Long Term Benefit of Immersion Programs

I, personally, have not been able to find any real data as to the benefits of immersion programs, though I do think there is some. Possibly I just am unaware on the proper search term to use in Google. Specifically, what is the language ability after one month, six months, a year? Has the level of the second language been maintained, improved, or is the student back to square one? Once the immersion program is over, how does a student keep the momentum going?

Attending a language immersion program can be lots of fun and very beneficial to the language learning process. Many, many schools exist all over the world for those wishing to learn a second (or sometimes third and fourth) language. Have you noticed that almost every school, at least those listed on the internet, claim that their school is different? I did a quick check on Google (1,380,000 hits) using the term, “Spanish Immersion Programs”. Out of the few selections that I actually clicked, the sales pitch was about the same.

I find it just as interesting that out of so many immersion programs for those wanting to learn Spanish, there is very little, if any, feedback from students other than the initial “I had a great time” story.

When a student initially returns from their immersion program they still have the excitement flowing through them. The exposure to a different culture, a different way of living is definitely a benefit of immersion programs. And, I think most do actually learn a great deal of language from immersion programs. What, however, are the long term benefits?