Language Policy in a Korean-English Two-Way Immersion Setting

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine a language policy in a two-way immersion programme and to explicate the dimensions as well as dynamics involved in the teacher's interpretation and implementation of the policy. The Korean-English two-way immersion kindergarten classroom where this research was conducted, adopted a 70: 30 language distribution policy: Korean was used as the language of instruction during 70% of class time and English was employed as the language of instruction during the remaining 30% of time. However, despite the teacher's strict implementation of the policy, both the ethnically Korean children and ethnically non-Korean children chose to maintain most of their communication in English, reluctant to use Korean in both official and unofficial school settings. Within this setting, I ask questions related to the principles that affected the implementation of the policy by the teacher, specifically, the process by which certain interests became prioritised and the other became marginalised. I provide description of the teacher's value systems and experiences that affected this process.

Keywords:

• Korean-English two-way immersion
• language policy
• teacher value systems
• policy implementation
• kindergarten language learners