Four French immersion weekends for continuing education students at the University of Calgary were evaluated. Each weekend involved recreational activities for twenty students and four French-speaking monitors at one of two recreational retreats near Calgary. The purpose of the program was to promote fluency in French by encouraging its use in a…

The role of the subject matter teacher, the pedagogical and linguistic adjustments required, and the role of the language teacher in "sheltered" courses in which traditional subject matter is taught in a second language are discussed in the context of a University of Ottawa experiment. (MSE)

A review of the evolution of second-language immersion program testing reveals that the focus has shifted from listening and reading comprehension to productive skills of speaking and writing. Immersion students learn to speak and write well enough for communication but not well enough to be indistinguishable from native speakers. (MSE)

This report, written in French and German, provides an evaluation of a pilot program, begun during the 1999-2000 school year, in which Kindergarten students (aged 5 to 6 years) in the French-speaking town of Cressier and the German-speaking town of Jeuss-Lurtigen-Salvenach, both in the bilingual Fribourg/Freiburg Canton of Switzerland,received 10%…

Describes immersion programs in the United States and Canada and reviews results of evaluative research pertaining to them. Discusses findings with respect to students' native-language development, academic achievement, and second language proficiency. Also discusses the suitability of immersion for students with distinctive, potentially…

Describes immersion education as practiced in Canada, outlining immersion programs' background, structure, methodology, and outcomes. Suggests that, to achieve the outcomes of immersion education developed for majority language groups, some minority language groups may require programs beginning in the first language and continuing in both the…

Research on bilingual education and its relationship to a variety of language teaching settings shows that the immersion experiment in Ontario has had several constructive side effects, including a reexamination of English language teaching and increased contact between teachers of French as a first and as a second language as well as increased…

Administrative problems that have been solved or accepted during eight years of early immersion programs are discussed including choosing locations, staffing, costs, logistics, and the need for suitable pupil progress reporting. (JMF)

Washington State University has adopted a new long-term immersion model for incorporating technology into teaching in which teachers invest fewer than 20 hours over 16 weeks getting used to the idea of teaching with technology before committing themselves to using it in the classroom. This article examines the four-step approach, its…

Used an approach to the study of interlanguage that challenges prevailing models of second language acquisition (SLA) that assume that negotiation of meaning is the only causal variable in SLA. Examines two notions of language play as they have been presented in applied linguistics literature: ludic language play and language play as rehearsal in…

A recent survey of teachers in a French early partial immersion program revealed concerns for those who teach English as to whether an immersion program is suitable for all children. Teachers believed, among other things, that the problems of children who were learning English and French as second languages were compounded by the program.…

Reports on a case study of face-to-face interaction around and about texts between a second grade dyad in a dual-immersion (English/Portuguese) programme. Reveals multiple pedagogical scaffolds, few of which were unexpected. Concludes that Buddy Reading encouraged the peer readers to acknowledge and draw upon each other's expertise, as they…

This paper focuses on the pedagogical beliefs and practices of immersion teachers in a large midwestern city. (JL)

The adoption of a process writing approach in elementary French immersion (FI) is discussed, including favorable arguments from the research and concerns related to creative writing in second-language contexts. Ways to address the special needs of FI students are outlined. (45 references) (Author/LB)

A study in which students in a teacher training program completed one of their compulsory subjects through immersion in French is reported. Results suggest that the immersion model can achieve success in both language and content areas in the Australian setting and that tertiary-level immersion could be an effective way of training non-English…