The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of an early partial immersion program as compared to a non-immersion program on English sociopragmatic awareness among Chinese kindergarten children six years of age. Of the 128 children who participated in the experiment involving the use of politeness perception tasks, half received three years…

This study was designed to investigate the nature of activities in an immersion English class and a non-immersion English class in the mainland of China, and to find out the differences between these two types of class through data gained from observation and interviews. Spoken discourse analysis was used to analyze the data, where Engestrom's…

This article reports a study on the China-Canada-United States English Immersion (CCUEI) Moral Education and Social Studies (MESS) curriculum materials for elementary classes (Grades 3-6) with the aim of learning how the curriculum addressed the dual goals of MESS content and English language learning. An analysis comparing the CCUEI third grade…

The present study investigated the efficacy of early English immersion in the Shi Da Fu Elementary School in Xi'an, China. Three hundred and fifty one students were tested in Grades 1-6. There were two main purposes that motivated this longitudinal and cross-sectional study. The first goal was to compare the L1 and L2 language and literacy…

This paper reports on part of an evaluation of a 2-year program providing preparatory support for 430 Cantonese Chinese-native-speaking students switching from Chinese to English-medium instruction late in their secondary schooling, mainly because of aspiration to English-medium tertiary study. Focusing quantitatively and qualitatively on…

Instruction in English as a foreign language at an early age is becoming more common worldwide even though the effects of this early instruction are not yet known. This study investigated the English and Chinese language performance of students enrolled in early English immersion in a Chinese primary school. In addition, factors that could predict…

This paper studies the similarities and differences between the goals of bilingual education in China and the United States. China and the U. S. have similar purposes in providing bilingual education to language minorities at the elementary-secondary school level. The Americans use bilingual education as a remedy, but most Chinese treat it as a…