Grounded in the cross-linguistic influence(s) (CLI) literature, this study used objective measures to compare the use of English, lexical richness and syntactic complexity, and grammatical accuracy and fluency in the texts of three groups of Grade 6 French immersion students: Canadian-born anglophones (C-A), Canadian-born multilinguals (C-M), and…

In the present day Mandarin Chinese has become a commonly taught language in the U.S. Mandarin is widely taught in colleges and universities; K-12 Chinese programs, including immersion programs, have also grown rapidly. However, to date little research has been conducted on the latter programs. This study examines immersion programs in elementary…

Few studies have compared the written competency of French immersion students and their core French peers, and research on these learners at a postsecondary level is even scarcer. My corpus consists of writing samples from 255 students from both backgrounds beginning a university course in French language. The writing proficiency of core French…

Research has demonstrated that students in dual-language immersion programs perform as well as, or better than, their peers in core academic content areas by late elementary school. However, the extent to which immersion education fosters bilingualism has received less attention in the literature. Using data from a four-year efficacy study of…

Research has demonstrated that students in dual-language immersion programs perform as well as, or better than, their peers in core academic content areas by late elementary school. The extent to which immersion education fosters bilingualism, however, has received less attention in the literature. Using data from a four-year efficacy study of…

This study compared the Mandarin performance of elementary immersion program students and high school world language program students in the same school district. A cross-sectional design was employed to gather information on Mandarin proficiency of fourth and fifth graders and Level 4 and Level 5 (AP Chinese) high school students who took the…

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…

A study was conducted to assess the French language proficiency of grade 10 and grade 11 students from three different French immersion programs: early, grade 7, and grade 7/8 immersion. English and French control groups were included in the study. The results indicate that: (1) the three immersion groups scored significantly higher than the…

Reports on an investigation of learning-strategy applications in elementary French, Japanese, and Spanish immersion classrooms. Focus is on identifying strategies that more and less effective learners use for classroom reading and writing tasks in the target language. Think-aloud data from 3rd-grade and 4th-grade students were quantified and…

The academic achievement in French of two cohorts of grade 9 students of a public school early immersion program in New Brunswick, which has total French-language instruction through grade 4 and includes all students in the program except transfers was compared to that of a group of native French-speaking students at a nearby French-language…

The journal includes nine articles on the theme of a world view of foreign language teaching. They are: "The Foreign Language Articulation Task Force Survey: A Report" (Reid Baker); "Report of the Ohio Foreign Language Task Force" (Barbara Snyder); "The Akron Story Part I: Summer Foreign Language Camps" (John D. Durden and Sandra K. Strauber);…

Results of a study of the efficacy of foreign language instruction at the elementary school level are presented. The study provides new information permitting comparison of three program types--Foreign Language in the Elementary School (FLES), partial immersion, and immersion--currently used in schools in the United States. The results are based…

The development of first language skills among native English-speaking students enrolled in early French immersion programs was explored. Preliminary results support the hypothesis that early bilingual schooling enhances the students'performances on various kinds of first language learning tasks. (Author/CB)

Instruction in English as a second language for differentially prepared college students should be conducted in an environment in which students have input from a wide range of authentic spoken and written language samples, varying in difficulty level. The instructional process should be viewed by the students as neither intimidating nor…