Two-way immersion shows promising results: Findings from a new study

A long-time detractor of immersion education has been the concern that a substantial proportion of teaching in and about a language other than English might potentially lead to irreparable damage to immersion students' development in English and, hence, their ability to function in an English-dominant society. The assessment in this article, however, indicates that the English language development of immersion students should not be a source of concern. Specifically, this study evaluates narrative English writing skills (coherence, grammar, content, and text length) evidenced by two groups in the Korean/English Two-Way Immersion Program during an early phase of elementary immersion (K to grade 2) in the United States: One group consists of Korean-American second-generation children and the other consists of English-dominant non-Korean-American students. The results show that the English writing skills are similar among the three second-grade groups in the experiment: the two immersion groups and the English-proficient students from typical all-English classes. The results indicate that comparable English-writing skills show up as early as the second grade (i.e., after 3 years of two-way immersion education starting from kindergarten). Additionally, the second-graders are found to perform significantly better than the first graders. The results of the study increase our understanding of immersion students' English development in light of the following unique features of this research: the less typical academic language combination (Korean/English), the study of writing development in earlier school grades, and the testing procedure developed and used.