Full-immersion EMI students show no statistically significant gains in any measured language domain over one year, despite descriptive improvement trends¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q2
Currency · newest study 2015 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? The immersion group (N=7) showed no statistically significant gains on listening, grammar, cloze, fluency, accuracy, or complexity measures between T1 and T2. → Ament 2015

Evidence¶

Ament 2015¶

Ament, J. R., & Pérez Vidal, C. (2015). Linguistic outcomes of English medium instruction programmes in higher education: A study on economics undergraduates at a Catalan university. Higher Learning Research Communications, 5(1), 47-68. http://dx.doi.org/10.18870/hlrc.v5i1.239

q2 · i? · causal · r1

Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests on the immersion group (N=7) across one academic year found all p-values above .05 for listening, grammar, cloze, and all CAF writing measures; the article states "the IM group shows no significant gains in any of the language domains measured."

"The results for the first three tasks, listening grammar, and cloze, all reflect values where p=>.05 (Table 6). The CAF measures also reflect values where p= >.05, for all tasks."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Written-complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures show non-significant changes after one year of EMI, with descriptive shifts toward more subordinate clauses and longer sentences — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Statistically significant linguistic gains after one year of EMI were detected in the semi-immersion group only, despite the immersion group's larger mean gains — a broader claim this one bears on
• Listening comprehension does not improve after one year of EMI in either group, with slightly lower scores at post-test — related
• Semi-immersion EMI students show a statistically significant gain in grammar over one academic year, while their cloze and listening gains are not significant — related
• Comprehensible input alone is insufficient for acquisition of high levels of grammatical proficiency — related