A Case Study Of English Immersion In Sino-foreign Joint High School Education Program

With the acceleration of globalization and the increasing number of Chinese people that choose to go abroad to further their study, the English immersion education is becoming more and more popular. The immersion education is a kind of education that immerses the learners into the target language. Unlike a more traditional language course, the teachers use the target language to teach all the curriculums in order to make the learners acquire the target language. In some parts of China, the children immersion education programs have been conducted. Some universities in China have also launched bilingual education programs and made more or less success. Through a case study on the Sino-American high school education program of High School Attached to Capital Normal University, the present paper will investigate some details of the English immersion including its general curriculum design, teaching materials, curriculum teaching as well as students'response to the immersion education.This study choose the 65 students of Grade 11 in the International Department of High School Attached to Capital Normal University as subjects and employ three methods to conduct the research including the interview, classroom observation and object analysis. The note-based content analysis is used to analyze the data of interviews. The data of classroom observation are mainly from the researcher's notes and diaries. And the object analysis will provide multiple angles for the study of immersion education.The results of the study show that (1) the program integrates language performance with the cultivations of innovation ability, international horizon and interpersonal communication, and emphasizes on both the classroom curriculums and after-class activities so as to ensure the possibility and flexibility of conducting immersion education; (2) the teaching materials of TOEFL and AP curriculums satisfy the need of the program and promote the success of immersion education; (3) the principle of immersion education is to acquire the language in an authentic language environment and put it into practical; (4) in the immersion program, students not only have performed well on the language competence but also have made progress on the development of cognition and interpersonal communication.Based upon the findings, this study recommends that the adoption of immersion education programs in China have made more or less success, although it encountered many problems. The immersion education is more like a methodology of teaching which emphasizes on the overall development of language learners.