Integration in two-way immersion education: equalising linguistic benefits for all students

As bilingual enrichment programmes that integrate language majority and language minority students, two-way immersion (TWI) programmes have the potential to overcome the harmful effects of segregation and remedial education that are the frequent byproducts of educational programmes for native speakers of languages other than English. Native/non-native speaker integration is considered essential in these programmes to achieve positive academic, linguistic and cross-cultural outcomes for all students, but these benefits have been largely assumed by educators and programme developers. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the distribution of the linguistic benefits of student integration in TWI classrooms. We argue that, in the absence of a bilingual perspective that takes into consideration issues of differential language status and language acquisition contexts, TWI classrooms may fail to optimise language learning opportunities for all students, particularly for language minority students and in the minority language. We conclude by highlighting programmatic and instructional features that serve to equalise the linguistic benefits of these integrated classrooms.