The potential of various instructional strategies for promoting second-language acquisition among child second-language (L2) learners is considered in relation to empirical findings in early French immersion programs. Several principles are proposed concerning code-focused L2 instruction in a communicatively oriented school-based acquisition…

Many approaches to instruction of language minority students have been tried: transitional bilingual education (BE), maintenance BE, foreign language education, immersion, and developmental-language BE. Research evidence of BE benefits has been ignored as a monolingual dominant class enforces assimilation. (SK)

Discusses the Hawaiian-language-revitalization effort, which is the most developed of any indigenous-language revitalization in the United States. During the last 15 years, Hawaiian-language revitalization has centered around establishing indigenous-medium/immersion education and implementing the official status of the language of Hawaii.…

Provides a dialogue that is a series of semi-structured interviews with a language educator who taught French for 4 years before becoming a full-time mother. After 9 years, she became involved in teaching in a French immersion program in Canada. The interviewer is a senior lecturer at Macquarie University in Australia. (Author/VWL)

Discusses two questions: (1) What has the recent research conducted in French immersion programs in Canada contributed to understanding of second language acquisition?; and (2) What has it contributed to the broader field of applied linguistics? Considers research in the coming decade, and discusses obstacles that may be faced in Canada in…

Educators and policy makers in many countries have been expressing concern about how to improve students' achievement in reading and math. This article explores and proposes a solution: introduce or increase foreign language study in the elementary schools. Research has shown that foreign language study in the early elementary years improves…

This article describes the Language Center Montessori School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where students are learning in a language-immersion Montessori environment. The school offers a choice to parents--Spanish immersion or French immersion--but Montessori comes with both. The school's motivation for promoting bilingualism is to improve…

Proficiency in a second language (L2) may depend upon the age of exposure and the continued use of the mother tongue (L1) during L2 acquisition. The effect of early L2 exposure on the preattentive perception of native and non-native vowel contrasts was studied by measuring the mismatch negativity (MMN) response from 14-year-old children. The test…

In immersion programs, language is not directly taught, but rather embedded into the content of a lesson. The target language is the medium of the lesson, not the object of the instruction. A story provides a language experience and encourages students to participate actively in the lesson. Children are also more apt to learn and retain ideas and…

The Department of Education respectfully submits this "Report to the Legislature: English Language Acquisition Professional Development" pursuant to Chapter 61 of the Acts of 2007, line item 7027-1004, and pursuant to G.L c. 69s.1I, the Department of Education addressing several provisions. School district implementation of sheltered…

Achieving biliteracy is a remarkable accomplishment, and it is important to understand the range of factors that permit its successful realization. The authors investigated a factor known to affect reading in monolingual children that has received little attention in the second-language literature: morphological awareness. The researchers tracked…

The establishment and growth of Irish-medium education has been central to the revitalisation of the language in Northern Ireland in recent years. Historically, the struggle by the minority of Irish speakers in the region to provide all-Irish schools has been both the goal and the engine of renewal and expansion during a period of community and…

The role of explicit and implicit acquisition of grammatical rules in second language learning was examined by assessing high school students performance after several years of study on the correct use of the Spanish verbs "ser" and "estar". These two verbs are essentially equivalent in use to the English verb "to be," but there is a complex set…

In 2002, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education Programs (NCATE) established Advanced Low (AL) as the minimal level of oral proficiency for foreign language teacher candidates. However, AL is not a level commonly reached by graduates of foreign language programs. Additional language training focusing on the development of…

A survey of research on French as a second language (FSL) education in Canada suggests that French immersion (FI) students enjoy significant linguistic, academic, and cognitive benefits. We organize our summary of the advantages of FI around these three themes, comparing students' proficiency in French and English across various FI programs, and…