ISF or CDNIS?

FattyDaddy

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-26 16:46
how would this apply in a Chinese/English immersion context (as opposed to mostly English/Spanish immersion in the research) ...

Chinese / English bilingual immersion would probably be much the same as any other bilingual immersion programmes as far as listening and speaking are concerned, but would be very different when it comes to reading and writing.

With Spanish / English, their writing systems are essentially the same. Both share the latin alphabet and their pronunciations don't differ that much, so once you have learned one system, picking up the other is not so difficult.

When it comes to Chinese / English though, their writing systems are completely different, you simply have to learn both from scratch, and because reading and writing Chinese are much harder and require much more time and effort to learn, many children would simply give up if they are left to their own choosing. That is why many IS students could learn to speak Cantonese and/or Mandarin very well but they are much weaker when it comes to reading and writing Chinese, even if they are ethnic Chinese themselves. I'm not saying this is the case in ISF, but it is the general scenario for IS students, those who could learn to read/write Chinese well are the results of much coercion and perseverance at home or school or both.

FattyDaddy

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-27 01:48
That would be my "guess" as well but that is not borne out by research.  I j ...

I think we are talking about different things here. I have no doubt that a bilingual immersion programme is of great value in learning to listen and speak a non-native language, I was just saying it doesn't help much when it comes to learning to read and write Chinese.

It is not a guess either, we see many real life examples around us. It is not uncommon for non-native Chinese speakers to learn to speak Cantonese or Mandarin to a very high standard, e.g. 河國榮, 喬寶寶, but few of them could read or write Chinese characters to the same level, this phenomenon also occurs in IS students. The reason is quite simple, Chinese characters are detached from the spoken language, knowing how to speak does not help much in learning how to read and write, while in an alphabetic language, once you know how to speak you can acquire reading and writing skills quite easily because the written words are just phonetic representations of the spoken sounds.

FattyDaddy

HKTHK 發表於 12-11-27 13:58
"In both Programs, both native Chinese speaking and native English speaking students developed oral language (listening, speaking) skills and literacy (reading, writing) skills in Cantonese or Mandarin." ...

Developed skills yes, but it didn't mention to what level.

Real life experience tells us, a non-native's Chinese literacy skills usually lag far behind their oral skills, and this is happening to many IS students even if they are ethnic Chinese. I guess many IS parents here can say just how hard they had to coerce and push their children to spend extra time and effort to read/write Chinese in order to attain a respectable level of literacy.