The Language Immersion Program at the State University College of New York at New Paltz provides a highly effective and exciting learning environment for intensive study of a foreign language. Participants progress rapidly and gain greater confidence and enthusiasm as they develop fluency. (CB)

Presents a theory that all developing and developed bilinguals have a preferred and a second language (L2) and that the bilingual increases L2 competence through fluctuating activity between bilingual preferred L2 medium-oriented communication and monolingual L2 message-oriented communication. Discusses implications of the theory for language…

Examines the efficacy of foreign language programs at the elementary school level by looking at three programs--immersion, partial immersion, and foreign language in the elementary school--currently found in 15 schools in the United States. Comparisons are made by measuring achievement in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. (SED)

Discusses goals of teaching French as a foreign language as set forth in the "Recommended Statement of 16+ National Criteria for French" and compares them to the goals of Ontario's bilingual immersion program. Discusses the feasibility of accomplishing these goals within the framework of the compulsory education system in Great Britain.…

Uses data from English-speaking children learning French in the Toronto French Immersion Program as evidence to support the 1981 study by Gundel and Tarone on the acquisition of pronouns by Chinese- and Spanish-speaking adults learning English. This study concluded that the acquisition of direct object pronouns proceeds in three stages. (SED)

Although foreign language education has much to offer this nation, few educators or parents support such programs. Possible reasons for this situation are discussed. Immersion programs for foreign language education have achieved success with elementary school children. (DF)

Since the popularization of networked computing that began in 1993, many excited educators have employed networked computers to improve motivation and learning in the classroom. Computers have also become a focal point for the improvement of instruction through the introduction of teaching methods that better support constructivist learning. While…

Describes an immersion program in the Milwaukee Public Schools in which children learn to understand, speak, read, and write two languages; by the time they finish sixth grade, they are functionally bilingual. Elements discussed include parental involvement, staffing and recruitment, acquiring materials, and program costs. (CT)

The article reports the results of a 1979-80 survey of the kind and number of French language programs in Canadian elementary schools. It notes the development of both traditional and immersion French language programs and the increasing enrollment in French programs, especially in Eastern Canada. (SB)

Compares programs for teaching Welsh to children in Wales with those teaching French in Canada. Describes Welsh medium schools, Welsh as a second language programs and the recent Schools Council Bilingual Project, in which Welsh is used as medium of instruction for part of the school day. (Author/BK)

Presents an investigation of a longitudinal study of the development of past tense and plural inflections in elementary school children enrolled in either a French immersion or a traditional English curriculum. The type of program did not influence the rate of acquisition. (Author/BK)

Three case studies of children with specific learning disabilities who were switched out of French immersion programs are presented to provide background for the development of hypotheses for future study regarding the advisability of switching. (JMF)

Provides an abbreviated update of a Spanish language program, initiated in Kansas City, Missouri in 1987-88, that was begun in response to a 1986 federal court order mandating the creation of magnet schools for ending segregative practices and beginning elementary school language immersion programs for French, German, and Spanish. (GLR)

Examines the history of language issues and educational policies in the Marshall Islands. Discussion focuses on the administrative, financial, curricular, and staffing features of current language and educational programs, and an immersion model of bilingual Marshallese-English education is proposed to counteract some of the negative outcomes of…

Many ideas attributed to the whole-language approach are not new. Whole language demands that literacy instruction be indirect, unsystematic, and nonintensive and that scope-and-sequence charts be abandoned. Experimental research has judged the major tenets of whole language to be erroneous--a point accepted even by whole-language leaders favoring…