A Case for Structured Immersion.

摘要: B ilingual education came of age in 1974 when the U.S. Supreme Court reached unanimous decision Lau is. Nicbols that public schools must provide special assist ance to students who enter school with limited English proficiency It was no longer legal merely place lan guage minority conven tional classrooms where all instruction conducted English. However, decision, did not recommend any specific edu cational model for serving these students. Within a short period time, US Office Civil Rights, on ad vice an expert panel, developed guidelines districts fol low These so-called Remedies specified language stu dents should be taught academics their primary home until they could effectively benefit from instruction. This transitional bilingual mod el has been predominant mode over past decade, pan because monitoring by Rights The strong common sense and hu mane appeal; it seems logical teach reading, math, arts native Districts can point classes being Spanish, Vietnamese, or Hmong as visible sign recognize needs rights children recent years, doubts have expressed about effica cy this served A controversial evaluation Danoff (1978) found difference achievement between Hispanic pro grams without For both groups, normreferenced test scores math were below 30th percentile at 19th reading. more review 39 studies prepared Department Education (Baker de Kanter, 1983) concluded had minimal success there is empirical evi dence support its use Baker Kanter called attention promising research findings Canada structured immersion W ith immer sion, done commonly used (English U.S., French Canada) lei vl understood Superficially, im mersion may seem similar what courts outlawed 19"T4; is, sink-or-swim approach those proficient domi nant culture. But critical difference: teachers do assume understand Difficult new words are pretaught, sometimes using child's guage. According Baker: Language effect learn leam through struction understandable level proficiency. In short, prac tice makes perfect, best learned much possible day (1984. p. 2).