This study is focused on the searching for the principles in developing a Korean immersion program. For this study, examples were taken from the Korean Language Village in Concordia Language Villages. The researcher had served as the participant observer for ten continuous years and in 2010, a full-fledged research began with surveys and interviews. Extracted research outcomes were used as the reference and basis for deduction of principles in developing a Korean immersion education program.
The theory that was heavily discussed in the immersion education research is looked at in Chapter 2. In order to do this, this study looks at the definition and the characteristics of immersion education, and also both positive and critical views. In addition, social and historic backgrounds, along with the aspects that caused the transformation of immersion education are dealt. Contents, forms, and community-based education systems, which are the essential aspects of immersion education, have been selected as the essentials of Korean immersion education as well.
Chapter 3 illustrates the current status of Korean immersion education. Both Japan and American Korean immersion educations were the initial subjects for the study. Yet, due to a relatively more active Korean immersion education in America, America became the subjective of the study. The naissance of immersion education in the USA was started with Korean language schools for Korean Americans. In the early 1990s, Korea-English Two-Way Immersion in Los Angeles was officially approved as a school. The Korean Language Village, the Korean immersion education for both Korean and non-Korean Americans started in the late 1990s to serve the purpose of educating Korean as an international language. When young American students of various backgrounds visited Korea and learned Korean language, National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program begun, also falling into an active period.
Chapter 5 discusses the contents, forms and community-based methods for teaching and learning for Korean immersion education. The principles of Korean immersion education were decided upon the same sequence, and the principles are the following. (1) Establish the environment for use of the target language. The environment can be classified into temporal and spatial. (2) Select the learners and a thorough understanding of them must be preceded for the capability of accommodating various types of learners. In addition, the instructors who lead the teaching and learning are also the participants in immersion education and communications, that they must be qualified as foreign language instructors. (3) The course for Korean immersion education must be set. The curriculum composition must aim for Korean-English Two-Way immersion or partial immersion education; a fine-tuning between contents and form-focused educations was suggested for the production of teaching materials. (4) The contents for the target language and the target culture must be set. Existing teaching and learning methods have their target language and the target culture separated from each other, but the newly established must contain the study of target culture incorporated into the contents or as a proper subject. (5) A full-scaled level of education must have community-based activities. Such activities should include peer interactions for cooperation, community activities for taking charge of their own portions, and lastly, project learning where learners can produce a piece that shows an integration of the target language and the target culture. The conclusion of this study is introduced in Chapter 6 where it states the principles for developing Korean immersion education as well as a proposal for a follow-up study.
This study will serve as the foothold for more practical strategies for vitalizing immersion education in Korean language educations through such discussions.
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