity. For example, empires were quite happy for the most part to leave unmolested the plethora of cultures and languages subsumed within them — as long as taxes were paid, all was well. The Greek and Roman Empires are obvious examples here, while ‘New World’ examples include the Aztec and Inca Empires of Central and South America respectively. More recent historical examples include the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s overtly multilingual policy. But perhaps the clearest example is that of the Ottoman Empire which actually established a formal system of ‘millets’ (nations) in order to accommodate the cultural and linguistic diversity of peoples within its borders (Dorian 1998). Nonetheless, in the subsequent politics of European nationalism — which, of course, was also to spread throughout the world — the idea of a single, common ‘national’ language (sometimes, albeit rarely, a number of national languages) quickly became the leitmotif of modern social and political organisation.
This paper analyses the language-in-education policies implemented to integrate international immigrants into the Catalan language community in Vic, Catalonia. It focuses on the Catalan Government's ‘Languages and Social Cohesion Plan’ (LIC) plan, Vic city council's local education plans, which were adopted as part of LIC plan, and the EBE centre, a Catalan Government initiative that was opened in Vic as an educational welcome space for newly arrived immigrant families. Drawing upon empirical data gathered from semi-structured interviews and substantiated with analysis of policy documents, this paper advances three main claims. First, that immigrant families and community members in Vic have played a vital role in reinforcing the city's language-in-education policies. Second, that immigrant parents can contribute to their children's linguistic integration, even when they are not fluent in the minority language. Third, that the wider discourse of social cohesion in Catalonia has facilitated this greater participation amongst the immigrant family and community members. Together, these three claims present a counterargument to the growing belief in the literature on minority language revival and revitalisation that the family and the community no longer play a significant role in minority language maintenance.
This article explores the bases for language minority rights – that is, the language rights that might be attributable to linguistic minorities– in modern liberal democracies. It draws on developments in international law and in some national contexts to outline what those rights might comprise and their potential impact on the provision of language education. However, the article also highlights how difficult it is for such rights to be established, let alone maintained. This is because of an ongoing skepticism towards language rights, which are deemed to be collective rights and, as such, are often viewed as militating against the individual tenets of human rights as they have developed post-Second World War. An advocacy for language education rights, most notably, via the provision of bilingual education, is also seen as potentially delimiting the engagement of students with the wider world and, particularly, English as the global language and standard-bearer for new cosmopolitan identities. Both coalesce to delimit the possibilities of more pluralistic, plurilingual, educational approaches to linguistic minority students, although they do not entirely foreclose them.
Tá slánú na Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht ag brath go mór ar pháistí óga agus ar an tacaíocht a thugtar dóibhy chun Gaeilge a fhoghlaim. Tá mionscrúdú déanta sa staidéar seo ar an gcaoi a gcabhraíonn an luathoideachas sna naíonraí le páistí ar cainteoirí dúchais iad, chomh maith le páistí sa Ghaeltacht a fhoghlaimíonn Gaeilge mar dhara teanga. Scrúdaítear freisin an comhthéacs ina bhfeidhmíonn naíonraí na Gaeltachta. Moltar bealaí praiticiúla chun cúnamh a thabhairt do na páistí óga seo agus dá dtuismitheoirí. Ní hamháin gur cheart seirbhísí naíonra ar ardchaighdeán a sholáthar, ach ba chóir tacaíocht leanúnach teanga a bheith ar fáil do theaghlaigh na Gaeltachta ón gcéad lá a thagann páistí ar an saol.
In the last 60 years, we have seen the growing development and articulation of human rights, particularly within international law and within and across supranational organizations. However, in that period, the right to maintain one's language(s), without discrimination, remains peculiarly underrepresented and/or problematized as a key human right. This is primarily because the recognition of language rights presupposes recognizing the importance of wider group memberships and social contexts; conceptions that ostensibly militate against the primacy of individual rights in the post-Second World War era. Drawing on theoretical debates in political theory and international law, as well as the substantive empirical example of Catalonia, this article argues that language rights can and should be recognized as an important human right.
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