Language is power, to teach language is to empower.

The quotes in this posts are from the article, “Language immersion has many meanings,” December 1st, 2007, by Valerie Strauss, found at http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/335111.html on December 2nd, 2007.

This article describes what, exactly, immersion programs are and what different types exist. It is important to note that these programs are not merely throwing students in an environment where only the foreign language they are to learn is spoken. There are actually different types of immersion, total, partial and two-way. Two-way is my personal favorite since it helps students to become used to interacting with native speakers of a different language. It involves one to two-thirds of the class being native speakers of a certain foreign language and the rest of the class being native speakers of the language used in the country in which the class is taught. This type of classroom has numerous cultural and linguistic benefits, most importantly to me being that it helps students to develop a pronunciation in their foreign language that is more near to that of native speakers than students who learn in a different style of language classroom.

Language immersion programs are the best way for students to become better at spoken language. Not only to achieve better pronunciation and the ability to call to mind the words that you wish to say, but also to become confident in their abilities and able to carry on casual conversations. They are a great way to learn the language in a way that will be the most useful.

Immersion programs mean getting away from your typical magical phrases that are never really used to more useful content-based literacy language that students can use in life.

I experienced this when I took classes in Germany. The things I learned in class were completely practical and I found myself using them in casual conversation outside of class. This made it quite a bit easier for me to remember and keep using these things.

Immersion programs often involve teaching other subjects in the language being learned. The author of this article describes how most programs operate with regards to this,

The reason some programs use science and math is because they are very hands-on, and that motivates the kids to learn the language through the content, whereas if you go with language arts, then you are going to focus on the language.

I found this to be a very good point. If you concentrate on a language itself, you will actively think about using it. If you use a language to learn other things, such as math and science, you we be concentrating on the concepts themselves rather than the language you are using. This will greatly improve language skills and help students to think in that language automatically instead of paying too much attention to what they are saying and translating from their native language. This is a vital skill for foreign language speakers to achieve fluency. I can only hope that I someday work at a school where classes are taught in this way.