Parallel immersion

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Parallel immersion is a term coined to describe a form of bilingual education in schools. In parallel [[immersion, students learn core subjects (content areas/key learning areas) in both the dominant language (L1/mother tongue) and a second language (L2). It differs from monolingual immersion programs where a subject is taught in the second language only.

In parallel immersion, the content is taught twice: first in the L1 and then in the L2. It is expected that instruction in the L2, while content-based, will be less content-rich and will give more emphasis to the language related to the content area. For this reason parallel immersion has been described as mother tongue content instruction + english for academic purposes. Be that as it may, parallel immersion aims at academic bilingualism.

This approach to bilingual education is applied in a number of bilingual schools in Thailand, where bilingual education has grown very rapidly since the first school, Sarasas Ektra School, was licensed as a bilingual school in 1995. Sarasas Ektra has applied the parallel immersion model since its establishment.

Bilingual education is a field with a range of different models and terms to describe them. The term "parallel immersion" does not appear at present to be used outside its Thai context. It is not to be confused with "parallel classes", where identified students are separated into special-purpose classes for additional support in their second language. Nor can "parallel immersion" be in any way identified with the division of classes based on students' differing first language (or racial identity, as in the former South African apartheid approach). In parallel immersion as it is practised in Thai bilingual education, nearly all students are speakers of Thai as their first language and all students study core content areas in both Thai and English.