In the United States, the best known group of language camps is Concordia Language Villages (CLV), located in the state of Minnesota.
CLV is an internationally recognized and respected world-language and -culture education program, whose mission is to prepare young people-- the "villagers"-- for responsible citizenship in our global community. Begun in 1961, the Language Villages annually serves 9,500 young people, aged 7-18, from all 50 of the United States, Canada, and a couple dozen other countries. Concordia Language Villages has long been a model of quality and innovative programming in immersion education, and currently offers sessions in 14 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish. Year-round programs are also available for adults, elderhostelers, families, teachers and school groups. Four high school credit abroad programs are offered, in France, Germany, Japan, and Spain.
CLV has five architecturally and culturally authentic village sites (French, Spanish, Finnish, German, and Norwegian) in Bemidji, and culturally authentic villages at sites throughout Minnesota, as well as in Georgia, Switzerland, and China. CLV's main campus is in Bemidji, Minnesota, but also opporates programs at other locations through Minnesota and in Savannah, Georgia. CLV is sponsored by Concordia College of Moorhead, Minn., a private four-year liberal arts college.
Simulations play a major role in giving villagers the opportunity to experience historic events and situations in international affairs that affect world peace. Examples have included world religions, children’s rights, and tolerance. Comfort with the language, open-mindedness, and awareness of world citizenship are core values taught at Concordia Language Villages. Villagers learn these important values daily, bit by bit, experience by experience.
A typical day at one of the Villages (each named "Lake of the Woods" in their respective language, the English and Arabic language villages excepted) includes cultural and typical summer camp activities. Villagers might go canoeing, create art projects, play African drums, practice yoga, play ping-pong, or make a film -- all in the target language. Each moment is used to teach the language. Camp songs and daily skits are an integral part of the village experience, as are jokes, games, and weekend dances -- fun is taken seriously at Concordia.
Language acquisition is the process by which language develops in humans. First language acquisition concerns the development of language in children, while second language acquisition focuses on language development in adults as well. Historically, theories and theorists may have emphasized either nature or nurture as the most important explanatory factor for acquisition.
Most researchers however, acknowledge the importance of both biology and environment. One hotly debated issue is whether the biological contribution includes language-specific capacities, often described as Universal Grammar. For fifty years, linguist Noam Chomsky and before his death Eric Lenneberg, strongly argued for the hypothesis that children have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning.
Other researchers, including Elizabeth Bates, Catherine Snow, and Michael Tomasello, have hypothesized that language learning results only from general cognitive abilities and the interaction between learners and their surrounding communities. Recent work by William O'Grady proposes that complex syntactic phenomena result from an efficiency-driven, linear computational system. O'Grady describes his work as "nativism without Universal Grammar". One of the most important advances in the study of language acquisition was the creation of the CHILDES database by Brian MacWhinney and Catherine Snow.
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Some of the above information courtesy of Wikipedia.