Early years' immersion education programmes can be either monolingual or bilingual, and their objectives can range from language maintenance and/or enrichment to early second language learning, depending on the context of implementation. Here we examine some of the key issues and policy concerns relating to immersion education in the early…

This study analyzed informal Finnish compositions written by the first pupils in Vaasa (Finland) who were taught Swedish by immersion method and the compositions of their parallel class. Compositions in the fourth and fifth forms were compared. The immersion pupils were taught mostly in Swedish, while their peers in the parallel group were taught…

Provides observations from a study of an attempt to introduce Indonesian in an Australian high school. Data collection was done through interviews and classroom observations. Classroom test results were used to compare achievement in subject content and language learning. Findings are discussed. (Author/VWL)

A study analyzed and compared the classroom interactional strategies of two teachers of Catalan immersion classes and one teacher of Spanish as a native language in Spain at the kindergarten level. The theoretical framework guiding the study is based on analysis of the native-speaker/non-native-speaker distinction. Two comparisons were made: (1)…

A study investigated beliefs about language learning held by two groups of students studying Arabic: 41 students in conventional classroom language instruction at the University of Wisconsin in 1992 and 1993, and 27 in an immersion program at the Yemen Language Center (Yemen). The survey instrument consisted of 47 statements in a Likert-type scale…

First-language acquisition of Turkish 4- to 8-year-olds in a Dutch submersion environment in the Netherlands was studied. Investigation of the development of lexical, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic abilities and comparison with children in Turkey suggested that the acquisition of first-language skills by Turkish children in the Netherlands is…

This study investigated the degree of communicative competence of 8-year-old (n=45) students in five Welsh language immersion programs or Welsh-medium schools, comparing the children's skills with those of 10 native Welsh-speaking children. All were asked to retell a story show previously on video, and to participate in a group discussion task. In…

The Hawaiian Language Immersion program (HLI) is described and evaluated. HLI began in 1987 with two small classes on two islands and within 6 years had grown, in response to parent interest, to serve 621 students in grades K-7 in 6 schools on 5 islands. Participating students are taught entirely in Hawaiian until grade 5; in grades 5 and 6 one…