Project-based learning in a foreign language immersion camp
Open Access
- Author:
- Cho, So-Eun
- Graduate Program:
- Applied Linguistics
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- August 17, 2010
- Committee Members:
- Joan Kelly Hall, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Joan Kelly Hall, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Karen E Johnson, Committee Member
Celeste S Kinginger, Committee Member
Jamie Myers, Committee Member - Keywords:
- language socialization
Foreign language immersion camp
second/foreign language learning
project-based learning - Abstract:
- Over the last three decades, the number of foreign language immersion programs in the United States has grown. This growing interest in foreign language immersion programs is based on the fundamental rationale that foreign language learning proceeds more effectively if the target language is used for authentic and meaningful communication rather than being taught as a separate school subject with no or reduced communicative value (Cummins, 1998; Genesee, 1992). While research has contributed much to the discovery of second language development in immersion school programs, few studies have investigated to understand how foreign language learners learn target languages in a short immersion camp programs, or about the kinds of activities and projects in which learners participate in immersion camp programs and their connection to language learning. This dissertation research centers on a unique Korean language-learning environment, i.e., an immersion camp in which high school students spend four weeks of summer in a rural village-like setting in the Upper Midwest of the United States (Korean Language Village). Participants interact using only Korean with their peers, camp staff, and instructors in a learning environment that reflects an eclectic nature of pedagogical approaches. It contains elements of traditional second language instruction coupled with immersion instruction. In this study, language socialization (Ochs 1990; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986) was adopted as the theoretical framework along with ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1962) guiding this qualitative research with the primary concern for the ethnographic description of the community to which the learners belong and the analysis of interactive practices in which the learners recurrently participate for explicit instruction in the target language during learning group sessions. The data consists of participant-observation, field notes, and 25 hours of interactional data collected from a focal learning group (one teacher and five learners). The analysis is divided into two parts. In the first part, a detailed ethnographic description of the Korean Language Village is presented, focusing on the key elements of constructing the learner-oriented community as well as the functions of learning group sessions in the community. The second part demonstrates how learners were taught grammatical structures with a project-based approach, which is defined as a “social practice into which students are socialized through a series of individual or group activities that involve the simultaneous learning of language, content, and skills” (Slater, Beckett, & Aufderhaar, 2006, p. 242). While engaging in the projects, the learners used the target grammatical structures in different contexts of talk, and the learners showed their development in syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and interactional skills. Overall, this study indicates that language learning in this context can be characterized as a communicative approach in authentic contexts where the target language is used for daily practices, and the roles of explicit instruction are to assist learners to become more competent members in the community. This study has important implications for foreign language educators regarding the importance of learner community in which learners become valuable members through interacting with others in the target language as well as the roles of explicit instructions on language in second/foreign language learning.