Time on Task and Immersion Graduates' French Proficiency

This comparative study aims to identify precisely how native speaker contact outside the immersion classroom may be an important missing link in the immersion learners’ acquisition of French, such that learners who enjoy such contact in other learning contexts may demonstrate a differential acquisition experience. For the purposes of such an investigation, we draw upon data collected in a Canadian immersion context, as well as within other contexts of language acquisition, such as the traditional foreign language classroom, as well as a naturalistic context where opportunities for native speaker contact are more amply available. Since the inadequacies experienced by the immersion ‘graduates’ relate to the characteristics of the learners’ real language usage, the data investigated as part of this research project are similarly based on real language usage elicited from learners in a range of learning contexts.

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 2000

in education, 2021

A review of Sylvie Roy's (2020) French Immersion Ideologies. Lexington Books. 220 pages ISBN-10‏ :‎ 1793612714

The Modern Language Journal, 2020

French second language (FSL) education, including the option of one-way French immersion, is mandated for majority-language Anglophone children in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province. Language ideological debates in the province surrounding official English-French bilingualism led us to investigate adolescent majority-language immersion students' investment in French, the co-official minority language, using Darvin and Norton's (2015) tripartite (capital, ideology, identity) model. We discuss 3 student profiles, drawing on data collected from multimodal focus groups conducted among 8th grade French immersion students. Our analysis reveals a dominance of neoliberal ideologies in these students' investment in French rendering it imbalanced and largely driven by imagined access to future economic capital. Language as cultural or social capital (Bourdieu, 1986) figures inconsistently in their investment. Drawing on our data, we conclude by proposing that Darvin and Norton's (2015) model, with a balanced focus on each kind of capital within the model, may be used conceptually PA G E 2 by educators in program development. The model used in such a way would enable educators to give equal priority to students' identity and intercultural development as to their preparation for participation in economic marketplaces, thus potentially expanding majority language students' investment in their co-official minority L2.

The French Review, 2018

Speaking (like the) French" was designed in 1993 to address the frustration that strikes too many students who feel that they plateau at an intermediate level of language acquisition. After the traditional sequence of three or four semesters of college language instruction, often following several years of study in high school, students may feel that their learning stagnates at the mid-intermediate level on the ACTFL scale, or B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR <coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf>). They lose interest in their initial goal of improving linguistic competence, and many abandon their studies in the language before they reach a higher level of mastery. 1 Yet students who manage to pass or bypass this low moment often go on to spend a year or semester studying abroad and regain their momentum to reach a greater level of fluency. Could a course be designed to counter the plateau effect? What kind of intermediate level course might re-motivate student interest by enabling them to surmount the period of stagnation and to reconnect with the language and culture? The January interterm at Smith College, a period students usually spend unengaged academically, offered an opportunity for an experiment. The proven success of the Middlebury summer language school's total immersion program, condensing two semesters of college-level language courses into seven to eight weeks, suggested a model for an interterm course that would likewise condense one semester into a three-week immersion. 2 Such an intense immersion experience, albeit shorter than the Middlebury program, could serve multiple objectives. Not only might it allow students to progress more rapidly than during a semester course, therein addressing the problem of the "plateau effect," but it might also make that progress more visible and attractive to students and thus encourage them to continue their study of the language beyond the intermediate level. Could a three-week intense immersion experience lead students to "dream" in French?

2009

Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 1978

The results of the evaluation of the French immersion program in grades three to five of the Ottawa public school system indicate that pupils in the program are in general on a par with or ahead of their peers in the regular English program in most academic areas considered (English, mathematics, work-study skills, science) and are performing satisfactorily in French. These findings are consistent with those of other evaluations.

Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics Revue canadienne de linguistique appliquée, 2019

This research synthesis aims to investigate the broader trends in K-12 French as a second language (FSL) published research from 2000-2017 (inclusive). We assembled a database of 181 peer-reviewed articles relating to FSL education to examine what we already know about specific issues. We used Nvivo 11 (Pro) to facilitate coding the articles for key words and findings (among other codes). Four prevalent research topics emerged in terms of frequency of occurrence: literacy, French language form, French language instruction, and student background. In this article, after exploring each issue by synthesizing main findings, we summarize what we know and what remains to be discovered about each topic. We conclude by suggesting relevant directions for future research, such as focusing on programs other than French immersion and working with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities to better understand FSL learning in these contexts.

Canadian Journal of Applied Lingustics: 24, 2021

In this article, we analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada. We employ the lenses of plurilingualism and plurilingual competence in the analysis of data from a one-year qualitative study of plurilingualism across the disciplines at the university. We analyze interview data and students' writing samples, focusing on how French and other languages are used by instructors and students in classes, and on the professional dilemma that instructors face in such courses: are they disciplinary experts and/or French immersion teachers? In our discussion, we suggest that instructors' and students' classroom practices are the result of several factors, including institutional discourses around plurilingualism and the French language, personal beliefs and ideologies, experiences of mobility from France and Quebec to British Columbia (instructors), and normative practices previously experienced in French immersion schools (students).