ETBI Journal of Education - Vol 2:2 November 2020 (Irish-medium Education)

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ETBI Journal of Education November 2020 “revival” is more accurate and suitable to describe the breathing of new life into an inanimate or dead language in order to revive it. Such a revival took place in the case of Hebrew in Palestine in the second half of the eighteenth century (Ó Laoire, 1999), or in the case of spoken Cornish in the sixties (Ferdinand, 2013). It would be more appropriate to use the term “revitalisation” when referring to languages which did not actually die, but which are still receding and threatened by a dominant global language. Spolsky (1995) claims that revitalisation involves a particular concept, since the use of the language as a family language and a community language is emphasised. The domain of the family is the most important of these in order to bring about language revitalisation. In the end, it matters little what supports are available for the language in other areas ¬- if the language is not acquired at home, it is unlikely that other efforts will be successful, be they in school, in the work life, in entertainment or in the immediate environment. This was the opinion expressed by the famous sociolinguist Joshua Fishman (1991; 2001) when he discussed the limiting of linguistic change through bringing a minority language back into use. IMMERSION EDUCATION Immersion education did not begin today or yesterday. It must be remembered that immersion education has been practiced in this country since primary and secondary education first started in the state. We were determined to revive the Irish language and it was recognised that it would be an essential support for revitalisation if the language was used as the medium of education in some primary and secondary schools 2 . The state placed a heavy emphasis on immersion education as an effective way to achieve (Irish) monolingualism. It is hard to imagine that a complete language revitalisation could be achieved by means of schooling alone. This author has said in a different context (Ó Laoire, 1999) that this was a top-down approach, which attempted to imitate the process of Saxonisation and Anglicisation which was at the front and centre of the national school system from its foundation with the Stanley Act in 1832, and which had already had a profound effect on the speech patterns of the population by the second half of the 19th century. However, this top-down approach was not successful in slowing the language shift in favour of English. Since the fifties, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of Irishmedium primary and post-primary schools. Better results were expected from the careful attempts to entrust language revitalisation to education alone, and the schools did not manage to convince the population to use Irish, instead of English, in the home or in other areas of society. “NEW” IMMERSION EDUCATION In Ireland, “new” immersion education came to the fore in the seventies and has been growing 2 As a result, the number of Irish-medium schools (category A primary schools) outside of the Gaeltacht in order the achieve language revitalisation. By 1930, for example, 4% of the primary schools in the country were Irish-medium schools and that percentrage rose to 12% ten years later. The percentage of Irish-medium post-primary schools was even higher By 1942, 28% of the post-primary schools were category A post-primary schools, serving around 27% of the post-primary students in the country. (Comhairle na Gaeilge, 1974). PAGE 108
ETBI Journal of Education November 2020 ever since 3 . Irish-medium schools were in demand and had community support (Ó Riagáin agus Ó Gliasaín, 1979; Ó Riagáin, 1997) at a time when the immersion education system founded in the early years of the state was failing. This was a movement from the ground up instead of from the top down. This type of immersion education was not only in demand in Ireland, but also in other regions and countries; Wales, Catalonia, Hawaii, the Basque Country and New- Zealand, for example. In these regions, and in Canadian and American regions where indigenous languages were spoken (Morcom agus Roy, 2019), primary and secondary schools were founded to revitalise the native languages. Several benefits and challenges are associated with immersion education which are discussed in the next section of this article. THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF NEW IMMERSION EDUCATION The benefits of immersion education have been long recognised, particularly in the context of minority languages 4 . International research demonstrates that the immersion education system develops the academic skills (Baker & Wright, 2017) and cognitive abilities (Baker & Wright, 2017) of learners. Overall, they have 3 The inception or beginnings of this immersion education was first seen in Canada in 1965, when parents, educators and researchers undertook a community experiment known as the “St. Lambert Experiment”(Lambert & Tucker, 1972). The experiment was highly successful in terms of French acquisition. 4 Míníonn García (2009:247): “Motivated by the success of the Canadian immersion bilingual programs, ethnolinguistic minorities who have experienced language shift away from their heritage languages have adapted the Canadian model to fit their needs.” more developed abilities in their second or target language (Genesee, 1987). Research tells us that, on average, a high academic standard is being achieved by learners in Ireland (for example, Gilleece et al, 2011) and in other countries (for example, Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013). The research indicates that the potential to acquire a second language is greatly expanded, without prejudice to the acquisition of the first language (Gilleece et al, 2011). Such research helps guide practice and attainment in schools in disadvantaged areas (Ní Chlochasaigh et al, 2020). Despite this, however, several challenges have also been identified. Although learners in immersion education succeed in attaining native-like ability and fluency in their passive abilities (listening and reading), the same does not appear to be true for their active abilites (speaking and writing). Although learners in immersion education often achieve a high standard of communication in the second language (Ó Duibhir, 2018), problems and a lack of accuracy can be detected in the type of language (interlanguage) they acquire in the system, which is heavily influenced by the structure and syntax of the first language. (Ní Dhiorbháin agus Ó Duibhir, 2017; Ó Ceallaigh, 2016; Walsh, 2007). Today, there is no shortage of innovative, dynamic research being provided by teachers, who are researchers, which provides potential guidance and advice for immersion education teachers to overcome some of these challenges for the benefit of learners. There is another major challenge faced by immersion education however, relating to language policy and language revitalisation, which will be discussed in the next section of this article. PAGE 109
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ETBI Journal of Education - Vol 2:2 November 2020 (Irish-medium Education)

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