Immersion method of teaching foreign languages

The immersion method of teaching foreign languages (not to be confused with immersion , in which a person travels to the country of the language being studied to master the language) is to immerse students in a foreign language atmosphere during the classroom.

The basic concepts of the immersion method go back to the techniques developed and implemented by the American French teacher M. Berlitz in the last quarter of the 19th century. The key provisions of this approach to teaching foreign languages ​​are as follows:

• speaking and listening prevail over other types of educational activities (writing and reading);
• vocabulary and grammar are not studied in isolation, but in context;
• the student is given an active role in the learning process, the teacher plays the role of the organizer;
• the use of the native language during training is excluded.

Further, already in the 20th century, the Berlitz method was continued in the light of the direct method [1], whose representatives (neo-directists) improved the line of predominance of mnemonic processes over mental ones.

The principles of the direct method, in particular the achievements of suggestionopedia , were also interested in intensists ( G. A. Kitaygorodskaya , A. S. Plesnevich, etc.) [2], whose task was to develop a methodology for quickly teaching a foreign language not by means of persuasion or explanation, but by immersing students in a foreign language atmosphere and influencing the subconscious.

The immersion method of teaching foreign languages ​​should also be distinguished from immersion training ( immersion in the language ), used in countries with two or more official languages. This educational technology consists in using the second studied native language as part of the teaching of subjects of the general educational cycle and the development of bilingualism in children. It is on the basis of immersion training that, for example, the immersion model of teaching a foreign language by V. Wenzel-X is developed. Sarter "One man - one language."

Only in the 21st century did attempts to formulate the immersion method into an independent methodological system begin. The experience of developing and implementing the author’s model of the immersion method (AMIM) of teaching foreign languages ​​in terms of language courses is already known [3]. Distinctive features of such a neoplasm, in particular, are:

1. Orientation to the ability of the human body to endorphinize in the process of the brain's intellectual work and verbal communication.
2. Manipulation of students' intellectual inclinations using the achievements of temperamentology and gender psychology .
3. The total use of pair work during group classes, to ensure which a complex of special transformational and communicative exercises is used.
4. The activities of the immersion teacher are limited to the functions of a monitor for the process of language acquisition, a demonstrator of the exercises and a student interlocutor.