Journal Article Review 3 (CCU)

Citation : Wesely, M. Pamela. (2012). Cross-Cultural Understanding in Immersion Students: A Mixed Method Study. L2 Journal, 4(2), pp 189-213

Cross-cultural understanding has been a prominent issue for someone who intends to learning foreign language. It provides knowledge about certain culture or the other way to communicate with the members of the target culture besides using their language such as knowing their habit in daily life, what kind of celebrations they have, what they may eat or not, or even the body languages which have negative meaning. In United States, there are several regions which is lived by people from two different culture such as Spanish-American or French American. The cultural sensitivity is an noteworthy item to have a good communication between those cultures. Thus, there is an immersion which is concerned on acquiring language and cultural sensitivity. In this article, the writer try to find out whether the examination of L2 learning motivation of early adolescents immersion graduates reveals about the development of cross-cultural understanding in immersion students and how the comparison of the students' interview and the data created by the results of the attitude/motivation test battery.

The concept models of this article is socio-educational model which is related to intergrativeness. intergrativeness is a complicated attitudes towards the target culture, the other cultures and even the individuals' own ethnic identity. It is measured by three different subscales: Attitudes toward the target community; Integrative orientation; and Interest in world languages. Attitude towards the community merely influenced the achievement in bilingual language and integrative orientation didn't improve language acquisition significantly. Therefore, socio-educational model determines intergrativeness as a students' character, which is able to be had or not to be, which can be linked to the other elements of their attitudes and motivation.
The goals of immersion school are to promote bilingualism and biculturalism which expect students will be the cause of democratic coexistence that requires people of different cultures and language to develop understanding and respect, to learn and to understand the culture of the people who speak immersion language, and to enhance intercultural sensitivity. From those goals, the research clarified that not all of the goals are achieved by the students, since some of the graduate students actually never have interest to study the other language and culture. They paid more effort with the identification and interpretation of elements of the target culture because advanced levels of language proficiency is not be able to be equaled with advanced level of cross-cultural understanding. Nonetheless, the research result revealed that students who expressed their interest to other languages and cultures tend to emerge the elements of L2 learning motivation which were connected to cross cultural understanding and stronger interest in world languages. Then, learners commonly showed strong intergrative orientations in their responses revealed their ability to develop relationship with members of target culture.

This is my first time to read journal article about immersion school. It is mean that i know what is the immersion school from this article. Thank you for the author of this article since i can clearly figure out the information . I just imagine how if immersion school is held in Indonesia, it will be quite fun and challenging. Knowing people round the world is just like seeing how some people see the world, since my lecturer (Mr. Gunarso) always said that learning language is learning about the world.