English classroom immersion learning on language barriers in autistic students

Abstract

Background

Language is an important tool for human thinking and communication, and language disorder is one of the core symptoms of autism. This paper aims to examine the effects of English full immersion use in an English classroom learning environment on facilitating language acquisition performance and language disorders in autistic students. In addition, the paper also seeks to analyze the potential impact of immersive learning on their language ability and communication skills.

Subjects and Methods

60 autistic students from a school in Chengdu were randomly selected, and 30 were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group. The experimental group used English classroom immersive learning, while the control group adopted the traditional bilingual teaching mode. The whole experiment lasted for 32 weeks, and the spontaneous language frequency and semantic accuracy of autistic students were recorded in both groups.

Results

According to the pre-post recording, the spontaneous language frequency and semantic accuracy rate of the students in the experimental group were significantly different from the comparison before the experiment (P<0.05), and there was no significant difference between the results in the control group (P>0.05).

Conclusions

The spontaneous language frequency and semantic accuracy of autistic students with English classroom immersive learning improved significantly one week after the beginning of the experiment, and were significantly higher than that of traditional bilingual teaching in the first week. Explain that immersive learning in English class has a potential positive impact on language barriers in autistic students. The findings of this study promise to improve educational and therapeutic approaches to promote language development of students with autism.