A Study Of The English Immersion Teaching In Primary School

With the rapid development of economy and technology, English is becoming more andmore important in our daily life. The communication and cooperation of countries arebecoming closer and closer. Therefore, Chinese people pay more attention to oral English.They have known the importance of the ability to speak fluent English.Students begin to learn English from grade one in primary school, which is regarded asa very important period of learning English. However, there are few studies on the field oflearning English in primary school. Immersion Instruction is derived from Canada. It is aneffective second language teaching model. In China, we use the Immersion Instruction inorder that we can use English as the teaching language to teach the students who speakChinese as first language and make them immersed in the second language when they haveEnglish classes at school. Immersion Instruction focuses on the application of language.This thesis takes72students as experimental subjects which are from2classes of gradeone in primary school. Each class has36students. The experiment chooses one class as theexperimental group using English as the teaching language in the class and makes the teachersand students try the best to speak English as much as possible. The experiment choosesanother one class as control group using the traditional way to teach English. This studyadopts questionnaire, interview and tests as the instruments and addresses the followingquestions:(1) Can English immersion teaching improve children s interests in English?(2) Is English immersion teaching a good method to improve children s English testscores?The results of the research show the following findings:(1) English immersion teaching is a good method to improve children s interests inEnglish.(2) English immersion teaching is a good method to improve children s English test scores.Children s motivation of learning English has been greatly stimulated and they may useEnglish to communicate with each other unconsciously. Teachers become more and moreconfident in their teaching and they are aware of the importance of continuous study ofEnglish. Parents hold the positive attitude towards the Immersion Instruction.This thesis states that English immersion teaching is an effective method of Englishlearning. This study has some theoretical significance and pedagogical implication for Englishteaching in primary school.