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Bilingual and multilingual education in national language policy.

Conference Paper · January 2007

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Lo Bianco, Joseph (2007). Bilingual and multilingual education in national language policy. In K.
Person & U. Warotamaikkhadit (Eds.), Proceedings of the Bilingual and Multilingual Education in the
National Language Policy Conference (pp. 9-23). Thailand: The Royal Institute of Thailand.

Bilingual and multilingual education in National Language Policy

Joseph Lo Bianco PhD

University of Melbourne, Australia

Introduction: Ideal Language Policymaking

When asked to describe or recommend an ideal or optimal national language policy I usually say that
it should have three features: it should be explicit, comprehensive, and public. In this paper I will reflect
on language policy in these terms before discussing some issues specific to Thailand. In common with
many countries, but in its own distinctive way, Thailand faces considerable language challenges today
at three levels of application, the sub-national, national and extra-national. Each of these levels also
involves categories of languages, at least three can be identified, the indigenous, the immigrant and
the international. Of course it is possible to develop a language policy that targets one or even none of
these categories of language application or that addresses only one of the levels application. It is also
possible to develop language policies that are not public, not comprehensive, and not explicit. This
happens all the time. Policies are often developed privately without any consultation with affected
communities, or are restricted to some elites, or deal with language questions indirectly. This type of
policy we can call the implicit, or covert. l mean that when we develop policies in areas such as health,
education or tourism which certainly have an effect on language, we actually do not address language
issues directly. These are implicit language policies because the direct policy focus on health or
tourism still impacts on issues of language but is not the main focus of the policy as such. Implicit,
private and partial approaches to policy suffer from the problem that to be most effective language
policies should gain the support and commitment of those who are affected by the policy. If we do
address language issues directly we can monitor the effect of our actions more clearly, adjust our
actions if our evaluations show that we need to modify the original policy, and ensure that there will not
be unjust consequences for some groups in the community.

Language policies are 'slow acting'. This means that we do not see the results of our policy
immediately and so if we have made a mistake in formulating the initial policy it might take a long time
before the problems become evident. This is why continual monitoring of the effects of policy
implementation is important. Keeping these considerations in mind, the ideal approach to a language
policy is to be as explicit as possible, as comprehensive as we can manage and to conduct the
process in an open and public way. Being explicit means making it clear to the community what we are
trying to achieve and evaluating the impact of our actions and changing course if we need to. Being
comprehensive means that we aim not to disadvantage any section of the community and so retain
the support of those affected. After all, if affected communities do not share the goals of language
policy then its chances of succeeding are greatly reduced. Being public and open means engaging in
consultation with communities, seeking ideas and suggestions from them, explaining technical issues
and research processes and negotiating a shared commitment to the goals and aims of the policy.

There are many types of language policy and language planning. Just because a country does not
have an explicit written policy does not mean that it has no language policy. Language is part of social
life, part of everything we do, in business, in television, in commerce, in our personal relationships, in
traveling. There are few aspects of society, or of social relationships, where language is absent. If we
do not have a language policy, then we just allow the marketplace to make the decisions on language.
This means that in a multilingual country, and a multilingual and globalizing world, stronger languages
will dominate. A language policy that is written down forces us to think through what we would like to
see happen with languages, rather than just leaving the fortunes of languages and communication
issues to the market place, or to the linguistic jungle. Developing a language policy gives us an
opportunity to review what is going on, to make the best choices in the interests of the citizens of the
country. The kind of policies that I like to work on are the policies that are debated openly and that are
developed democratically because this gives people a chance to have a say and to influence the
policy in a direction that is important to them. Policy development is part of citizenship education and
public participation.
Language planning
Language planning is the activity of implementing a language policy. There are essentially six main
kinds of language planning activity. These are: Status Planning, Corpus Planning, Acquisition
Planning, Esteem Planning and Discourse Planning.

Status Planning: This refers to the legal standing and rights of different languages in multilingual
countries. Many countries have statements in their national constitutions naming the official language
and setting out the status of other languages. This legal recognition can be very simple such as
declaring that X is the official language of Y, or it can be more elaborate declaring that X is to be the
sole language used in courts of law and education, but A and B languages can be used in other
domains.

South Africa’s constitution recognizes thirteen languages: English, Afrikaans, and then another 11
languages that are indigenous African languages of that country. This does not mean that all those
languages get the same treatment or the same support, but in different ways each of the thirteen
languages gains recognition. Canada recognizes two official languages and declares that they are
equal in the country. Even though English is economically and socially dominant over French, they
have equal legal status. Belgium’s constitution recognizes a local version of French and Dutch in
different parts of the country but it also has laws that recognize German in one small area, and which
declare the national capital, Brussels, to be bilingual. The Indian constitution recognizes Hindi and
English as having national official status, but it also schedules another 13 languages in particular
states and then recognizes a large number of minority languages. Many constitutions recognize one
official language, such as France, whose constitution declares French official. Although France does
not officially recognize other languages in reality there are many minority, regional and immigrant
languages used across France. There are many societies that have status language planning and
there is a great variation in how it works. Some countries have official languages but no official
declaration of this status. An example is the United States, where some 22 states have declared
English the official language, others have declared English plus another language (Hawaii recognizes
English and Hawaiian), while most, and the Federal government, do not recognize any languages at
all.

Corpus Planning: Status planning is usually undertaken by politicians and policy makers. Corpus
planning is a more specialized linguistic kind of language planning that is mostly undertaken by
professional linguists, in collaboration with a community of speakers. Some examples include the work
of linguists to develop writing systems for indigenous languages or to develop terminology and
expressions. In Australia there are many examples of corpus language planning. There are well over
100 surviving Aboriginal languages in Australia and many linguists work with these communities. Many
of these communities have their own linguists who have been trained within the communities
themselves and who assist the speakers of these languages to develop the speech, or writing, so the
languages can be used in schooling to teach children their first language.

Acquisition Planning: This kind of language planning is sometimes called language in education
policy, and essentially it means developing policies to learn other languages, like Thailand does with
English. Acquisition planning is discussed in detail below.

Usage Planning: This is a more recently identified form of language planning activity. It refers to
action taken to extend the settings and domains in which language is spoken. Expanding the use of a
language is seen to make that language stronger and longer lasting. An excellent example is the work
of the Welsh Language Board in Wales in the United Kingdom. In recent years status planning has
given Welsh more recognition and now a wide range of activities are underway to strengthen this
minority language. Welsh used to be a seriously endangered language, but today it appears to be
stronger because more young children are being raised speaking the language. One kind of usage
planning has been to encourage mothers of newborn babies to bring up their children in Welsh. For
the first time in nearly 200 years there is an increase in the number of infants who speak that
language. There is usage planning in the region of Catalonia in Spain as well, where many
shopkeepers cooperate to try and encourage young children to be able to use Catalan in their daily life
when they go to the shops because in the past the number of places it could be used was very
restricted. As a result today Catalan is a much more vibrant language than it was a few decades ago.

Esteem Planning: This kind of language planning refers to how writers and others with social prestige
try to raise the reputation of a language. The esteem usually follows the creation of important works of
literature in a language, or even in a dialect of a language, and over time people come to have a
higher opinion of the language concerned. In some countries official academies support literature in
the national language, especially if it is a language that has been suppressed in the past, and these
academies aim to bring about a change in the informal status of the language. As people come to
admire the language and feel that it is capable of expressing significant thoughts, or which has an
important heritage in its literature or its intellectual traditions, they will want to use the language and
support its development.

Discourse Planning: This is perhaps the most controversial kind of language planning, and some
people disagree that it can be called language planning at all. At its best discourse planning means
training people to develop persuasive ways to express themselves, so that they can participate in
society and accomplish their goals by effective use of written or oral communication. Discourse
planning, in its worst sense, means propaganda or brain washing. We can see this kind of discourse
planning when advertisers try to get customers to buy what they want them to buy by singing their
jingles, or when political parties try and persuade citizens that their way of thinking is the only right
way. In these examples, the language used tries to block out alternative understandings or alternative
meanings so that the thinking process of an individual reflects what a powerful outsider desires.

Discourse planning is part of all other kinds of language planning. If we want to develop a
comprehensive, explicit national language policy for Thailand we will need to persuade people that this
is a desirable thing to do. To achieve this goal will require the language planners to persuade public
administrators, education officials, government agents, and other power-holders that it is in their
interests, and in the national benefit, to invest in producing a comprehensive national policy. This is
best done by focusing on the practical communication problems that Thai society faces and producing
evidence that a comprehensive policy on languages will solve these problems.

Developing a national language policy

Many countries have foreign language teaching polices. This means that they engage in acquisition
planning, at the national level, for international languages. In Asian countries in recent years there has
been a major effort to improve the outcomes from English teaching, and to use English to teach other
subjects. Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China have all extended or improved their English
acquisition planning policies in the last 5 years. In some countries there can be very well developed
policies in some areas of application for language planning and nothing in other fields. At the Federal
level in the United States a Native American Languages Act was adopted in 1990 to support the
indigenous languages of the United States and many new foreign languages policies have been
adopted in the last two years, but the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was abolished in 2001. So the
United States has a policy for indigenous languages and foreign languages, i.e. for the indigenous
sub-national and extra-national areas, but not for the immigrant sub-national level.

I think it is important to bring all of these areas together in a single comprehensive policy that enables
a society to marshal all its resources to produce widespread bilingualism across the population.
Fundamentally, under globalization today, I think it’s very important that children who speak a minority
language other than the national language, such as Thai, should be able to maintain their language
and learn Thai and so become bilingual in this way. Thai speaking children should be able to maintain
and develop their Thai and learn a second or third language. The pathway to bilingualism for these
groups is different but the outcome is similar. A general policy aim to produce bilingualism for
everybody is highly appropriate in a time of rapid globalization. This goal should respect the context of
national cohesion and common citizenship by making Thai the common vehicle of communication. I
believe that a language policy should have important statements about the society and the opportunity
of the people in the society to have equal opportunity as citizens together.

However, I think language policies should also do a lot more. This is what our language policy in
Australia has tried to do in the past, to be comprehensive by dealing with status, acquisition and other
kinds of language planning within the same policy framework. Specifically we tried to combine the
teaching and learning of languages at the sub-national, national and extra-national levels (i.e.
indigenous and immigrant languages at the sub-national level, English as our national language at the
national level, and Asian and European foreign languages at the extra-national level) and to link these
activities with what we call language services. The term language services refers to the need to build
up a strong professional translating and interpreting service, to do ongoing research on language
problems, to support sign languages and to include communication support for blind children and
adults. Bringing together all these levels of activity has many benefits in efficiency of resources and
effectiveness of outcomes because all groups feel their needs are being attended to fairly and justly. A
good language policy should also include research and evaluation to support people both inside and
outside the country, as well as the speakers of languages to do their own research, to develop
research, to evaluate programs, because we are constantly learning new things about how to teach
languages well, how to keep minority languages vibrant in societies, and about how to be effective
intercultural communicators, including how English functions as an intercultural-international language.

For example, we now know through extremely good research that has been done in the last 5-10
years on people who have suffered injuries to the brain that bilingual people recover from brain
damage more quickly that monolingual people. And if you suffer certain kinds of brain damage in
certain parts of the brain, you are likely to recover more quickly or more fully if you, as a child, spoke
more than one language. We know that bilingualism also helps people to cope with some of the
illnesses that come through ageing, such as the loss of attention. We know these things because
research has been done that not only helps treat people who become ill, but also to understand how
language interacts with the brain and how we relate to each other in society. It’s important to deal with
as many areas as possible in language policies so that the interests and needs of a wide range of
people in the community are constantly addressed and so that there can be an efficient use of
resources.

A national language policy should begin from basic principles that should try to gain the attention and
support of as many people in the community as possible: such as the business sector, professional
educators, health officers, people concerned with the national language and its literature and
associated culture, regional, indigenous and immigrant minority groups, people concerned with
globalization and English as a global language. All of these come together in a comprehensive
approach, aiming to reach goals and objectives that are ambitious but realistic. The process begins
with research and documentation of practical language problems. We can then link these practical
language problems together into a draft language policy statement and begin an extensive public
conversation within the nation about how our communication is organized at present, what problems
we face, and how these problems can be tackled. If we do not have the principles and broad aims of
such a language policy, we cannot have a meaningful conversation with the responsible authorities
and with the affected groups.

In my experience as an observer and practitioner of language planning in diverse settings, such as

Scotland, Sri Lanka and Australia, I reached the conclusion that a partial language policy can actually
make existing language problems worse than doing nothing at all. For example, in 1956 Sri Lanka was
trying to cope with the legacy of colonialism and the unequal knowledge of English in society. This
made access to public resources and opportunities very difficult and created immense problems for
the majority of the nation’s people who did not know English. However, rather than a comprehensive
policy that would address the status problem for the national language Sinhala, and the masses
excluded from many social opportunities, and the status issues for the minority language, Tamil, as
well as the continuing need for English for extra-national purposes, the country adopted one official,
single language. Although it was not the sole cause of the conflict that followed, the 1956 official
language act did contribute to minority alienation without really solving the problem of the exclusion of
the masses from economic and social opportunities. A comprehensive and explicit approach would, in
hindsight, have been preferable.

Language policy development should include extensive consultation and collaboration. Everybody is a
speaker or user of language in some way; everybody has an interest in language. I think it is very
important to have language policy development based on wide consultation, involving all the
communities in a society, and building on the collaboration and support of people. Policies that are
imposed usually provoke resistance and produce problems. The steps in developing a comprehensive
policy are straightforward, as set out below:

Document language and communication problems (in education, health, citizenship etc.) > produce a
draft policy of principles and key actions for discussion > consult widely > gain feedback > incorporate
public views and suggestions in a formal policy > seek the endorsement of key cultural, social,
business, political figures > seek ‘champions’ > gain ratification from public authorities > devise a
process of implementation, evaluation and review > back all stages of the process with research
evidence > continually modify the policy on the basis of review findings.
What would this mean for Thailand?
Assuming we are committed to an explicit, public and comprehensive national language policy in
Thailand then what would be the categories of languages to be included? The three levels correspond
to three ‘i’s: indigenous languages, immigrant languages and international languages and would be
implemented in three broad levels of application: the sub-national, national and extra-national.

Sub- • Language support for • Access to standard Thai and Thai literacy for regional
National indigenous communities; minorities in Thailand;
• Language support for • Language and literacy support for minorities in regional
immigrant communities; languages;
• Language support for • Support for bilingualism among immigrants to Thailand;
Thai public • Sign language for the deaf;
administration in • Communication support for the communication
regional minority areas disabled;
and disadvantaged • Language support for blind persons;
urban zones; etc. • Etc.
National • Language support for • Interpreting and translating support for minorities to
citizenship, education, access Thai public administration and fulfill their
public administration and citizenship duties;
national unity • Research, monitoring and evaluation of language
policy
• Etc.
Extra- • Language support for • Promotion of Thai internationally;
National internationalization, • Promotion of Thai to Thai expatriates;
diplomacy, commerce, • Widespread English learning in Thailand;
tourism and regional • Learning of other prestigious or economically
relations significant languages for promoting Thai commerce,
tourism and international diplomacy and travel;
• Etc.

The above is only an indicative list of the policy application levels and the kinds of policy actions that
could be taken at these levels. The first step in the language planning process that I would
recommend would be to conduct a thorough examination of the fields of application and language
problems that exist and which can and should be tackled in a comprehensive, public and explicit
language policy.

Language-in-education
I will now focus on acquisition planning, and especially the models for teaching languages in schools.
In doing this, I will include both an international focus (such as the teaching of English, Mandarin,
Japanese, or German to Thai children) and a focus on minority languages. I will give examples from
what I would call immersion education and bilingual education.

The first point to make is that bilingual and immersion teaching share one important thing in common,
both teach subjects in and through two languages. This is different from traditional foreign language
teaching, which mostly teaches the language in and through the language itself. We can see this in
the following table.

Object and Medium Approaches to Teaching Second Languages

Model Content Teacher Talk
Object Teacher teaches English through Teacher talk is mostly about English
English (grammar, communication, expressions etc)
Content Teacher teaches subjects through Teacher talk is mostly about subject matter
English (geography, mathematics, history etc.)

Immersion and bilingual education are both forms of content teaching. In both of these the teacher is
teaching mainstream school subjects rather than the language, the learners are learning the language
through its use to teach subjects.

The very important thing here is what the teacher talks about – what comes out of the teacher’s
mouth. The teacher’s mouth is the single most important resource that a language program has, more
important than books and more important than computers.

The teacher’s talk in an object program is mostly about English, about grammar, communication,
expressions. In a content program, the teacher teaches a subject through English. So they are
teaching mathematics or geography or history of Thai citizenship studies in English. They are teaching
content, information that the students want to know, not the English language directly.

In content programs teachers’ linguistic input to learners (teacher classroom talk) serves two main
roles: it is the model of English that learners acquire (TL model) and it is the vehicle for content
(message conveying talk).

However, while immersion and bilingual education are similar in this fundamental way, research over
30 years has found that there are also important differences between immersion and bilingual
teaching. The main difference is whether the learners are minority children, or majority children.
Minority children are often in a situation where they are losing their first language and gaining the
national language, whereas majority children are not losing their first language as they gain a second
language. The first is subtractive bilingualism, the second is additive bilingualism. Sociologically this is
important and psychologically for the children involved the subtractive-additive difference is very
significant.

Bilingual education programs are mostly directed at immigrant and indigenous children who are trying
to maintain their first language (the L1), such as children in Thailand who speak a minority or regional
language at home and who learn Thai in school. The pathway to bilingualism for these children would
be via the maintenance of the first language and new learning of the second, national language.
Majority Thai children, say in Bangkok or Chiang Mai, are different. In an immersion program they
would be learning bilingually by gaining a second language, an L2, such as English. In this model of
immersion education English is used to teach subjects for Thai speaking children in Thailand. For
minorities who might speak Malay or Khmer, or for immigrant children to Thailand, the bilingual
program would consist of learning in their L1 and Thai as their L2. There are about 70 languages in
Thailand that might fit into this category. The table below sets out this difference.

Two Basic Models of Content Second Language Learning

Model Learners Method
Bilingual Education i) Immigrant and indigenous i) Maintaining minority language and
children in Thailand; learning Thai as L2
ii) Thai immigrant children in ii) Maintaining Thai as L1 and
Melbourne learning English as L2
Immersion Education i) Thai speaking children in i) Maintaining Thai as L1 and
Thailand; learning English as L2
ii) English speaking children in ii) Maintaining English as L1 and
Melbourne learning Thai as L2

We can see from the above that bilingual education is directed at minority children, whether they are
immigrants or regional/indigenous minority. This usually means that their first language is a home
language that is rarely supported in the wider community and often it is a language these children
struggle to maintain. By contrast, immersion content teaching is a strategy to teach a prestige
language. The difference between immersion and bilingual programs is not so much about what
happens in the school, but what happens outside of the school. The content and prestige carried by
the languages is different. Everyone can appreciate the necessity of learning a major international
language, such as English, the global economy functions in English, people all over the world study
English. There are more people in China studying English than there are North Americans. For
minority children in Thailand gaining Thai competence is similar in that it has major consequences for
the children’s ability to fit in, find jobs, get a higher education and progress economically. In both
cases, there is no struggle to justify the effort, the resources, or the time involved.

But maintaining minority languages is not constituted so positively. The effort, time, and resources are
questioned all the time. This is the situation for children of minority language backgrounds, who would
be learning a second language like Thai as their main school language but much of whose
communication and basic thinking skills would have been developed in their first language. Their
higher order thinking skills, however, are happening in their second language because that is the
language of the education in their country. Over time this will mean that the second language will
come to challenge, and probably replace, the first language.

Alongside this difference there is an additional difference between immersion and bilingual education,
related to what happens outside of school. The social status, esteem and rewards from the outcome of
schooling tend to be markedly different. This is reflected in the praise we give children. For example,
some US research found that Spanish-speaking children learning English were not praised very often,
but in the same school, English-speaking children who learned Spanish were given lots of praise by
their teachers. For a majority child to learn a second language, even when it is a minority language,
was seen as a bigger achievement than for a minority child to learn the majority language. This kind of
discrimination communicates a message to the child that his or her first language has little importance
if it is a minority language. In this way, one kind of bilingualism is valued while the other kind is de-
valued.

The next section focuses on immersion programs, and I will use the example of the teacher teaching
English through English to Thai children. Because these children continue to develop intellectually,
emotionally, and socially in Thai we can call the process “additive bilingualism” – the children are
adding a prestige language to their existing prestige language.

Immersion
So far I have made a distinction between content and object teaching and between two types of
content teaching (immersion and bilingual). In this section I will discuss several different types of
immersion teaching that are in use across the world.

The models I will use are just illustrations of what is possible and what is commonly found in different
parts of the world. They would need to be adapted to fit local circumstances but in general terms they
indicate what acquisition planning in different parts of the world has found useful in recent decades.
These models are: i) Early Partial ii) Early Total iii) Late Partial iv) Late Total v) Partial Continuous and
vi) Occasional Intensive.

Model (i) Early Partial Immersion: As the name implies Early Partial immersion starts at the
beginning of schooling with partial immersion, only a small part of the curriculum being delivered in the
target language. A key feature of early partial programs stipulates that important subjects should be
taught in both languages and so in a proper early partial program both languages should share the
teaching of important subjects. If this were being done in Thailand, up to half, but in reality closer to
40%, of the content during the first six years would be in English and the rest in Thai. After grade 6, an
early partial program would reduce the amount of English because children in secondary school are
dealing with more difficult material with increased reading demands, and so they would be doing more
work in Thai and the time devoted to English would reduce. This model of early partial is very common
in Canada. About 800 research studies have been done on this type of immersion program.

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Yr 6 Yr 7 Yr 8 Yr 9 Yr 10

The graph above shows this kind of program for 10 years of schooling. The darker shaded area
indicates the use of English, reducing from year 7 and again at year 9 in response to increased
academic demands in the Thai curriculum.

Model (ii) Early Total Immersion: The Early Total model starts completely in the target language
from the earliest years, and then reduces the amount of time spent learning the target language
through late elementary and secondary school. So, if this were being done in Thailand, all early
schooling would be offered in English, with the usage of Thai increasing after about grade 4. In the
graph below the shaded part refers to English.
The early total approach is usually used in situations where the writing systems of the two languages
are the same, and so the children do not have extra script or orthography to learn. This would be the
case in Spanish or English bilingual or immersion programs in the United States. Thus, this might not
be appropriate for Thailand, since the English and Thai scripts are so different. Because of this
difference, in a Thai national language policy the opposite approach might make more sense, which
would be to teach children’s initial literacy in the mother tongue (Thai for mainstream children, minority
language for minority children) aiming to teach minority children to become literate in their mother
tongue first.

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Yr 6 Yr 7 Yr 8 Yr 9 Yr 10

Model (iii) Late Partial Immersion: A Late Partial program involves having the early elementary
years taught all in the mother tongue. So this would involve Thai for mainstream students and the
minority language for minority students. Then, in the upper primary years the second language (L2) is
introduced – English for mainstream students, Thai for minority students. Then, as time goes by, the
L1 would gain more prominence again. This type of program establishes children’s literacy first and
foremost in their mother tongue. This is a very common program in Europe and the United Kingdom.

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Yr 6 Yr 7 Yr 8 Yr 9 Yr 10

Model (iv) Late Total Immersion: In a Late Total program children do all their early education in their
first language. Then, beginning in year or grade 5, there are several years of complete immersion in
the second language. By that time, the children have become strongly literate in their first language,
and use those skills to learn in the second language. Thereafter, the second language is reduced, and
the first language increased proportionately.

Late total programs are found in some Scandinavian countries, but are not very common. There are
some tertiary total immersion programs as well.

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Yr 6 Yr 7 Yr 8 Yr 9 Yr 10

Model (v) Partial Continuous Immersion: The Partial Continuous model is usually very subject-
specific. The great majority of teaching is in the child’s first and strongest language, and the second
language or target language is used only to teach some prestige subjects – in Malaysia since 2002-
2003 science, mathematics and technology subjects are taught in English (although not in all cases
throughout schooling).

Some people believe it is desirable to choose these subjects because they are less language-
intensive than literature, religion, history or other studies that might depend much more on language
exercises to show children’s understanding of the work they have done. This kind of program is also
favored because it can be used to increase the place of the second language a little when the children
have established a reading capability in the second language. This approach is also used in some
Amity school programs in Sri Lanka.

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Yr 6 Yr 7 Yr 8 Yr 9 Yr 10

Model (vi) Occasional Intensive Immersion: Occasional Intensive programs can be found in some
European schools, in the north of Italy and some schools in France and Spain. One approach of
several that are possible with this model is that single years in the target language are split by two
years in the home language. An alternative is to single years in each language (or even semesters
and terms) but during these periods the language that is used is the total means of teaching all
subjects.

The model shown below is based on full initial immersion, with single alternating years, and ends with
the final year in the home language. If this were being done in Thailand, a school might start an entire
full immersion year in English, making sure to end the schooling phase in Thai.

There has not been a great deal of evaluation of this approach, and so, it is not possible to
recommend or discourage its use on the basis of research, but it is growing in popularity in some
countries.

Yr 1 Yr 2 Yr 3 Yr 4 Yr 5 Yr 6 Yr 7 Yr 8 Yr 9 Yr 10

Non-school Based Immersion: An altogether different approach is the example of the immersion
villages in Korea. I recently visited the Gyeongi English Village, in Ansan Province south of Seoul.
What I will describe is only one instance of a program I observed and might well have changed since.

The children arrive in buses and are met by native speaking English teachers. The children encounter
something like culture shock almost immediately. Before they can enter the complex they begin their
English immersion, the entire facility being marked as an exclusive English language zone. For the
first time in their lives the students are talking to their teachers in colloquial English and are expected
to use first names. This is the first of a series of changes that brings about a radically different
relationship with their teachers. Inside the village the learners have assigned social roles which they
must fulfill in English. This model is the classical way in which some traditional Australian Aboriginal
communities teach outsiders their language. The learner is inducted into a social role, with
expectations and responsibilities, a clear social position in the kinship system, even before learning
the language.

The learner, whether a child or an adult, then has a major reason to succeed in the language, because
there is an allocated social function that they are expected to fulfill, they are not just doing a subject in
school. In the Korean language immersion villages this social roles plays a crucial part in the
responsibility for learning. The children have to pass through a passport control station, where they
show their passport and sign a form indicating that they are going to be speaking only English while in
the village. In effect they are involved in a process of gaining a new personality, via new names a new
set of social relationships. They produce broadcasts in English; send video and electronic news
updates to their parents in English, effectively using as much English as they can manage in various
social roles. Essentially this is usage leading learning. The students earn money working in a factory
and generally are required to become functioning citizens of a learning community. This is different
from the traditional ‘English Camp’ idea, because in immersion villages the children actually have an
active social role in the community that reproduces as far as possible genuine social interaction.

I look forward to future evaluations of these programs and their rates of success. The experience is
very challenging for the children, both linguistically and culturally. We would expect them to learn quite
quickly in such an intensive setting – the children I saw seemed very enthusiastic. This, too, is a type
of immersion education program because it utilizes the essential requirements of adopting the target
language for content and action-orientated encounters with various people in diverse social roles. The
academic content is less critical than the actual immersive experience, but combined with school
immersion this would produce a substantial language in education policy commitment. This option,
however, is relatively expensive.

There are six of these villages planned for South Korea. In recent years Japan has created a large
number of Super High Schools in which English is either the medium of instruction, fully or partially
along lines similar to what I suggested above, or in which English is taught as a subject, but in very
intensive mode.

Outcomes from Bilingual Education

As pointed out above, bilingual programs differ from immersion programs in social as well as
educational ways. Some bilingual programs do not aim for full literacy in both languages, while
immersion programs always aim for full literacy in both languages. Immersion programs usually deal
with a national language like Thai and an international language like English or Mandarin, and children
would be expected to become bi-literate in both to a greater or lesser extent. We can divide bilingual
programs according to their literacy aims. Using this as the measure found in the world today: i) Mono-
literate Transitional ii) Bi-literate Transitional iii) Mono-literate Maintenance iv) Bi-literate Maintenance
v) Bi-literate Enrichment.

Mono-literate Transitional programs develop literacy skills in only one language. For example, children
in the United States could be in a program where two languages are used orally, but literacy skills are
only developed in English. The other language is used for only a short time, just one or two years to
understand basic concepts, before transitioning to the dominant language.

In a Bi-literate Transitional program literacy skills are taught in both languages, before transitioning out
of the first language into the dominant language.

There are some very rare cases of Mono-literate Maintenance when both languages are maintained
for all of schooling, but literacy is only in one language, so that the children become verbally fluent in
both languages but do very little reading or writing in the less dominant language.

Bi-literate Maintenance programs are the ideal of the programs mentioned here. In these programs the
children develop literacy skills in both languages, and maintain literacy in both languages as long as
possible. Australia has some good bi-literate maintenance programs, although the most famous are
the Canadian immersion programs and those found in a series of schools created in Europe called
European Schools.

Finally, Bi-literate Enrichment, most of the teaching is done verbally in both languages, with intensive
periods of reading and writing. There is some research that shows that separating the languages in
this way can be useful.

Key Questions…and Answers

There are three questions that all stakeholders – including parents, Ministries of Education,
researchers, etc. – ask of both bilingual and immersion programs. The three basic questions are:

1. What effect will studying through a second language have on the students’ first language?
Another way of casting this question would be: if we start teaching Thai students in English from
grade 6 onward, what effect will that have on their Thai? Will they lose their Thai? Will their Thai
literacy go down? Will they become more domain-dominant in English in the areas they have
studied? In other words, would they have good conversational Thai but be unable to talk about
mathematics or social studies in Thai? These are serious questions, and they have been
 extensively researched, though not, regrettably, in Thai.
2. Will students be disadvantaged by learning subjects in a second language? In other words if we
are to teach students their mathematics in English, and they do not know English as well as they
know Thai, will their learning of mathematical concepts be worse than it would otherwise have been
if we’d taught them in Thai? In other words, should we teach high level, key subjects in the
curriculum only in the mother tongue? Research tells us that using the mother tongue is in most
cases the best way to teach immigrant and minority children, should not this also be true for
mainstream children? This is a crucial question today in Malaysia, now that they are teaching
science and mathematics and technology in English.
3. Will there be improvements in the children’s second language ability? This seems like a very
obvious question but if we are to spend 6 years teaching Thai children in English, we would really
want them to be better in English than if they had been taught English as a subject, otherwise it
would not be worth the effort of setting up immersion programs for such children.

There are at least 1200 reliable studies on addressing these questions, and, interestingly the results
do not vary greatly.

As for the first question, most immersion students and most bilingual students have equal or better first
language or home language skills as non-immersion students. In other words, if Thai children had six
years of secondary schooling in English, their competence in Thai, as long as it remains a subject on
the curriculum, on the timetable, as long as the students are still developing their Thai literacy, would
not suffer. If such students take all their mathematics, history, and geography subjects in English, they
would still need to learn the vocabulary that they have learned in English in Thai. If such students are
taught explicitly the Thai equivalent vocabulary of the technical subjects they have learned in English
they are quite likely to be able to converse in technical areas in Thai at an equivalent level had they
been taught this material originally in Thai. In other words, children transfer subject knowledge
between languages; however the words, expressions and technical terms need to be separately
taught in the mother tongue. So the answer to the first question appears quite clear, children’s Thai
would not suffer, with the qualification that equivalent vocabulary would need to be taught in both
languages.

As for the second question, research has found that academic results for children in bilingual and
immersion programs are approximately equal, and in some cases better, compared to non-immersion
students. For example, we would expect that children, who are taught six years of English (after
several years in Thai) on average are going to be equal and sometimes better than children who were
taught only in English or only in Thai.

The reason for this is that the language ultimately becomes an intellectual resource itself. Bilingualism
itself becomes cognitively enriching. It comes into the brain and helps children to conceptualize and to
think about the concepts they are dealing with better. After all, science and mathematics are symbolic
languages.

Research has shown that children who have been taught in both English and Spanish for many years
have some important advantages over monolingual children. For example if these children are given
science problems about gravity, the rotation of planets around the sun, or how tadpoles turn into frogs,
a significant number of bilingual children are better at forming such hypotheses than monolingual
children.

The answer for the third and most obvious question is that children do learn the target language better
by having it, English in this case, used as a medium of instruction – learning in and through the
language, rather than just learning about the language.

Immersion works because of a complicated thing called linguistic interdependence. In the brain, the
two languages of a bilingual do not exist in separate space; they are connected to each other. The
level of skill and concept strength that has been developed in one language feeds into and supports
the other language.

Knowledge gained in one language transfers to the other. Students learn a second language most
effectively if they develop their first language to a degree that allows them to pursue academic content.
Thus, in practical terms, Thai students should be expected to learn literacy and academic skills in
English before they have developed some level of those skills in Thai. Minority children, in practical
terms, should not be expected to learn literacy and academic skills in Thai before they have developed
some level of those skills in their mother tongues.

Key Qualities of Successful Programs

The most successful programs have the following key features in common:

1. Rigorous subject matter teaching. In other words, in a bilingual or immersion program, it is

important not to “dumb down” the content, not to make the content of one or other language
weaker than the other.
2. Teachers who are themselves bilingual. It is very useful to have teachers who are bilingual or at
least able to understand the student’s first language, because the students will often need to speak
in their first language. They should be allowed to do this, and the teacher should be able to
understand what the child is saying in the first language, accept what they say, and then respond in
the target language. If bilingual teachers are not available, there are alternatives through the use of
aids and other ancillary support staff.
3. Literacy skills are developed in the first language. The most successful outcomes are found in
programs where the children develop literacy skills in their first language, their mother tongue,
developing those skills in the second language, or at least concurrently with the development of
literacy in the other language.
4. Target language material is comprehensible, with subject matter geared to the second language
acquirer. In the case of Thai students learning English, some ESL activities are still needed to
address specific language acquisition issues. Similarly, minority students would require special
Thai as second language lessons. We cannot teach a Thai student as though he or she is a native
speaker of English, or a minority student as though his or her first language was Thai, if we are
hoping for good long-term academic performance.
5. Label English-taught knowledge in the L1. Knowledge taught in one language does not have to be
re-taught in the other but the essential items of vocabulary should be covered in the home
language to ensure that students are able to talk about material they have learned in English in
Thai.

There is one important caution often termed the “literacy lag”. Children will not be equal in their
knowledge to the children who are being taught mono-lingually immediately. It will take 6, 12, 18
months, even 2 years, during which time they are processing content and language at the same time.
If tested during this initial period, the lag phase, they might often perform below their age peers being
taught only in Thai. Essentially this is because they are developing literacy in the second language as
they are also developing content mastery. Typically such students reach parity usually around 18
months after immersion education has commenced.

In bilingual programs, the teacher’s talk is the single most important variable: what comes out of the
teacher’s mouth. Materials are important, computers are important, excursions are important to make
the language communicative, but what comes out of the teacher’s mouth is the single most important
feature of a good program. Teacher talk essentially serves three functions in classrooms:

1. The linguistic function of modeling proper use of the language;

2. The teaching function of conveying messages in the language;
3. The pragmatic or “getting things done” function of managing in the classroom.

Each of these has its own importance, because each taps a different part of the language learning.
Although the bilingual teacher will usually be speaking the target language, it is very useful if he or she
understands the first language of the students, so that the students can express themselves, give
answers, ask questions, that demonstrate that they are engaging in the subject matter even if they
have not mastered the ability to communicate everything in the target language.

Code-switching is controversial in bilingual programs. Some researchers argue that teachers should
not permit students to switch between languages. Sometimes code-switching is not ideal in second
language learning, but in content areas, it can be important to allow students to code-switch if the
teacher is trying to explain quite subtle concepts about mathematics or astronomy, the ability to code-
switch can be an asset, as long as the switch is strategically used.

Some years ago I worked at the secondary teachers’ college of Samoa advising on bilingual
education. Once while working with some teachers in secondary schools who were teaching about
climate I observed the following. One particular teacher who had been teaching very effectively
suddenly introduced a very challenging word into her teaching when some inspectors from the Ministry
of Education arrived. She switched from using the word ‘rain’ to using the term ‘precipitation’.
Precipitation is a long Latin word one of whose meanings is rain, and as a technical term in
meteorology it would be necessary to teach this term at advanced levels, but it was not needed in the
specific context of that lesson. Perhaps the teacher was trying to impress the inspectors, or her full
knowledge of the water cycle, or she was trying to demonstrate that the students really had learned a
great deal. However, the shift from rain to precipitation, one single word, disrupted the entire flow of
the students’ understanding of the whole lesson, and they let this be known. Becoming alarmed the
teacher code-switched into Samoan, “It’s the long word for rain” and proceeded with the lesson
effectively using this rather complicated word. The students appeared to understand the term, it had
been explained through the code-switching, and that code-switching unblocked a potential problem.

If teachers code-switch too frequently students have been observed to stop actively listening to the
target language – “tuning out” and waiting for the translation. Too much code-switching is not
educationally effective, too little, or the wrong kind, can create obstacles to learning the new language
and subject content. In bilingual programs in Africa, teachers and researchers now talk about using
code-switching strategically. It has to be used when children have tried to understand in the target
language, but have reached a blockage point. If code-switching takes place before a genuine moment
of incomprehension, when the flow of meaning itself is threatened, an ideal moment for language
acquisition is squandered.

In summary, immersion is viable, well researched, and effective. It can achieve improved target
language skills, effective academic results, and effective mother-tongue literacy. These results are
available for mainstream Thai children by extrapolating from the research evidence in general.
Bilingual programs can be expected to achieve similar outcomes for minority children in Thailand.

National language planning is often undertaken to support national identity or to assist nations address
demands of globalization, but a comprehensive approach would mean that excellent education for
minority children could be included in such national plans. For minority children, bilingual education
can produce academic results that are higher than they would otherwise attain by being taught in the
second language. Bilingual education offers such learners mother-tongue literacy that can support
their L1 knowledge and adequate national language or foreign language skills and therefore would be
an important inclusion in a national language policy for Thailand.

Lessons from Around the World

Hundreds of studies on immersion and bilingual education in many different countries teach specific
lessons relevant to different parts of the world.

From North America, especially Canada, a critical lesson that has been learned is that there is a
significant difference between academic and conversational language. Children can appear to be
fluent in a language conversationally quite quickly, sometimes in as little as 6-8 months. However, it
takes 5-7 years for a minority child coming into a new system, on average to reach academic levels in
the language. Bilingual programs which are not maintained for five or more years do not make the
most of the advantage they offer children. Programs of 1-3 years duration however are still valuable
culturally, and for early language transition. They can ease the challenge of initial literacy and assist
with making initial concepts in education clearer and more easily grasped by learners. However,
academically it is desirable to aim for the longest possible continuation of a bilingual program to reap
maximum intellectual benefit for learners.

Hong Kong and Singapore have provided insight into the use of different scripts in education –
Chinese and English. Script differences need to be taken into account based on the different kind of
literacy demands the different languages make. If subjects like science and mathematics are taught in
English, it is important to give children the labels to be able to talk about those concepts in their
mother tongue. The knowledge will transfer, but they may not have the words to do so, unless taught
the vocabulary in both languages. So an early start and continuous immersion is most effective for
such situations – this is one of the lessons from Singapore, Hong Kong and other settings where
different scripts are part of the bilingual context.

In Australia bilingual programs have in the past been extended to university level Japanese English
 immersion. Student selection is important to the success of such programs but their overall benefits
compared to regular offerings in tertiary Japanese are considerable. The students need to be
academically able to take on the special demands of such a course.

From Europe and Scandinavia, research has pointed to how to produce conversational proficiency in a
target language. The key is often to link in-school activity directly to out-of-school language use. If we
can encourage children to be conversationally fluent in the target language, then they are able to read
more. If they are able to read more, then they are able to improve their cognitive level. European
programs have also pioneered the notion of incorporating the teaching of second language as a
subject into an otherwise immersion based program, so that prior to introducing the second language
as teaching medium it is taught explicitly as a subject. Usually this takes the form of twelve months of
grammar teaching of French before teaching subjects in French. One result of this approach is that
those children in such immersion programs can have higher levels of grammatical skill than their North
American or Australian counterparts who might be conversationally proficient but not grammatically
accurate.

Language Policy and Language Rights

I think all children have a right to develop their first language to a literacy capability, if their language
has a literate form. Thus, minority and immigrant children should have the right to receive at least
some of their education in their mother tongue, their first language. At the same time, I think that the
society has a right to expect that people will have a common language and a shared basis for
citizenship and to expect that its citizens will learn a language that will allow the society to compete
economically at the international level.

A comprehensive language policy should thus contain provisions for the national language,
international languages, and minority languages.

Many societies have been governed by a “one nation, one language, one literacy, one culture”
philosophy. However, globalization, bilingualism, and the acknowledging of language rights means
that such narrow ideologies need to be set aside in favor of policies that see language diversity as an
asset and a resource for national development.

The most powerful way to influence existing policies is to conduct evaluations of practice. Comparing
actual practice against the aims that Ministries of Education and governments have set themselves
invites the researcher and the policy maker into a conversation about the aims of policy itself. In this
way we can engage in discourse planning, shaping how people talk about the problems to be tackled
in language education planning.

The second key way to influence policy is to develop strategic alliances across language interests.
This would involve having people interested in English and international languages working with
people concerned with Thai, Thai literacy, and the expansion of the Thai language, alongside others
who are committed to supporting minority language communities. This was the basis of the national
language policy success in Australia and in post-Apartheid South Africa. In both instances diverse
language interests came together, learned from each other, and developed shared goals for language
planning.

Ultimately, language policy is a conversation about the communicative abilities, rights and
opportunities of a society. Developing such a conversation will be made easier and more effective if
our aim is to develop an explicit, comprehensive and public national language policy and if we do this
as a collaborative and democratic endeavor.

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