English-only vs Immersion: Lost in Translation?

Is 'English-only' really the same as immersion? Huma Hasna Riaz Ahmed reflects on how a widely accepted practice in ELT may be oversimplifying a more complex reality and why learners’ languages might be key to making immersion work.

“Only English, please.” Most English language teachers have said this at some point.

But why do we say it? 

Because we have come to believe that immersion is the same as English-only instruction.

In this article I explore how immersion is often misunderstood in ELT, and what a more context-sensitive understanding might look like in today’s classrooms.

Where do teachers first encounter immersion, and what does it mean to them?

When I began teaching, I remember hearing the term 'immersion' early in my training, alongside advice to maximise English use in the classroom. Like many teachers, I quickly equated immersion with English-only teaching.

I don’t recall ever learning what immersion actually meant in my early years of teaching. It was something I was expected to do, rather than debate or interrogate. Over time, it became part of my professional instinct: if learning is to happen, English must be used, and used exclusively.

When I began researching plurilingual pedagogy a few years ago, I started to question this assumption. And what I discovered was this: perhaps what many of us have been practising is not immersion at all.

So, what is immersion, and where does it come from?

In research, immersion has a specific meaning that is often lost in everyday ELT discourse.

It comes from bilingual education contexts, most famously Canadian French immersion, where English-speaking learners were taught subjects such as maths and science through French (Genesee, 1987) within stable, long-term, well-resourced school systems. Learners typically shared a common first language, had continuity of schooling, and were immersed over several years, not weeks.

These conditions matter.

They differ significantly from many English language teaching contexts around the world, especially in contexts where time, resources, and access to input may be more limited, classes are short and time-bound, and learners may have limited access to sustained support in the language of instruction. 

In other words, the ecological conditions that supported immersion’s success are not the same as those in many ELT classrooms today.

What makes immersion effective in its original contexts—long-term exposure, continuity, and carefully structured support—is not always replicable in typical ELT classrooms. In short, what immersion builds over time, learners in ELT classrooms often have to construct quickly, with additional scaffolding. As a result, they draw on their existing languages as tools to bridge gaps and make sense of new input within the available time, especially at lower proficiency levels.

Ignoring this does not strengthen immersion—it risks making learning less accessible.

How does this impact education?

This issue extends beyond ELT classrooms. According to UNESCO (2019), around 40% of the world’s population does not have access to education in a language they understand. That represents a significant proportion of learners worldwide. 

When the language of instruction is unfamiliar, it can affect comprehension, participation, and retention, and has been linked in many contexts to reduced confidence and motivation, as well as higher dropout rates. While this issue is shaped by broader medium-of-instruction policies, it highlights a shared challenge across educational settings: when learners cannot access the language of learning, they often need additional scaffolds to make meaning.

This brings us to a critical question:

Is immersion the same as English-only instruction?

The short answer is no.

In ELT, immersion seems to have travelled in a reduced form—stripped of the ecological conditions that made it work. The result: English-only instruction.

Part of this shift lies in how ideas are transmitted through teacher education. In teacher-training qualifications, trainees are often encouraged to maximise the use of English in their teaching. However, this principle is often reduced to immersion, and what we have is received wisdom.

Over time, the focus has shifted from maximising English exposure to minimising the use of all other languages. This is further reinforced by institutional branding, learner expectations, teacher identity and evaluation, and market pressures.

So, what is the difference?

Here’s a simple way to think about it:

 Does immersion actually argue for excluding learners’ languages?

Not at all.

While immersion prioritises the target language as the medium of instruction, it does not advocate for the elimination of learners’ languages as cognitive or interactional resources. As Jim Cummins (2000) argues, languages are interdependent, and knowledge transfers across them.

The issue is not the use of English as the main classroom language. The issue is assuming that excluding other languages improves learning. Macaro (2005) found no evidence that banning other languages actually improves English learning. In fact, the opposite may be true. As García (2009) shows, learners use an integrated linguistic repertoire to make meaning. 

So, where does this leave us?

Reclaiming immersion: a plurilingual perspective

This raises an important issue of teacher literacy and education: if we are not clear on what immersion actually means, how can we apply it meaningfully in our classrooms?

Rather than rejecting learners’ languages, we need to reclaim immersion with context in mind. In my own classroom practice with lower-level learners at the British Council Teaching Centre in the UAE, I think of this as gentle plurilingual immersion where:

• English remains the main medium 

• learners’ own languages are used strategically to scaffold learning

• learners have the agency to make informed choices 

This is not about translating everything or abandoning English. It is about recognising that learners’ languages are resources, not roadblocks.

A final question

Monolingual teaching philosophy is deeply entrenched in ELT across institutions, coursebooks, classrooms, and teacher education.

So, we need to ask: 

Are we immersing learners in English, or isolating them from their languages that can make immersion work?