“Foreign” languages are here distinguished from intranational languages and from international lingua francas. Foreign languages are not used within the community, but there is an identifiable community and culture elsewhere that establishes the target for the immersion program. The French immersion program in Australia described by Michele de Courcy in Chapter 3 falls clearly within this category. For generations, French has been the foreign language most widely taught in Australian schools, a tradition inherited from the British education system. In the case of the English immersion program in Hungary described by Patricia Duff in Chapter 2, it is less clear. Traditionally, English would have been taught (where it was taught at all) as a foreign language based on British English and culture, but the current impetus toward learning English is more instrumental, and has a much wider international frame of reference, than a purely European context. Indeed, Duff's chapter could equally well be placed in Part V, which is concerned with immersion in a language of power.

Duff's chapter is about late partial English immersion programs – what she also refers to as dual-language (DL) programs – in Hungary. These programs reflect the current political and economic uncertainties of Eastern Europe. They are “resource-hungry,” as many other immersion programs are, but the resources for education are limited and those provided for a program considered by many to be elite are being challenged by other priorities within the education system.