Dual Language Immersion Education - Book Report/Review Example

Dual Language Immersion Education Table of Contents I. Swain and Lapkin- On the Immersion Program in Canada 3 II. Genesee- Dual Language in the Global Village 3III. Reflection 4References 6 I. Swain and Lapkin- On the Immersion Program in CanadaThe focus of the paper is an investigation into the merits of immersion programs for bilingualism education that adds to the primary language by full immersion into the second language to be learned. The context is the changing demographic characteristics of students and the populations in general in major habitation communities throughout Canada.

Whereas the original assumptions of the old immersion paradigms include that the primary language of students is English, the new demographic reality is that students nowadays are more racially and linguistically diverse, so that immersion as it was originally conceived and practiced may need to be tweaked essentially to be relevant to the changed Canadian demographic realities. One of the key insights is that immersion programs can still work in bilingual education, but they need to factor in primary languages other than English, and that this tweaked immersion paradigm has promise based on positive outcomes of similar learning situations with students having diverse primary languages and ethnicities (Swain and Lapkin, 2005).II. Genesee- Dual Language in the Global VillageThe chapter starts off by providing compelling reasons for multilingual education, including the globalization of trade, mass migrations, and telecommunication advances.

From there, the chapter highlights how important schools are in teaching young people other languages, especially in North America, where communities are more homogeneous linguistically compared to other geographies. The chapter then goes into a discussion of three basic bilingual education paradigms in North America, including one way and two way immersions, and developmental programs for minorities. The chapter then discusses in some detail of key issues in bilingual education, including age of students, how long students are exposed to a language, issues related to bilingualism that is additive, and language teaching that is based on content.

The key take is that the past four decades have yielded many lessons and insights relating to teaching bilingualism and multilingualism not just in North America but in the rest of the world, and these can be brought to bear to make teaching more effective moving forward (Genesee, 2008). III. ReflectionThere is merit in the assertions of Swain and Lapkin with regard to the need to tweak the traditional immersion paradigms for additive bilingual education that take into consideration the fact that Canadian society is not what it used to be.

The goal after all is to make sure that the immersion programs remain effective for their intended purpose, which is to make students effectively learn a new language. The new reality is that the first language for many students is no longer English, but is a mix of many different languages that spring from the changed ethnic mix of the general Canadian population. There is also room to incorporate activities in the tweaked immersion programs, from best practices in other classroom settings that have yielded positive learning outcomes, and where the student population is diverse ethnically and linguistically (Swain and Lapkin, 2005).

The value of Genesees inputs lie in the insights that he gave relating to the issues that are tied to bilingual education, especially with regard to determining the effectiveness of bilingual education paradigms in achieving target learning outcomes for certain groups of students, in particular minorities. The problem lies in the dearth of literature on bilingual learning in such groups. On the other hand, the article also makes a good point regarding the wisdom that has been gained over the past four decades teaching multilingualism worldwide.

This wisdom can be leveraged to improve learning outcomes for problematic cases (Genesee, 2008). ReferencesGenesee, F. (2008). Dual Language in the Global VillageSwain, M. and Lapkin, S. (2005). The evolving sociopolitical context of immersion education in Canada: some implications for program development. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 15 (2).