Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Laptop Poster Session for Graduate Students

English and Mandarin

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion

High School

This study investigates a newly emerging English immersion model in China where foreign high school curricula are taught by native English-speaking teachers to local Chinese students. These foreign teachers’ beliefs and interaction with students in lessons were investigated regarding the facilitation of students’ learning of both science and English language.

Teaching academic subjects through English in countries where English is not an official language has become a rapidly rising global phenomenon (Macaro, 2015). In China, driven by the increasing demand from Chinese students to study abroad at the university level and a growing population of foreign teachers, a special English immerion program has emerged. It entails foreign native English speaking teachers teaching Chinese students a foreign high school curriculum. This context presents a unique English immersion model worthy of investigation because of the monolingual native English speaking teacher population, as opposed to the bilingual non-native teachers commonly found in the previous English immersion literature. This study makes an innovative inter-disciplinary attempt in examining teachers' beliefs and practice in this unexplored English immersion model, drawing on theories and teaching approaches in both science education and language education.

Underpinned by Vygotsky’s Socio-cultural Theory (1986), teacher-student interaction was chosen as the key focus in investigating teachers’ beliefs and practice. Theories and teaching approaches guiding this study include the constructivist teaching approach (Hohenstein & Manning, 2010) and Dialogic Teaching (Mercer and Littleton, 2007), well developed in science education, and the Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1996), established in second language acquisition. Data was gathered using questionnaires, pre- and post-lesson interviews and lesson observations, involving 7 schools across China, 18 foreign science teachers, and approximately 400 students. 36 lessons were video recorded and transcribed. 

Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, initial findings suggest most teachers held constructivist beliefs of teaching science and favourable beliefs of teaching English. However, some constructivist beliefs were successfully translated into practice while others were not. The use of extensive dialogues in facilitating students' learning of science and English proves to be difficult, partly due to students' low English proficiency and culturally different expectations of the rule of talk. The challenges and opportunities the learning of science and English brings to each other are discussed.