This micro-ethnographic classroom-based case study explores the teaching methodology in a first-grade French-immersion class. This study was carried out in a public elementary immersion school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where English-speaking children throughout the school learn the school curriculum through a second language (French), starting in…

Purpose: This study aims to provide substantive data on the effectiveness of the total-student-body approach to school-based conflict resolution training. The authors investigated the effectiveness of the Peacemakers (D. W. Johnson & Johnson, 1995) program, a total-student-body conflict training program taught bilingually to all students in a…

One of the advantages of having students work in pairs on language-related tasks is that teachers and researchers can listen to what the students say as they carry out their assigned tasks. What they say offers insights into the students' beliefs about the target language they are learning and using, and reflects the cognitive processes they use…

The purpose of this paper is to argue that the traditional division between bilingual education programmes offered to speakers of majority languages and those available to minority language speakers in Colombia should be reconsidered within a wider, integrated vision of bilingual provision. Initially, developments will be situated in relation to…

In dual language programs, children who speak a majority language are grouped with children who speak a minority language, and instruction is delivered in both languages. This focus on structural rather than instructional design can lead to a recipe approach to design: add the ingredients (native-speaking children, content language instruction) in…

This paper explores the role of negotiation in teacher-student interaction and argues that the negotiation of meaning, defined as a set of conversational moves which work toward mutual comprehension, is too narrow a construct to fulfil its pedagogical potential in teacher-student interaction in communicative and content-based second language (L2)…

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…

A powerful tool for creating culture while, at the same time, a cognitively rigorous exercise, Indigenous-language immersion could be a key for producing both language fluency and academic success in culture-based schools. Drawing on seven years of critical ethnographic research at Ojibwe schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin, this researcher…

In this testimony, Dr. Willard Sakiestewa Gilbert talks on behalf of the National Indian Education Association with regard to the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) and challenges facing BIE schools in improving student achievement. Founded in 1969, the National Indian Education Association (NIEA) is the largest organization in the nation dedicated…

In 2002, Massachusetts voters passed Question 2, a law similar to its predecessors in California (Proposition 227) and Arizona (Proposition 203) to replace bilingual education with structured English immersion (SEI) programs. Using Ruiz's (1984) framework for language planning as an analytical lens, this study examined how three Massachusetts…

Differences between early and late Irish-immersion secondary school students are examined, not only in terms of academic outcome and target language ability, but also in terms of attitudes to learning the target language. Participants included a gender-balanced group of 97 students in Irish-immersion in fourth year of secondary school (mean age…