Being thrown in at the deep end works

Mandarin is taught to more than 400 students, with many using an immersion method at Bohunt School. [Photo/Provided to China Daily]

Tania Horak, a language lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, says immersion teaching is an interesting concept and she believes it has many advantages, among them that "the main concept behind this approach is that language is being used for real-life goals of actual communication, which is often missing from other types of language classrooms".

Horak's viewpoint was vividly illustrated when one of the Bohunt students realized halfway through delivering a technology workshop that her audience was primarily French-speaking and thus, because of her increased confidence through Bohunt's French immersion program, switched languages and presented the rest of the workshop in French.

Juan Cole, head of Chinese at Bohunt School, says the immersion program creates an authentic environment for students to learn the language and, for example in the physical education lessons, "you learn by doing, which is exactly the same as when you learn your first language".

The proof can also be found in the results of Cole's GCSE class who are taking the exam, which is aimed at 16 year-olds, three years early, with 90 percent of them predicted to get an A or A-star, well above the national average.

The program, especially the inclusion of Mandarin, has received widespread acclaim through the British Council and HSBC's National Mandarin Chinese Speaking Competition, in which students from Bohunt reached the national final three years in a row.

This year, Lila Marshman, 13, a Mandarin immersion program student at Bohunt, impressed the judges with her language skills and won the first prize of the beginner level section of the contest.

However, even with the immersion program's recognizable successes it is nowhere close to becoming widespread around Britain.

The main problem, Horak suggests, is that the effectiveness of the approach relies on the quality and commitment of the teachers.

"They need to be confident, enthusiastic, and proficient users of the language, notably not necessarily native speakers, however, who above all understand key principles of second-language acquisition."

Lara Wolfe contributed to this story.

wangmingjie@mail.chinadailyuk.com