Immersion and Bilingualism

What is immersion?

Immersion is a form of bilingual education in which at least 50% of content-area instruction takes place through the target (second) language. Studies in bilingual education indicate many benefits of Navajo bilingual education and bilingualism in general, including improved academic achievement, strong cultural identity, and resilience^[1]. However, many established Indigenous language immersion (ILI) schools teach 70-90% of content through the Indigenous language^[2]. First launched in a few schools serving Native Hawaiian and Navajo students in the 1980s, ILI practices were developed by grassroots teams of Indigenous and non-Indigenous practitioners and parents; the launch was in response to the dual realities of enduring achievement disparities and a growing trend toward Indigenous language and culture loss—the consequence of a long history of policies of linguistic and cultural suppression. Whereas previous generations of Native American students entered school speaking a Native American language, most Native students today speak English as a primary language. ILI is thus a unique form of bilingual-bicultural-biliteracy education in which all or most academic content is learned through the Indigenous (heritage) language, resulting in a strong push towards Native language and culture revitalization. It has shown great success in producing child speakers of the Indigenous language^[3]. ILI is also unique in the challenges it faces; diminishing numbers of speakers and inequitable access to higher education mean that there are few Indigenous-language speaking teachers available, and those that are available are often second-language learners themselves. ILI programs must therefore “grow their own” teaching staff and curricula—a long-term, resource-intensive process. However, among Diné communities, there are still many adult speakers, making this an opportune time to grow their language abilities into immersion teaching skills.

Why is immersion important?

Bilingualism confers cognitive benefits that extend over the lifespan (Kroll & Bialystok 2013).
Promoting and maintaining the home language increases children’s academic success as well as their health and well-being (Chee 2017; Chee, Forthcoming; Collins et al. 2011; Genesee, 2017; Wilkinson & Morford 2020).
First language loss can have serious repercussions for children, both emotionally and academically (Restrepo & Gutiérrez-Clellan 2012; Wong Fillmore 1991, 2000).

^[1] Rosier, P. and Holm, W. (1980) The Rock Point Experience: A Longitudinal Study of a Navajo School Program. Center for Applied Linguistics, Papers in Applied Linguistics. Bilingual Education Series: 8

^[2] Coronel-Molina, Serafin M. & McCarty, Teresa L. (Eds). (2016). Indigenous language revitalization in the Americas. New York, NY: Routledge Press.

^[3] Hinton, Leanne & Hale, Ken (Eds.) (2001). The green book of language revitalization in practice. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.