Key words: immersion teaching, input, language teaching, communicative language teaching

Abstract
Immersion language teaching has developed techniques that enable teachers to make their subject matter, through a second language, more comprehensible. It is argued in this article that EFL teachers can also use techniques used by immersion language teachers in their classrooms. In doing so, teachers will increase the amount of input in the SL provided to their students, make their classroom rich with comprehensible input and thus potentially achieve a better language outcome. The techniques that are briefly discussed and examples provided are: Questioning downward, rephrasing, recasts, modelling or demonstrating, and the use of visuals and realia.

Introduction
One of the most effective ways of learning a second language is, what is now known as, immersion language teaching. The programs that have used such techniques have been called immersion (Swain & Johnson, 1996), content-based instruction (Snow, 1998), two-way bilingual education program (Cazabon, Lambert, & Hall, 1993) (the last program being different from the other two because the languages used for instruction are L1 for some of the students in class). In each of these types of bilingual programs there has been an emphasis on meaning, and more particularly on conveying content matter to the students. Teachers of such classes therefore have to learn how to make their language comprehensible to their students so that through an understanding of this language (second language, in most cases) students can develop an understanding of the content that is being taught. Teachers skilled in teaching immersion classes (immersion will be used as a short-hand for all types of programs where content is taught through a second language) show a number of common techniques, all designed to help students understand meaning.

Teachers of EFL might wonder how immersion language teaching techniques can be relevant to their context in which they are not focused on teaching content. EFL teachers are, nevertheless, increasingly using more communicative approaches to second language teaching. One of the primary characteristics of this approach is a focus on meaning, or as (Ellis, 2005, p. 217) recently put it, that instruction is 'predominantly [focused] on meaning'. One of the reasons for the limited amount of second language learning that occurs in a foreign language context is that there is such a limited amount of second language input provided or available to students. Where the teacher speaks the first language of the students there is a great temptation to do much of the explanation in the first language so that during a class of 40 minutes, the second language is heard or read only a small fraction of the total class time. In other words, input provided to learners is frequently quite limited and if we are agreed that input is vital for language development (Ellis, 2005; Krashen, 1994; Lighbown, 2000; VanPatten, 2003), then improved outcomes in our foreign language classrooms are more likely to occur if the amount of input in the second language in class is increased substantively.

The argument in this brief paper is that EFL teachers can increase the second language input in their classes by adopting some of the immersion language teaching techniques: questioning downward, rephrasing, recast, modelling or demonstrating, and the use of visuals and realia. All these techniques result in a greater focus on meaning and understanding the second language without recourse to translation.

1. Questioning downwards
This is a technique that can be best used with both reading and listening comprehension. It is a way of helping students to reach the textual meanings through establishing what students might already know about the topic. The idea of 'downwards' is a metaphor of trying to establish what the students know and then building their comprehension of the text from that starting point. In educational terms, it is constructivism at its operational level (Larochelle, Bednarz, & Garrison, 1998), as teachers build students' knowledge of a text from what knowledge they already possess about the subject matter of the text. For example, in a short piece of reading text on seasoning food, it is suggested that novices wanting to use spices and herbs in cooking their food should underseason the food. The following dialogue shows how downward questioning might occur.

The point about such questioning is that it is carried out in the second language, that the focus for students is meaning, and that an implicit message is conveyed to students that they often know more than they think they do and they need to use their background knowledge to help them to understand texts.

2. Rephrasing
This technique can be thought of as a paralleling the questioning downward technique. In the previous example, the focus has been on conceptual understanding without focusing on whether vocabulary items or particular structures might be the cause of lack of understanding. (Note the last sentence suggests that the perspective is the teachers', that is, it is the teachers who decide that it might be a word, a phrase or a particular structure that might have presented a problem to their students, reflecting teachers' thinking at any particular moment of the lesson.) Rephrasing therefore requires active thought on the part of the teachers as they evaluate the classroom situation and make decisions about whether they should focus on linguistics items or on content in order to further students' understanding of the topic of the lesson.

3. Recasts
While rephrasing is regarded as basically a teacher-driven behaviour, the genesis of recasts lie in the language behaviour of the students and is frequently the feedback in the oft-cited IRE or IRF triadic dialogues that occur in the classroom (that is, teacher Initiates, the student Responds, and the teacher provides some form of Feedback, or Follow-up) (see, for example, Lemke, 1990; Nassaji & Wells, 2000). Such feedback may focus on the correctness or otherwise of the utterance ('right', 'not quite' 'good try' etc) but it could also focus in two other ways, which can lead to some learning: one where teachers modify the students' utterance, and secondly, where teachers repeat the learner's utterance and implicitly correct any errors made by the learners, in ways that are similar to those found in the language data of interactions between parents and their young children. Both instances can be regarded as recasts, though they perform a slightly different function. In the first case, teachers recast a learner's utterance keeping meaning intact but giving it under a slightly different form, as in these two examples:

The second case is found frequently in language teaching classrooms (Lyster & Ranta, 1997) and represents those cases where teachers provide a correct version of the utterance. This may be done as in the example below:

Such recasts may be carried out in class with or without any intonational emphasis on the correct form. Research data suggests that those done with some emphasis, particularly on the incorrect item slot, may be more salient for learners, thus increasing the potential for change in the learner's interlanguage than might be the case in those situations where there are no such overt signals (Nicholas, Lightbown, & Spada, 2001). In the latter case, it is quite likely that they are interpreted by students as confirmation of the content (Lyster, 1998) and the input is thus not available for language development.

The role of recasts in language acquisition is quite complex (for example, it is found more at lower levels whilst at upper levels of proficiency, corrections might be more explicit) and readers might like to look at Nicholas, Lightbown and Spada (2001) who summarise some of the research in both L1 and L2 acquisition as it relates to recasts and discuss some of the complexities surrounding their role in language learning.

4. Modelling or demonstrating
Modelling and demonstration of meanings is more usually associated with vocabulary items where teachers may demonstrate, for example, what an oblong is by the use of their hands. Such visual cues help students to understand new words and store them both as linguistic items as well as a visual representations of them. An establishment of this practice in one's classroom also sends a message to students that the first recourse in case of incomprehension is not necessarily the dictionary. Here is an example from Mangubhai et al., (1999) that shows how demonstrating brings forth an answer.

5. Use of audiovisuals or objects
Use of visuals in classroom is a powerful way to convey meanings to students. To try to convey the idea of globalisation a very good starting point can be a picture of globe (or better still a model of globe itself). The visual aid can lend itself equally well to teach the converse of globe, the local. At early stages of second language learning the use of visuals or objects can be effectively used through a teaching approach called Total Physical Response Method, where a teacher might be able to introduce a series of names of fruit, for example, in the second language through use of fruit, or colours through the use of coloured pens. The following example from Mangubhai et al., (1999) shows the use of students' bodies as physical objects.

Conclusion
To sum up, the techniques used by immersion language teachers are in essence good teaching techniques that can be employed in other contexts also. The critical mode of behaviour for the teachers is that they endeavour to use language in such a way as to facilitate students understand of it. In the process of doing so, teachers will have also increased the amount of input they provide in the second language to their students.

References
Cazabon, M., Lambert, W. E., & Hall, G. (1993). Two-way bilingual education: A progress report on the Amigos program. Santa Cruz: National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning.

Ellis, R. (2005). Principles of instructed language learning. System, 33(2), 209-224.

Krashen, S. (1994). The input hypothesis and its rivals. In N. Ellis (Ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of languages (pp. 45-77). New York: Academic Press.

Larochelle, M., Bednarz, N., & Garrison, J. (Eds.). (1998). Constructivism and education. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning and values. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex.

Lighbown, P. M. (2000). Classroom SLA research and second language teaching. Applied Linguistics, 21(4), 431-462.

Lyster, R. (1998). Recasts, repetition, and ambiguity in L2 classroom discourse. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20(1), 51-81.

Lyster, R., & Ranta, L. (1997). Corrective feedback and learner uptake: Negotiation of form in communicative classrooms. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19(1), 37-66.

Mangubhai, F., Ross, D., Albion, P. (1999). Teaching ESL students in Australia. CD Rom. Toowoomba: University of Southern Queensland.

Nassaji, H., & Wells, G. (2000). What's the use of "Triadic Dialogue"?: An investigation of teacher-students interaction. Applied Linguistics, 21(3), 376-406.

Nicholas, H., Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2001). Recasts as feedback to language learners. Language Learning, 51(4), 719-758.

Snow, M. A. (1998). Trends and issues in content-based instruction. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 18, 243-267.

Swain, M., & Johnson, R. K. (1996). Discovering successful second language teaching strategies and practices: From programme evaluation to classroom experimentation and A response. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 17(2-4), 89-113.

Van Patten, B. (2003). From input to output: A teacher's guide to second language acquisition. New York: McGraw-Hill.