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Second Language Learning Through Immersion: A Review of U.S. Programs

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 Review of Educational Research
Winter, 1985, Vol. 55, No. 4, Pp. 541-561

Second Language Learning Through Immersion:

A Review of U.S. Programs
Fred Genesee
University of Hawaii at Manoa

ABSTRACT. Second language immersion programs, originally developed in

Canada some 20 years ago, have been implemented in a number of U.S.
cities. Alternative forms of U.S. programs are described—enriched, mag-
net, and two-way bilingual—and research findings pertaining to the effec-
tiveness of each are summarized and discussed.

Second language immersion programs for majority language students were first
introduced in 1965 in Canada. They were instituted at that time in response to the
concerns of a group of English-speaking parents in Quebec that existing methods
of teaching French as a second language were not providing their children with the
communicative proficiency they would need to function and succeed in an increas-
ingly French-speaking community (Lambert & Tucker, 1972). Immersion programs
are presently available in all Canadian provinces and territories and, as of 1983,
there were more than 100,000 students participating in them (Stern, 1984). A
number of innovative versions of the immersion approach to second language
learning have been instituted in the U.S. In this article I will describe these versions
and summarize and discuss the results of evaluations of them.

Pedagogical Aspects of Canadian Immersion Programs

Immersion is not as much a method of second language teaching as it is a
pedagogical approach that promotes second language learning. The most distinctive
feature of immersion programs is their use of French to teach regular school
subjects. The second language is not simply taught as another subject in the
curriculum, but rather is the medium through which the curriculum itself is taught
(see Genesee, 1983, for a complete description of the Canadian immersion pro-
grams). In early total immersion programs, in fact, all curriculum instruction
during the first two, three, or four grades is presented in French (Figure 1). This
means that students in early total immersion programs receive their initial literacy
and academic training through the medium of a second language. English is not
introduced into the curriculum until grade 2, 3, or 4, depending on the particular
school district. It is initially used to teach English language arts and is subsequently
expanded to include other academic subjects so that by the end of elementary
school each language is used to teach approximately 50% of the curriculum.
By using the second language as a major medium of curriculum instruction,

The author would like to thank the following people for helpful comments on an earlier
version of this article: Wallace Lambert, McGill University; Richard Tucker, Center for
Applied Linguistics; Mimi Met, Cincinnati Public Schools; and three RER reviewers.

541
FRED GENESEE

immersion programs are designed to create the same kinds of conditions that
characterize first language acquisition. There is an emphasis on creating a desire in
the students to learn the second language in order to engage in meaningful and
interesting communication (Macnamara, 1973). Thus, for the students in immer-
sion, second language learning is incidental to learning about their school subjects,
their community, the world, and one another. This approach contrasts sharply with
more conventional second language methods which put an emphasis on the
conscious learning of grammatical rules or communicative protocols. Second
language learning through immersion also differs from other methods of second
language instruction insofar as teaching and learning are not as much grammar-
driven as they are proficiency-driven, that is, they proceed according to the learners'
real communication needs in the classroom. This arises necessarily from the fact
that the second language is the means of academic communication, and language
learning goes on even when explicit language instruction is not taking place, as, for
example, during a math lesson. Students "pick up" the language skills they need to
perform the tasks that compose school life.
Immersion teachers use only the target language in their interactions with the
students even though most of them are fluently bilingual. This strategy is adopted
to encourage, indeed, require that the students learn to use the language. The
students themselves are not required to speak the second language with the teacher
or with one another during the first few months. In fact, the students usually
communicate in English during the early stage. It is not uncommon during this
stage to hear the students speaking English with their teachers and getting a response
back in French. During the early part of the program, there is an emphasis on
developing the students' listening comprehension skills. Students in early total

542
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

immersion classes begin to speak French toward the end of kindergarten or the
beginning of grade 1. All communication in the classroom usually takes place in
the second language by the middle of grade 1, at which time a rule is established
that only French be used. Once the students begin to use the language productively,
the teachers are careful not to overcorrect their usage for fear of inhibiting
communication. Error correction that does occur tends to be indirect and does not
disrupt the flow of communication.
It is not the mere use of the second language for academic instruction that
characterizes immersion, however. And, although immersion has been described
as the "mother's method" (Penfìeld & Roberts, 1959) or as a first language approach,
it is not simply a matter of treating second language learners as if they were native
speakers of the target language. Immersion is a communicative approach that
reflects the essential conditions of first language learning and at the same time
responds to the special needs of second language learners. The effectiveness of
immersion depends very much on the quality of the interaction between the teacher
and the learner. Although no formal description of the patterns of interaction
between teachers and students in immersion classrooms has been undertaken,
informal observation indicates that they can be characterized by what Wells (1979)
has referred to as "negotiation of meaning." Negotiation of meaning is a complex
of interaction strategies that generates interpersonal communication that is mu-
tually intelligible to the participants. In immersion programs, these strategies
promote the learners' comprehension of what the teacher is intending to mean,
what the situation means, and thereby what the language means and how it works.
It is through comprehension of both the teachers' verbal messages and the nonverbal
significance of events that the students in immersion programs come to learn the
target language and ultimately how to use it effectively (see Genesee, 1985, for a
more detailed description, with examples, of this process). Although there are
adjustments made in the curriculum to accommodate the students' initial lack of
proficiency in the second language, the same content and skills are covered in an
immersion program as in a regular all-English program.
Different forms of immersion programs have been developed. Programs can be
distinguished according to whether they offer early immersion in the second
language, beginning in kindergarten, delayed immersion, beginning in grade 4 or
5, or late immersion, beginning in grade 7 or 8. A distinction is also made between
total immersion alternatives, which offer all or nearly all instruction during one or
more school years in the second language, and partial immersion alternatives,
which usually provide 50% of instruction in English and 50% in the second
language.
The effectiveness of the immersion approach to second language teaching and
learning has been documented repeatedly in a number of longitudinal evaluations
(Genesee, 1983; Lambert & Tucker, 1972; Swain & Lapkin, 1981). Briefly, the
evaluation results indicate that participants in immersion programs attain high
levels of functional proficiency in the second language (e.g., reading and listening
comprehension, oral communication, and writing), although they seldom attain
truly native-like mastery of the elements and rules of the language. They continue
to make specific phonological, lexical, and syntactic errors when using the second
language even by the end of secondary school. It has been noted in a number of

543
FRED GENESEE

the evaluations, however, that their linguistic deficiencies do not appear to impede
their functional use of the language (Genesee, 1983; Swain & Lapkin, 1981).
Students in all types of immersion programs have been found to achieve signifi-
cantly higher levels of proficiency in all aspects of French than students receiving
conventional French second-language instruction; such instruction is usually lim-
ited to short 30-60 minute daily lessons.
It has also been found that early total immersion students demonstrate normal
English language development when compared to control students, although they
often perform below grade level on tests that assess literacy skills in English if the
tests are administered prior to English language arts instruction. They usually score
at par with control students on literacy-related tests of English within 1 year of
receiving English language arts instruction. No such lag in the development of oral/
aural language skills has been found. The academic, general cognitive, and social
psychological development of immersion students have also been found to be
normal in comparison with carefully selected groups of control students attending
all-English classes.
Since immersion programs have been made available throughout Canada, it has
been possible to evaluate their effectiveness in settings that lack a large number of
target language speakers, for example, Toronto or Vancouver. Systematic evalua-
tions in unilingual English districts have reported the same pattern of findings as
noted for Quebec (Shapson & Day, 1984; Swain & Lapkin, 1981), thereby attesting
to their effectiveness in different settings.
For the most part, the Canadian immersion programs can be said to have been
developed in response to the practical realities of bilingualism in the country and
to policies of official bilingualism (see Lambert & Tucker, 1972, for a description
of the early background to immersion in Quebec). Also, a number of immersion
programs have been adopted for purposes of heritage language maintenance and
revival. For example, an early total immersion program in Mohawk has been
instituted in Caughnawaga, Quebec (outside Montreal), as a means of preserving
an indigenous native language that is at risk of loss (Lambert, Genesee, Holobow,
& McGilly, 1984). Double immersion programs in French and Hebrew have been
instituted in some private schools in the Montreal area to promote the learning of
Hebrew, a language of religious and ethnic significance for the students, and French,
a language of local social and economic importance (Genesee & Lambert, 1983).

Immersion Programs in the United States

It was not long after the introduction of the first immersion program in Canada
that American educators began to explore its use in the U.S. context. Immersion
programs in the United States seem to have been adopted for somewhat different
purposes: (a) as linguistic, cultural, and general educational enrichment; (b) as
magnet schools to bring about a more balanced ratio of ethnolinguistic groups;
and/or (c) as a means of achieving some degree of two-way bilingualism in
communities with large populations of non-English speaking residents. This clas-
sification is somewhat arbitrary but it serves to highlight some important program
variations. Descriptions and evaluations of each type of immersion program exist,
but the pertinent documentation is often scattered or difficult to obtain (see
de Lorenzo & Gladstein, 1984, for a brief review of U.S. immersion programs).

544
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

The remainder of this paper then will summarize the available documentation with
a view to describing the existing types of programs and examining the evidence
concerning the effectiveness of each.

Immersion as Educational Enrichment

Throughout history, bilingualism and bilingual education have been seen as
hallmarks of the well-educated person. This is no less true today than in the past.
Indeed, it is not uncommon to find private schools in North America that offer
special foreign or second language courses as part of their curriculum. There are
numerous international schools located throughout the world that established their
reputations, in part at least, on the opportunities they provide students to become
bilingual, for example, the J. F. Kennedy School in Berlin (Mackey, 1972). Interest
in these schools is based not only on their language programs but also often on the
cultural experiences they offer as a result of studying in a foreign country. Attend-
ance in these schools provides an enriched cultural and language experience that
can seldom be found in public schools in the home country. Second language
immersion programs offer the possibility of providing a similarly enriched educa-
tional experience without traveling abroad and without considerable expense to
either the school system or the families involved. To the extent that immersion
programs exceed the academic and linguistic demands of regular public schooling,
they also provide a challenging academic experience that some parents may feel is
missing in regular school programs. This aspect of immersion is often cited by
Canadian parents who have opted to put their children in the program. The first
experiment in second language in the U.S. reflects this tradition.

The Culver City Immersion Program

The first adaptation of the Canadian immersion program in an American setting
took place in Culver City, California, in 1971. The comments of some of the
parents who took part in this experiment give an indication of their motivations
for wanting their children in it:

—"I felt it would give her an added dimension to her education and provide
insight into another culture."
—"I wanted my child to learn a foreign language. [I] also felt that she was
ready for more challenge than the regular kindergarten provided."
—"My husband and I had a deep desire for our daughter to learn of another
cultural background and have somefluencyin that language." (from Rhodes,
1982, in Campbell, 1984, p. 119)

A survey of parents in Holliston, Massachusetts, who also opted to send their

children to an immersion program revealed similar motivations (Irujo, 1984).
The Culver City program provides all curriculum instruction in kindergarten
and grade 1 in Spanish. The selection of Spanish as the language of immersion was
based, in part at least, on the prevalence of Spanish in southern California and
parents' interest in the practical benefits their children might derive from knowing
Spanish. The Culver City immersion teachers are either native Spanish-speakers or
they have native-like proficiency in Spanish. In kindergarten and grade 1, they

545
FRED GENESEE

present themselves as monolingual Spanish speakers in order to encourage the

students to use Spanish (see Campbell, 1984, for a complete description).
English is introduced into the curriculum for the first time in grade 2 when
English language arts are taught. As in other early total immersion programs,
instruction in English is expanded progressively until there is an approximately
equal split between English and Spanish instruction by the end of elementary
school. As pointed out earlier, in most Canadian immersion programs, the French
and English curricula are taught by different teachers. In contrast, in the Culver
City program the immersion teachers teach both the English and the Spanish part
of the curriculum from grade 2 on, although the languages are never mixed during
an instructional period. Campbell (1984) characterizes the Culver City immersion
program as additive: "In addition to the full and complete development of English,
the home language of the children, they are provided with opportunities to acquire
a foreign language" (p. 123). Participation in the program is voluntary, and the
participating children come from backgrounds that represent a wide range of
socioeconomic levels, with the majority of them coming from middle class families.
The vast majority of the participating students are English-speaking and have had
no experience with Spanish.
Program evaluation. The development of the Culver City program has been
accompanied from the beginning by a close working relationship with the Depart-
ments of English as a Second Language and Applied Linguistics at the University
of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The researchers from UCLA have undertaken
extensive, longitudinal assessments of the program and particularly student out-
comes, including English language development, academic achievement, second
language proficiency, and attitudes. The results of the Culver City evaluations
correspond in most major respects to the results of evaluations of early total
immersion programs in Canada. Culver City immersion students have been found
to lag behind non-immersion students in their English language development during
kindergarten and grade 1 when no English language arts are taught. Within 1 year
of receiving English language arts instruction, however, they perform as well on
standardized tests that assess their English language development and academic
achievement as carefully selected comparison groups of students attending regular
English language programs (Cohen, 1974).
Assessment of their Spanish language skills has indicated that they attain high
levels of functional language proficiency. This has been evidenced in their use of
Spanish for scholastic purposes in school and for social interaction outside school
and in their performance on standardized tests in Spanish (e.g., Comprehensive
Test of Basic Skills: Espanol). At the same time, it has been found, however, that
they "do not sound like native speakers of Spanish, nor can they perform as well
as native speakers in reading, writing or aural comprehension" (Campbell, 1984,
p. 131). A similar differential between language proficiency and linguistic compe-
tence has been found for French immersion students in Canadian programs, as
noted previously (Genesee, 1983). Indeed, it is unlikely that second language
learners would ever achieve total native-like mastery of the target language as long
as their learning is restricted to a school setting.
It has been customary in evaluations of Canadian immersion programs to
evaluate the second language achievement of immersion students in comparison

546
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

with that of students participating in conventional second language programs. As

noted briefly in the introduction, the results of these comparisons have revealed
that immersion students attain significantly higher levels of proficiency in all aspects
of the second language than do non-immersion students. Equivalent comparisons
have not been undertaken in evaluations of most American immersion programs
because of the absence of second language instruction at the elementary school
level in school districts offering immersion. There is no reason to believe that the
results of such comparisons would be different from those made in Canada, were
they possible.

The Montgomery County Immersion Program

An assessment of a similar enrichment immersion program has been carried out
in Four Corners Elementary School, Montgomery County, Maryland (see "End of
the Second Year Report," 1976). In the Four Corners program all curriculum
instruction in kindergarten to grade 2 takes place in French, with the exception of
physical education and music, which are taught by English-speaking specialists.
English language arts instruction is introduced in grade 3, 1 year later than in
Culver City. Class groupings include multiple grade level combinations so that
students from different grades share the same classrooms. The evaluation results
from Four Corners School are particularly interesting because the second language
tests that were used allow for comparisons with students attending early French
immersion programs in Canada and also with native French-speaking students
attending French public schools in Montreal.
Comparisons between the performance of the Four Corners immersion students
and the performance of native French-speaking students from Montreal indicated
that most of the Four Corners students scored in the above average stanine range
on tests of French language arts and mathematics. It should be pointed out that as
a group the Four Corners students were above average in academic ability—on a
test of cognitive abilities, they scored at the 83rd percentile on the verbal subtest
and at the 77th percentile on the quantitative subtest. It is likely that this contributed
to their high level of performance on the French language tests, especially the
reading, language arts, and mathematics tests, which probably reflect overall ability.
Genesee (1978) has found that performance on literacy-related tests of language
achievement is correlated with academic ability as measured by intelligence tests,
whereas performance on tests of interpersonal communication is not (see also
Cummins, 1981). When the performance of the Four Corners immersion students
was examined using tests of French reading and listening comprehension designed
for Canadian immersion students, it was found that the former scored at an
impressively high level. It is not possible to be more precise since neither test norms
nor comparison group results were reported.
The English language proficiency and academic achievement test scores of Four
Corners immersion students have been compared to those of other students in the
same school who were equally capable. No differences were found, except for
spelling and punctuation, with the immersion students lagging behind the non-
immersion students. Such lags are common among early immersion students in
Canada, and they have been found to be self-correcting usually within 1 or 2 years
of receiving English language arts instruction (Genesee, 1983).

547
FRED GENESEE

Summary. Taken together, the results from the Culver City and Four Corners
projects attest to the effectiveness of second language immersion programs in U.S.
communities that lack either a local presence of the target language or national
political recognition of the target language. The participating students achieved
noteworthy levels of target language proficiency at no expense to their native
language development or academic achievement. In summarizing the findings from
the Culver City Spanish immersion project, Campbell (1984) points out that
immersion programs present an alternative to FLES programs (foreign languages
in the elementary school) that is cost- and pedagogically effective and, therefore,
may serve to dispel some of the misgivings that Americans have traditionally
expressed about the time and expense of foreign language education.

Immersion as "Magnet Schools"

Immersion programs have been instituted in a number of American school
districts in an effort to achieve a balanced ratio of students from different ethnic,
linguistic, and socioeconomic groups. Immersion programs in these districts then
provide alternative forms of education that will be sufficiently attractive to students
from diverse family backgrounds to result in ethnically, linguistically, and socio-
economically mixed schools without having to resort to compulsory busing or other
enforcement procedures. Alternatives other than immersion are also offered in
these districts as an enticement to integration. The attraction of magnet schools,
including immersion, is based in part at least on their educational enrichment
value (M. Met, personal communication, June 1985), and to this extent this form
of immersion is similar to the previous one. Immersion programs have been used
as "magnets" in Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and San Diego. Spanish has been used as
the language of immersion in San Diego, and French and German in addition to
Spanish have been used in Milwaukee.

The Cincinnati Immersion Program

The first use of immersion programs as magnets was in the Cincinnati Public
Schools in 1974. At present, the Cincinnati immersion programs are the nation's
most extensive, with over 2,000 students and approximately 80 immersion teachers
(see Campbell, 1984). Programs are available in French and in Spanish and are of
the early partial immersion variety—they begin in kindergarten, and approximately
50% of the curriculum is taught in English and 50% in French or Spanish. The
program is pedagogically similar in all important respects to other immersion
programs in Canada and the United States.
Program evaluation. Genesee, Holobow, Lambert, Met, and Gastright (1985)
have undertaken a systematic evaluation of the Cincinnati French immersion
program. Like other immersion evaluations, the design of their research is longi-
tudinal and will involve evaluating pilot immersion groups and follow-up groups
of students in order to assess the generalizability of the findings. Because the
Cincinnati immersion programs function as magnets and, therefore, have attracted
both black students and white students, as well as students from working class and
middle class backgrounds, it is possible to assess the program's effectiveness for
students from these different subgroups. The design of the research looks like this:

548
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

White
.Middle Class <^ßlack
Immersion
\tl, i ^i /White
Working Class < ^ ^

.Middle Class < Black

Non-immersion
\ Working Class /White
\ Black

The participation of black students is particularly interesting since many of them

speak a nonstandard or minority dialect, namely black English, in addition to being
from a minority ethnic group. A systematic evaluation of the suitability of immer-
sion for such students has not been undertaken before, although it is clear from
other magnet school projects that use immersion that such students are in attend-
ance. Students who come to school speaking a nonstandard dialect are not available
in sufficiently large numbers in Canada to permit a systematic assessment of their
progress in that setting.
The Cincinnati research is ongoing. The baseline performance of each subgroup
of students will be assessed at the beginning of kindergarten using Raven's Progres-
sive Matrices and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, widely used tests of
nonverbal reasoning ability and verbal ability, respectively. This is an important
feature of the research design because it allows the researchers to follow the progress
of groups of students who are comparable from the beginning with respect to these
two important school-related abilities. Any subsequently measured differences in
achievement between the groups can then be reasonably attributed to other factors.
The Metropolitan Readiness Tests are also being administered at the beginning of
kindergarten to assess the students' readiness for school learning. The kindergarten
level of this test assesses skills related to auditory memory, rhyming, letter recog-
nition, visual matching, listening, quantitative language, and copying. The kinder-
garten program is a full day, with half the day spent in English and half in French.
The progress of each subgroup will be monitored each spring until the end of
grade 3. A battery of English language, French language, and mathematics tests
will be used, where appropriate, for this purpose. Only English language achieve-
ment is being assessed at the end of the kindergarten year. The French language
achievement of each immersion subgroup will be compared to that of the other
immersion subgroups, and their English language and academic achievement,
where assessed, will be compared to that of non-immersion students attending the
same schools.
To date, pilot groups have been evaluated as of the end of kindergarten, and
follow-up groups have been pretested. Only the results of the pilot kindergarten
groups are presently available. The following discussion will focus on each ethnic
and socioeconomic subgroup separately.
English language development. All the pretest scores and the spring English
language results were submitted to three-way analyses of variance, with program
(immersion, non-immersion), socioeconomic status (middle class, working class),
and ethnicity (black, white) as the independent variables (see Table I). As expected

549
FRED GENESEE

TABLE I
Cincinnati Partial Immersion Program—Pretest Results
Middle class Working class
Non- Non-
Immersion Immersion
immersion immersion
Raven's Progressive
Matrices (36)
Group F= .43 (1,134)
White 15.08 15.93 14.69 14.77
Black 15.89 15.33 12.53 13.05
Peabody Picture
Vocabulary Test (45)
Group F = . 3 8 (1,137)
White 32.08 31.32 29.65 30.93
Black 29.22 29.89 26.35 27.68
Metropolitan
Readiness Test (76)
Group F = 1.61 (1,136)
White 60.52 58.43 58.76 54.77
Black 61.56 56.33 48.50 48.95
Note. Maximum test scores are entered in parentheses after test names.

on the basis of the preselection procedures, the immersion and non-immersion

students did not differ significantly on the pretest measures, including the Metro-
politan Readiness Tests. Furthermore, the immersion and non-immersion students
did not differ significantly from one another when examined according to socio-
economic and ethnic subgroupings. Thus, one can be reasonably confident that the
respective immersion and non-immersion subgroups are comparable from the
outset with respect to nonverbal reasoning and verbal ability.
There were no significant between-group differences on the English language
tests administered in the spring (see Table II), nor were there significant interaction
effects involving program type with either social class or ethnicity. This means that,
taken as a whole, the immersion students did not differ significantly from the non-
immersion students in English at the end of their kindergarten year. That there
were no program by social class interaction effects means that the working class
students from the immersion program scored just as well on the English language
tests as the working class students from the regular English program, and similarly
that the middle class immersion students scored just as well as the middle class
non-immersion students. When the raw scores from the Metropolitan Tests were
converted to stanine equivalents, it was found that all four of these groups scored
in the average stanine range (i.e., 4-5-6) and thus were performing on par with
average kindergarten children in the United States.
That there were no statistically significant program by ethnicity interaction effects
means that the black students from the immersion group scored just as well as the
black students from the non-immersion group, and, similarly, the white students
from the immersion group scored just as well as the white students from the non-
immersion group. Thus, apparently students from both the majority white group

550
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

TABLE II
Cincinnati Partial Immersion Program—Summary of Spring Kindergarten Test Results
Middle class Working class

Non- _ Non-
Immersion Immersion
immersion immersion
English language results
Metropolitan Readi-
ness Test (73),
Group F = 1.47(1,133)
White 58.61 61.04 56.12 55.46
Black 57.13 57.33 45.19 51.11

F
French language results White Black White Black
Ratio
French Comprehension Test:
raw score (45): 33.50 35.11 32.25 29.42 3.45
(1,68)
percentile: 67 74 62 53

Test maternelle
linguistique:
listening (20): 13.12 15.33 13.31 12.37 .63
(1,68)
speaking (17): 5.31 5.00 5.50 4.17 .26
(1,67)
total (37): 18.42 20.33 18.81 16.44 .55
(1,67)

and from the minority black group experienced no setbacks in their native English
language development as a result of participation in this partial immersion program.
This is particularly interesting in the case of the black students, many of whom
speak a nonstandard dialect of English and, therefore, can be said to be functioning
in both a second language during half the school day (French) and in a second
dialect during the other half (standard English). The present results indicate that
these nonstandard dialect speakers appear to have no difficulty mastering literacy
skills in the standard dialect.
Second language achievement. Turning now to French language achievement,
the immersion students were administered two French language tests: the French
Comprehension Test (Barik, 1976) and the Test maternelle linguistique (Stevens,
1983). The French Comprehension Test was designed to assess the listening
comprehension skills of partial immersion students in Canada. It assesses compre-
hension of single words, sentences, and short stories. Percentile norms, based on
the performance of partial immersion students in Canada, are provided, making it
possible to compare the achievement of the Cincinnati immersion students to that
of Canadian immersion students. The Test maternelle linguistique has two com-
ponents, one assessing listening comprehension and the other oral production skills
in French. The comprehension component tests comprehension of vocabulary,

551
FRED GENESEE

short phrases, and short stories using a variety of toys, pictures, and other realia.
The test is administered to small groups of students. For the oral production
component the students are tested individually; they are asked to name objects
(vocabulary), to use complements and prepositions by describing the relationships
of objects to one another, to produce short phrases in response to questions from
the examiner, and to express themselves freely by telling a short story based on a
sequence of cartoon-like pictures. The test is scored using both objective and
subjective criteria. The French language test scores were analyzed using analysis of
variance procedures with social class and ethnicity as independent variables (see
Table II).
There were no statistically significant differences between the middle class and
working class students or between the black students and white students on either
of the French tests. In particular, the working class students scored just as well as
the middle class students, and the black students scored just as well as the white
students. When social class differences were examined for each ethnic group
separately, it was found that there were no differences between the middle class
and the working class white students on either French language test. Nor were there
differences between the working class and middle class black students on the Test
maternelle linguistique, but the middle class black students scored higher than the
working class black students on the French comprehension test. Inspection of the
test means reveals that the latter finding was due to the superior performance of
the middle class black students relative to all other groups; it was not due to below
average performance on the part of the working class black students who, in fact,
scored at the same level as the white students from both social class groups.
When the Comprehension Test results are converted to percentile form, it can
be seen that, on average, the Cincinnati students scored at the 60th percentile; that
is better than 60% of the Canadian students on whom the test was standardized. It
can also be seen from Table II that the students' comprehension skills were relatively
better than their oral production skills. This is characteristic of both first language
acquisition and second language learning and has been noted frequently in assess-
ments of Canadian immersion students (Genesee, 1983; Swain & Lapkin, 1981).
The oral production skills of the Cincinnati students were very rudimentary and
did not permit a detailed analysis; this is also common among kindergarten
immersion students in Canada.
Summary. Although preliminary, the Cincinnati results are highly consistent
with kindergarten evaluation results from Canada; indeed, the results of the middle
class white students replicate the Canadian results. In addition, the present results
indicate that students from lower socioeconomic families and from ethnic minority
groups can benefit from participation in partial immersion. In fact, it appears that
these students can experience the same benefits in second language learning as
students from more advantaged families. The Cincinnati immersion students
performed just as well as corresponding comparison students on the tests of English
language achievement. It is important to emphasize here that these results pertain
only to ethnic minority group children who may speak a nonstandard dialect of
English and, therefore, they cannot necessarily be generalized to ethnic minority
group children who do not speak English or who have limited proficiency in
English.

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 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

Immersion and Two-Way Bilingualism

The final application of immersion programs in the United States to be consid-
ered here includes features of the preceding cases but at the same time is distinctive
in other respects. Immersion programs for English-speaking American children
have been used in a number of American school districts in conjunction with Title
VII bilingual education programs for nonprofícient or limited English proficient
(NEP, LEP) students (see "An Exemplary Approach," 1982, and Cohen, 1975, for
examples). As in other early immersion programs, the English-speaking students
receive instruction in a second language during a substantial part of their elementary
school education; English is gradually and slowly introduced until the curriculum
is divided approximately equally between English and the second language. What
distinguishes these programs from the enrichment programs described in the first
section of this review is the inclusion of NEP or LEP students who are native
speakers of the target language. In fact, these programs are usually designed to
provide bilingual instruction to NEP/LEP students in compliance with Office of
Civil Rights guidelines concerning the educational treatment of such students. As
Title VII bilingual education programs, however, they differ from most bilingual
education in the United States by the inclusion of English-speaking students who
are learning a second language. These programs aim for two-way bilingualism in
that they promote bilingual proficiency in English and a non-English language
among both native English-speaking children and NEP/LEP children. Thus, these
programs represent an innovation to both the Canadian immersion programs and
the United States bilingual programs.

The San Diego Bilingual Immersion Program

The first program of this sort was instituted in San Diego in 1975. It was designed
to meet
the instructional needs of Spanish-speaking students with limited proficiency
in English In addition, since the program also includes native English-
speaking students, it allows minority language students to enjoy full integra-
tion while it provides exemplary second-language instruction for native
speakers of English. ("An Exemplary Approach," 1982, p. iii)

Approximately 60% of the students in the program are Spanish-speaking and the
remaining 40% English-speaking. They are grouped together in multilevel grades.
Participation in the program is voluntary for both the Spanish- and English-
speaking students. Project schools are located in areas of the district where there is
a sizeable population of Spanish-speaking children; as of 1982, there were six
project schools. Although no information concerning the students' socioeconomic
characteristics is contained in the project report, it seems likely that the Spanish-
speaking students are from predominantly working class homes.
Spanish is the main medium of instruction from preschool to grade 2. English is
taught for approximately 20 minutes a day in preschool, 30 minutes a day in
kindergarten, and 60 minutes a day in grades 2 and 3. There is a strong emphasis
in these grades on oral language training in both English and Spanish as a
preliminary to teaching literacy. Instruction is divided approximately equally

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FRED GENESEE

between English and Spanish during the remainder of the program, that is, grades
4, 5, and 6. English is used to teach language arts, music, art, and physical education
(for 2 hours), and Spanish is used to teach language arts, social studies, science,
and health (for 2 hours); mathematics instruction (1 hour) alternates between
Spanish and English on a weekly basis. Spanish language instruction during
preschool to grade 3 is provided by a bilingual teacher with the assistance of a
bilingual aide. English language instruction during these grades is provided by a
different, English-speaking teacher.
In grades 4 to 6 the teacher uses both Spanish and English to teach the curriculum
but never during the same instructional period. This is a marked departure from
the "concurrent method" of instruction that was commonly used in many early
bilingual education programs. According to this strategy, both English and the non-
English language would be used interchangeably, and in some cases non-English
translations of English utterances were even provided. It is now generally believed
that this approach engenders confusion or inattention to the language in which the
students are not proficient and is, therefore, counterproductive. The San Diego
project has been particularly successful at creating a Spanish-only setting during
the early elementary grades. This is an extremely important feature of this program
since it means that both the Spanish- and English-speaking students are given every
opportunity to develop high levels of proficiency in Spanish for academic purposes.
As Cummins (1981) has pointed out, high levels of proficiency in the bilinguaPs
two languages are necessary to incur the positive cognitive effects that are sometimes
associated with bilingualism. Moreover, a high level of proficiency in Spanish can
facilitate transfer of skills from Spanish to English and therefore expedite bilingual
proficiency (Cummins, 1981).
In order to maximize the mutual language learning benefits to be derived from
the presence of both English and Spanish speakers in the same class, the students
from both language groups are always kept intact as an instructional unit. However,
since the curriculum planners felt that simply mixing children with different
language backgrounds will not insure that they will actually interact and commu-
nicate, they have incorporated a lot of structured classroom activities that encourage
the students to talk with one another: "A strength of the program, particularly for
the preschool and kindergarten levels, is that classroom activities are well planned
and highly structured—more than classroom activities usually are at the earliest
grade levels" ("An Exemplary Approach," 1982, p. 33). A detailed and integrated
syllabus based on current thinking regarding language and learning has been
designed to coordinate and reconcile the different instructional and linguistic needs
of these students. An example from the Kindergarten and Grade One instructional
guidelines will illustrate this point:

Two instructional techniques compensate for the differences in the Spanish

vocabulary and language patterns at the command of the K-1 class's two
native language groups at this early grade level. First, when the K-l class's
students are receiving Spanish oral language instruction as a total class, visual
aids—in the form of pictures, chalkboard drawings, gestures, and panto-
mines—are used to insure that the native speakers of English comprehend
what is being discussed. Second, when the class is divided for individualized
oral language instruction, the instructional emphasis for native-English-

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 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

speaking students is on reinforcing beginning Spanish vocabulary and lan-

guage patterns. (These same techniques apply to native-Spanish-speaking
students during the English language period.) ("An Exemplary Approach,"
1982, p. 41)

Program evaluation. The San Diego Bilingual Demonstration Project, as it is

officially called, has been evaluated on an annual basis by an independent evaluator.
Both Spanish- and English-speaking project students have been assessed for (a)
English and Spanish oral language proficiency, (b) English and Spanish reading
achievement, and (c) math tested in Spanish and in English. Student performance
in each domain has been interpreted with respect to test norms. In general, this is
a less satisfactory basis for interpretation than the performance of local comparison
groups of the type used in the Canadian, Culver City, and Cincinnati evaluations.
The results of the Spanish- and English-speaking project students were combined
and treated as a single group "since instructional goals are the same for students of
both native language groups" ("An Exemplary Approach," p. 185). This means
that it is not possible to differentiate the outcomes of the two language groups in
each domain of the assessment. It is possible that the English language results are
inflated by the results of the English-speaking project students and that the Spanish
language results are inflated by the results of the Spanish-speaking students.
Additional analyses are currently underway to examine the results for each language
subgroup separately (C. Herbert, May 1985, personal communication). In the
meantime, the results of the English-speaking and Spanish-speaking students com-
bined will be summarized here.
English language development. On average the project students scored below
grade level in English at the beginning of the program and had either attained grade
level proficiency or had made good progress toward grade level proficiency by the
end of the program. More specifically, students who entered the program in
kindergarten progressed from an average rating of "limited" proficiency in oral
English to an average rating of "proficient" in 3 years; they progressed from 1 year
below grade level in English reading in grade 2 to 8 months below grade level in
grade 5; and they progressed from 6 months below grade level in math tested in
English in grade 2 to 1 month below grade level in grade 5. A second cohort of
students who entered the program in grade 1 fared somewhat better than those
who entered in kindergarten. By grade 6 they had achieved a "proficient" rating in
oral English, and they scored 1 year above grade level in both English reading and
math tested in English. The differences between the kindergarten-entry and grade-
1-entry students may be due to the fact that the latter were assessed in grade 6 and
the former in grade 5, or they may be due to initial differences in ability or in
socioeconomic characterisics. The use of carefully selected comparison groups from
the same communities as the project students would help to answer these questions.
Spanish language development. The Spanish language results are quite variable.
The students received an average oral rating of "proficient" within 2 years of
entering the program. Kindergarten-entry students scored 5 months below grade
level on a Spanish reading subtest in grade 5, while the grade-1-entry students
scored 2 years above grade level by grade 6, having scored 5 months below grade
level in grades 3, 4, and 5. The evaluator offers no explanation for this rapid

555
FRED GENESEE

improvement or for the discrepancy between the two cohorts. Both cohorts scored
between 2 and 3 months above grade level by the end of grades 5 and 6 on a math
test administered in Spanish. Variability in the test results may be due in part to
the use of grade equivalent scores, which are generally regarded as problematic and
difficult to interpret (Cronbach, 1984).
Summary. A final assessment of the San Diego project awaits the results of
analyses of each language group considered separately. In particular, it is not
possible to evaluate the immersion portion of this program unequivocally as long
as the scores of the Spanish-speaking students are combined with those of the
English-speaking students. Notwithstanding the inconclusive nature of these results
for the purposes of this review, they illustrate the importance of longitudinal
evaluations of school programs of this sort. This point has been illustrated repeatedly
in evaluations of the Canadian immersion programs. It has been found that there
is generally a lag in English language literacy skills development during those grades
of the early total immersion program when English language arts are not taught.
Follow-up testing of these students has found that they achieve the same level of
proficiency as English control students within 1 year of receiving English language
arts instruction. Had the program not been viewed as longitudinal from the
beginning, then results from evaluations carried out during the early grades might
well have led to abandonment of the program because of the putative English
language deficits of the students. It was only through longitudinal testing that these
"deficits" were seen to be short term.
This point also warrants particular emphasis in the case of transitional bilingual
education programs for LEP/NEP students where there is often an urgency,
sometimes required by law, to "exit" students from the program as quickly as
possible, thereby increasing the risk that normal grade level proficiency in language
or academic domains will not be achieved. In fact, legal guidelines in some school
districts encourage mainstreaming LEP/NEP students from bilingual programs as
soon as they have scored at the 25th percentile on a standardized English language
test, thereby insuring below average performance in an all-English class. Surely the
rationale behind bilingual education or any special educational treatment of LEP/
NEP students would recommend that they be able to compete on an equal footing
with at least half of their English classmates before being integrated with them.

Conclusions
Immersion programs aim to develop full bilingual proficiency, and therefore they
have been characterized as additive. In contrast, bilingual education programs of
the transitional type for LEP or NEP students in the United States have been
characterized as subtractive because they aim for full proficiency in English only
(Chavez, 1984). The students' home language is used in school only temporarily as
a bridge to an all-English curriculum. The possibility of using immersion for
educating LEP/NEP students has become a hotly debated issue in the United States
(e.g., see Baker & de Kanter, 1983, and "Studies on Immersion," 1984). In
concluding this review, it is important to emphasize that immersion programs were
designed for English-speaking, majority group children, and the evaluation results
pertain to this population only. Therefore, the conclusions to follow should not be
interpreted to pertain to the case of LEP/NEP students. The relevance of the

556
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

immersion approach for educating LEP/NEP students has been considered in some
detail by Chavez (1984) and Genesee (1985).
The evaluation results of the American immersion programs reviewed here
suggest a number of general conclusions regarding the impact of immersion
programs on native language development, academic achievement, and second
language learning. These conclusions are somewhat incomplete and await the
outcomes of ongoing research, including, for example, the follow-up testing of the
Cincinnati project and the results from the San Diego subgroup analyses.

First Language Development

With respect to English language development, the Culver City, Cincinnati, and
Montgomery County results indicate that English-speaking students experience no
long-term deficits in their English language development as a result of participation
in an immersion program of either the total or partial type. The results from these
three projects are especially important because appropriate comparison groups were
included in the evaluations. The Culver City and Montgomery County results are
highly consistent with the Canadian results, as one would expect in view of the fact
that these two projects are highly similar to many of the Canadian projects.
Of particular interest are the Cincinnati results, which go beyond the Canadian
findings in indicating that children from a minority ethnic group, many of whom
speak a nonstandard dialect of English, and/or who are from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds, also show normal levels of first language development in immersion
programs. These findings contribute to a series of Canadian studies that have sought
to explore the suitability of immersion programs for students with characteristics
and backgrounds that often put them at a disadvantage in school. Genesee (1976)
has examined the suitability of immersion programs for students with below average
levels of academic ability, and Bruck (1982) has examined students with specific
language difficulties. Contrary to some expectations, these types of students have
been found to demonstrate the same rate and level of development in English and
in academic domains as comparable groups of students attending regular English
schools. At the same time, they achieve significantly higher levels of second language
proficiency than students in the regular English program who receive conventional
instruction in French as a second language. These kinds of studies are important
because they provide an empirical basis on which to formulate policy regarding
eligibility for immersion. In fact, these results provide no justification for local
educational policy that seeks to exclude such children from participating in im-
mersion programs.

Academic Achievement
With respect to academic achievement, and mathematics in particular, the Culver
City and Montgomery County results indicate that the students had no difficulty
assimilating new academic knowledge and skills even though they were taught
through a second language. The English language and mathematics results from
the San Diego evaluation corroborate the above findings but are less conclusive
owing to the use of a combined-groups analysis in that study. Assessments of
academic achievement will be added to the Cincinnati study in grade 1 after the
students have studied enough academic material in their second language to warrant
evaluation.
557
FRED GENESEE

Second Language Achievement

The second language results are more complex and varied. Assessments of
immersion students' second language reading skills have varied from approximately
1 year below grade level (Culver City) to above average (Montgomery County) or
above grade level (San Diego). Variations in grade level, student ability, socioeco-
nomic status, and other factors may account for these differences. Notwithstanding
this variation, even the lowest reading assessment results attest to relatively high
levels of achievement.
With regard to speaking and listening comprehension, it can be said that the
American immersion students under evaluation attained functional proficiency in
the target languages. This was evidenced by their performance on speaking and
listening tests standardized on native speakers or on Canadian students participating
in early total immersion programs. Observations of the students' second language
use both in school and outside school, as reported by the Culver City evaluators,
also attest to high levels of functional proficiency. The Cincinnati results are
important in suggesting that immersion students from lower socioeconomic back-
grounds and/or from minority ethnic groups who speak a nonstandard dialect may
be as effective in developing speaking and listening skills as students from middle
socioeconomic backgrounds and/or from the majority ethnic group. At the same
time, it has also been reported in the Culver City evaluations that the immersion
students had not attained truly native-like mastery of the target language even after
6 years of immersion in Spanish. This has been found by Canadian evaluators as
well, and is probably not unexpected given the language-learning limitations of
most school environments. What is noteworthy is that their linguistic deficiencies
do not seem to impair their communicative proficiency. Extracurricular activities,
such as exchange visits with students who speak the target language or attendance
at summer camps with target language speakers, could play an important role in
promoting native-like levels of proficiency.
It is interesting to note that all of the immersion projects in the United States
have been of the early type; there do not appear to be any delayed or late immersion
programs. In Canada, late immersion programs have been found to be very
effective. In fact, research carried out in Montreal over several years has found that
students attending 2-year late immersion programs achieve the same level of
proficiency in all aspects of French as do students who have attended early total
immersion programs, despite the fact that the former have had considerably less
exposure to French—approximately 1,400 hours compared to 5,000 hours by the
end of grade 8 (Genesee, 1981). In 2-year late immersion programs all curriculum
instruction except English language arts is given in French for 2 consecutive years—
grades 7 and 8 in most districts. As in the case of other immersion students, late
immersion students do not experience any setbacks in English language develop-
ment or academic achievement. The effectiveness of the late immersion option has
been attributed to the cognitive and linguistic maturity of older students, which is
thought to contribute to more rapid progress in second language learning (Genesee,
1981). This option may be of potential interest to American educators and parents
who wish to concentrate on first language development prior to extensive exposure
to a second language. A number of school districts in Canada offer both early and
late immersion options so that parents are able to choose the alternative that best
suits them.
558
 SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THROUGH IMMERSION

The conclusions reported here corroborate the Canadian findings in most im-
portant respects. In summary, they indicate that the immersion approach is a
feasible and effective way for English-speaking American students to attain high
levels of second language proficiency without risk to their native language devel-
opment or their academic achievement. In a comparison of alternative elementary
school foreign language programs in the United States, Gray, Rhodes, Campbell,
and Snow (1984) found that students in American immersion programs out-
performed students in FLES programs in all language skills: speaking, listening,
reading, and writing. At the same time, the American programs afford researchers
and educators an opportunity to extend their knowledge of the immersion approach
by providing a number of program variations that, although not as popular as their
Canadian counterparts, are truly innovative. More specifically, the magnet school
immersion programs have been instructive in demonstrating the suitability of the
immersion approach for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and from
minority ethnic groups in contrast to the majority of Canadian programs and the
American enrichment programs, which involve predominantly middle class, white,
standard English-speaking students. The two-way bilingual/immersion programs
are instructive as examples of truly bilingual, integrated programs involving partic-
ipants from both language/cultural groups. By providing peer contact in the target
language, this approach promises to remedy some of the shortcomings inherent in
immersion programs in which only the teacher has native proficiency in the target
language.
At a time when a growing number of educational authorities, including, for
example, the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International
Studies, have expressed concern over Americans' general incompetence in foreign
languages and their ignorance of foreign cultures, the immersion approach offers
an educational response that is showing itself to be both effective and feasible in
the American public school system.

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AUTHOR
FRED GENESEE, Associate Professor, Department of English as a Second Lan-
guage, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 1890 East-West Rd., Honolulu, HI 96822.
Specializations: Bilingual education, bilingualism, second language learning.

561

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