Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2025

In the Republic of Ireland (RoI), Irish is recognised as the first official language of the state. The public has the right to conduct all business with the state solely through the medium of Irish if they wish. The reality, however, is that many government bodies only provide services in English. This article discusses the language used for assessments and interventions for students with special educational needs (SEN) in Irish-medium (IM) primary and post-primary schools in the RoI. A mixed methods study was conducted, with teachers from schools (n = 56) completing an online questionnaire at first and then teachers (n = 32) undertaking semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that students in IM schools are not being afforded access to services in Irish and many challenges exist for these schools when meeting the SEN of students. Recommendations are made around how to strengthen educational policy and practice to enable IM teachers meet the needs of all students.

In Germany, the number of bilingual elementary schools, in which subjects are taught in a foreign language (FL), is on the rise. While previous research highlights advantages for typically developing students in such programs, little is known about at-risk learners, including those with reading difficulties (RD), affecting 5–10% of all German school children. This exploratory study investigates FL English abilities in 359 Year 4 elementary school students by comparing minority (L2) and majority language (L1) students with and without RD in a partial immersion (IM) and a regular (EFL) program. Students with RD (n = 95) were identified through a standardized German reading test and cognitive tests. Results showed no impact of language background on English tests, but teaching program was identified as a significant predictor, with IM students outperforming EFL peers, irrespective of RD. These preliminary findings indicate that students with RD may benefit from IM programs, possibly due to increased literacy activities.

This contribution aims to explore the bilingual strategies of students producing the bilingual Basque-French “Grand Oral” (GO) text genre in the only Basque immersion high school in Northern Basque Country (NBC henceforth) (France). 20 immersion students’ Basque-French GO productions are analysed. Previous research with similar text genres in the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain) shows that even if immersion students successfully manage linguistic alternation, they scarcely adapt Basque terminology when using English. The GO is an explanatory-argumentative text genre, addressed to a jury involving a monolingual French speaker. The analysis shows that students alternate languages with no lexico-grammatical difficulties. However, when they refer to Basque terms in French, they hardly include any clarification for the non-Basque-speaking member of the jury. These findings could shed light on a better understanding of Basque immersion students’ oral bilingual strategies and could contribute to the development of plurilingual teaching approaches in NBC multilingual education, which remain unexplored.

Despite the popularity of immersion/bilingual programs across the globe, student retention from kindergarten to the last year of high school has been a preoccupying issue for decades. There is a dearth of research exploring the challenges faced by parents, who are the primary decision-makers when it comes to enrolment and withdrawal. Thus, we lack a critical understanding to address the issue of student retention in immersion programmes. This article reports on two large-scale online survey studies, one conducted in the Canadian French Immersion (FI) context and the other in the Irish Immersion (IM) context. Both studies explored parental decision-making processes in relation to enrolment and withdrawal. Findings revealed common challenges, such as the need for greater support for students with special education needs. Parental motivation and understanding of the L2 acquisition process were also found to be critical when it comes to resilience to continue in the programme.

Research evidence predominantly based on studies with older learners suggests that Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) instruction yields significant language gains when exposure exceeds 300 hours (Muñoz, 2015). However, the impact of high-intensity CLIL on young learners’ oral proficiency remains underexplored. This study examined fluency, pronunciation, and productive vocabulary measures in young L1-Spanish learners (mean age = 10.46) across four groups: non-CLIL (n = 23), low-CLIL (n = 21), high-CLIL (n = 32), and a younger high-CLIL group (n = 32; mean age = 9.84) with 0, 707, 2473, and 2164 CLIL hours, respectively. Socioeconomic status and extramural exposure were controlled. Intraclass correlations, Kruskal-Wallis, post-hoc, and Friedman tests were conducted. Significant advantages were limited to both high-CLIL groups over the non-CLIL group at the vocabulary level, providing policymakers with empirical evidence about the markedly different outcomes of high, and low-CLIL programmes in relation to oral gains with young learners.

Few books are available to support reading instruction in minority language immersion programs. Since North American teachers provide children with a choice of books scaffolded in difficulty and suited to their interests, they must resort to creating or adapting their own minority language materials, networking, or spending hours online or in bookstores. A more systematic approach would be based on an interdisciplinary understanding of the concept of readability. We focus on German as a minority language in North America and examined research published in both German and English to develop a conceptual framework of readability as comprising text complexity, context, and literary aspects. Using this framework, we conceptualize a research program for investigating readability of books in minority languages. This research program would be language-specific, but adaptable to other minority languages, thereby serving as a call to action for researchers interested in the readability of books.

This study delves into immersion competencies within secondary education, specifically focusing on transformative professional development in Home Economics pedagogical integration. Specifically, this paper investigates how six teacher participants, in the Gaeltacht education context in Ireland, acquired the necessary competencies for meaningful language integration, as outlined by the IPACK framework. In addition, the role of a bespoke professional development programme in fostering such competencies was examined. Through qualitative action research design, data collection tools such as classroom observations, stimulated recall interviews, questionnaires, and reflective diaries were employed. Findings demonstrated evident evolvement of participants’ pedagogical approach of Form-Focused Instruction and contributed to understanding the intricacies of immersion competencies at secondary level, highlighting their interdependence as a prerequisite for effective pedagogical integration. Implications suggest the need for targeted professional development initiatives to empower teachers with the competencies necessary for effective integration of content and language pedagogies.

Previous studies have shown that grammar is a central source of difficulty for immersion students and that their teachers often lack knowledge of how to integrate linguistic aims with content teaching. This descriptive, enquiry-based study reports on Finnish immersion teachers’ (n = 54) perspectives on grammar instruction in language immersion in Finland — a theme under-researched in Finland thus far. Our online questionnaire consists of 18 questions comprising three sections: the informants’ professional background, their views on the role of grammar in immersion and their views on correcting grammatical inaccuracies. We analyse our data using quantitative and statistical methods (Pearson’s χ² as a statistical test). Our findings show that most of our informants are experienced immersion teachers teaching languages to 13–15-year-old immersion students. They do not prioritise grammatical accuracy when planning their instruction, although they consider it an important aspect of second language proficiency. They also discuss grammatical accuracy to a greater extent with their students than with their colleagues and are more tolerant of inaccuracies in spoken output. Implications are discussed regarding the necessity of improving grammar instruction in immersion and immersion students’ grammatical accuracy.