Reviews the theoretical foundations of French immersion programs in Canada, which are based on early exposure, creation of a natural imitative environment, cross-language interference and support, contextualized learning, and a communicative approach. Describes the practical applications of the theories, immersion program teachers and their roles,…

This study analyzed the production of voice onset time (VOT) for /p, t, k/ in Japanese and English by English-speaking children (n = 15) in a Japanese immersion program. The immersion children produced Japanese voiceless stops with significantly longer VOT values than the monolingual Japanese children and the immersion teachers, but they produced…

It is an underlying principle of Australian Education Review (AER) 54 that active efforts should be made to cultivate the latent bilingual potential within Australia's wider population and that this should be linked to major improvements in the quality of language teaching in schools. A combined approach of this kind will require investment in…

A survey of school administrators and educational researchers concerning the characteristics desired in elementary school language teachers resulted in rankings of personal qualities, pedagogical skills, and linguistic skills preferred for teachers of three program types: foreign language in the elementary school (FLES), foreign language…

Discusses the increased demand for French immersion teachers, the concomitant demand for improved teacher education programs, and the joint efforts of the University of Manitoba's faculty of education and French department to create a course for senior students and practicing teachers to meet these needs. (MSE)

Describes an innovative teacher education program that prepares elementary school foreign language teachers to work in immersion or partial immersion schools. The model's effects on other teacher preparation components and possible use by other institutions are also discussed. (Author/CB)

Reviews a survey of all Ministries of Education and a sampling of school districts taken to explore whether a French Immersion (FI) teacher shortage exists. Findings indicate a stabilization in the growth rate of immersion programs, a lack of teachers for specialty areas and of teachers specifically trained to teach in immersion. (12 references)…

An experimental study was designed to evaluate the effect on French language proficiency of an integrated, formal, analytic and functional, communicative approach to second-language teaching in French immersion. The study consisted of 315 grade 7 early French immersion students. (28 references) (VWL)

From 1990 to 2000, there was widespread change in general education. What do the trends say? (Contains 10 tables and 2 notes.)

This article presents an autoethnographical account of my foray into Spanish immersion education in Costa Rica as a professor of multilingual education at a university in Canada. This language-learning journey was inspired by curiosity about the growing trend for Internet marketing of second-language learning as a form of tourism, which I label…

The purpose of this manual, which accompanies a video program, is to provide general background information for foreign language teachers who are, or soon will be, teaching in total, partial, or two-way immersion classrooms. Part of a series of video programs, this manual highlights techniques, strategies, and special considerations that immersion…

Describes and critiques a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded summer graduate program at the University of Minnesota for preservice and inservice teachers of French, German, and Spanish. The program combines a language immersion approach in content-based classes with a pedagogical component. (Author/JL)

An Ontario language teachers' association survey of school boards concerning projected staffing needs, status of current core and immersion French programs, planned expansion and development, and areas of particular need for qualified French second-language teachers is summarized. Data and issues raised by respondents are presented. (Author/MSE)

Within '"communicative language teaching," "natural" language has had a privileged position, and a focus on form has been seen as something inauthentic or as something that is inconsequential for learning (for a critique, see Kramsch and Sullivan 1996; Cook 1997). Yet in the present study of an immersion classroom, it was found that children with…

Jamaica is a Creole-speaking environment, where children enter school with a range of varieties, some of which are closely related to English. The expectation is that they will learn English in school. The appropriate language teaching approach, it is argued, is not English as a mother tongue, English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign…