If an adult FL learner has a fund to take an immersion program in the target language speaking country for short period, when should the person take advantage of the opportunity? Right now at 0+? At intermediate level or advanced level? What do the research studies recommend? What is the ideal level of proficiency of adult FL learner to maximize the benefit of the immersion program in overseas?
Having taught ESL in immersion classrooms, I can safely say there is no right/wrong or more advantageous level to start. As long as the teachers in the classroom are trained in ESL teaching then the teacher will be able to reach each learner whether he/she is a true or 'false' starter or advanced learner.
The teacher and course will determine student level, and will then design or provide a course that will help the learner to continue improving language skills. Of course, if the course does not provide support in terms of true starters getting help to settle in, look for an apartment, be able to take transport, buy food or just generally survive in a foreign country, then it would be wise for the learner to have at least these survival skills in the target language before moving. This has been a source of problems for many basic students who have participated in courses which do not lend support to their needs outside of the classroom. In such instances, I have questioned the preparedness and integrity of such courses, as I cannot comprehend how courses that are language, culture, life and skills based, can offer courses without considering the life skills and cultural needs of learners they choose to include in these courses.
Two ideas from my own experience as a learner of various FL (2 of them partly through immersion) and as a FL teacher (not in immersive context):
1. I consider language learning is mainly defined by guided learning hours (GLH) and time of exposure to the language (TEL). If you accept that you need a specific amount of GLH and TEL to reach each proficiency level (for example, around 80 GLH for a Spanish-speaker to reach A1 level in French, 200 GLH to reach A2, 450 -> B1, 650 -> B2...), then it doesn't matter at what point you do the immersion program: of course, during the immersion program, GLH will still be comparable to exolingual teaching contexts, but TEL will rise dramatically; so the learning will happen quicker, but it won't change the number of hours you still need for each level.
In this sense, the question is not "when should a student do the immersion program?" but:
- what potential of learning does the student have in his own country? -> depending on the quality of FL courses, in some traditional education settings, it's sometimes difficult to rise above a A2 (breakthrough / lower-intermediate) level, because of the lack of spontaneous oral practice
- what is his language learning goal / final objective (threshold level/B1 ? or B2 ? or C1/proficiency level ?) -> it's usually very difficult to find appropriate learning settings in exolingual contexts to reach very high proficiency levels (C1/C2), so if you want to achieve this kind of level, you should only do the immersion when you already have a certain level in the FL
2. In traditional educative settings, like most secondary school language classes, the teaching is usually mostly focused on grammar and language knowledge, not so much language use and productive skills. Because of that, a lot of students have strong knowledge about the language but aren't able to use it in real communicative settings. In this case, immersion is usually very efficient to transform this "passive knowledge" into an "employable skill".
In my own two experiences of immersion, a short (60 GLH for spanish) or ±long (200 GLH for italian) academic learning experience of the language had given me the grammar and lexical basic knowledge, but no really usable communicative skill: only a very short (but total) immersion (2-3 weeks) was enough to "activate" this knowledge and transform it into an ability to communicate in real contexts. It doesn't mean the long learning (italian) resulted the same as the short one: more knowledge was acquired and communicative skill could more rapidly be used in more complex settings.
I personally consider that a short academic learning experience is good to have before immersion, so that immersion can be shorter but still have important effectiveness. But, past that previous very limited proficiency, I think immersion will be equally taken advantage of.
We should be careful about the concept of immersion here. We should not forget that we deal with adults. I think the best way for an adult to learn a foreign language would be either the translation or audio-lingual method. both methods provide the adult learner with the logos/reasoning capacity he often laments its absence in immersion programs or communicative methods.
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