이멀젼 접근법과 새로운 영어교육의 패러다임 = Immersion Approach and a New Paradigm of English Education

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The objective of this paper is to introduce a new method of English education that has recently drawn considerable attention of the foreign language educators and researchers alike as a new promising paradigm of foreign language education. It addresses the current issues as to the problems in the English education at elementary schools in Korea; introduces the history and worldwide status quo of the immersion approaches along with their criticisms and evaluations; and explores the viability of the implementation of the program in Korea.
Since the monumental inception of the compulsory English education at elementary schools in 1997 after a long drawn-out controversy, various kinds of problems have been identified. Among them are the insufficient instruction hours, under-qualification of elementary school English teachers, particularly at the lower division where the first English contact takes place, and overly restricted instruction contents, such as limited vocabulary and limited sentential lengths. For a more fruitful achievement of English education, these fundamental problems must be redressed.
There are several important aspects in child language acquistion or learning that have to do with the theoretical underpinnings of the immersion approach; the critical age hypothesis, speech-motor muscular maturation, L1 interference, field dependce and hemispheric dominance, and the language innatensess hypothesis. A comprehensive review of these issues brings forth a conclusion that a formal education of a foreign language must begin before puberty and preferably after 5 years of age or so; that the instruction must be holistic rather than anlaytic, natural rather than artificial; and that the rich yet well-designed data must be provided to the learners.
The immersion approach was first launched in the 1960s by linguists and psychologists at McGill University at the St. Lambert area under the leadership of Wallace Lambert. Currently there are more than 300,000 immersion participants in Canada only, and an increasing number of students are getting enrolled in this new approach in the U.S. This approach is typically characterized as a 'sink-or-swim' strategy, teaching content courses in the target language, thereby attaining the fluency of the foreign language at a subconsciousness level while the learner is actively processing course contents at the consciousness level. The outcome was truly marvelous ―immersion participants' L2 skills were highly developed; their L1 fluency was not adversely affected; their achievement in the content courses was either equal to or better than the traditional method participants; and immersion participants showed faster increase in their intelligence quotient, according to some studies.
Among the most important prerequisties for implementation of this innovative paradigm are securing educational subsidy for implementing the approach in the formal education settings, recruiting qualified instructors in terms of their fluency and teaching skills in this new approach, and well-designed textbooks that suit the needs of the Korean elementary students. From these considerations this new approach is more compatible with the private instruction institutes at least at the current educational circumstances. However, considering the relative inefficiency of English education in Korea and the extent of success in other countries that adopted the immersion approach, implementation of this new paradigm at public school systems must be seriously considered.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• 1. 머리말
• 2. 한국의 영어교육
• 3. 이멀젼과 외국어교육의 이론적 배경
• 4. 이멀젼 프로그램
• 5. 한국 초등영어에서의 이멀젼 시행 가능성
• 6. 결론