Queensland second language immersion programs have been in existence for three decades, and are part of a growing number of additive bilingual education programs in Australia. Most prominently, many new Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs have been established particularly in Victoria over the past few years. This focus on…

Kindergarten in Victoria, Australia is the preschool year, attended by children who are four going on five, and who will go onto primary school the following year. These are part-time programs, run over a small number of sessions per week, typically for 3-5 hours per session for 10-12 hours per week. North West Brunswick Kindergarten, in the…

Task-based learning has been recommended in immersion classes in order to provide relief from the usual teacher-fronted lessons and increase the opportunities for student output. This paper presents one aspect of the data collected during the on-going evaluation of a late partial immersion French programme in an Australian school. It presents the…

In his examination of successful innovation and change in education in many settings, Fullan (2001) identifies the three broad options for effecting change that public authorities have at their disposal. They can seek to bring about change through imposing accountability (system-wide or targeted), or through providing incentives (either…

In this article, the author describes the French immersion program at Meriden Junior School, an Anglican school for girls from pre-Kindergarten to Year 12 in Sydney. Four teachers (one of whom is the coordinator) and three assistants are involved in the program. They include six French native speakers and one non-French-born teacher who speaks…

Addresses common questions about immersion-type language programs in Australia through interviews with 18 immersion program students. An explanation is given of what goes on in an immersion program; and student comments regarding the program's knowledge, academic, cultural, social, and general aspects are provided. (six references) (GLR)

Presents data on interlanguage development obtained from a storytelling exercise using a picture storybook for children in an Australian French-English immersion program. (Author/VWL)

International Grammar School was founded twenty years ago on the belief in the benefits of immersion language learning for children. It offers immersion second language learning in German, Italian, French, and Japanese which continues through kindergarten into the high school years. With language as the medium and not the object of learning,…

This paper deals with the author's recent work on political, sociolinguistic and educational aspects of bilingual and immersion education in Australia. Among the cases considered are: the development of a professional position statement on bilingual and immersion education, to be disseminated to policy makers; advising on an Auslan (Australian…

Overviews recent developments in immersion language programs in Australia, contrasting the Australian experience with that of other countries. Findings indicate that the most promising developments at the tertiary level are teacher education programs with content-based instruction in the target language and an emerging focus on combining intensive…

The Northern Territory's bilingual education programmes, in which local Australian Aboriginal languages and English were used side by side in a minority of Aboriginal primary schools in remote northern Australia, came into being in 1973 under the broader federal government policy imprimatur of "self-determination" for Indigenous…

A recently developed primary school German immersion program for a German community is described and its development from Canadian examples is discussed. The program is a composite of immersion, bilingual, and second language models. Early reaction is highly favorable, although the program will not be fully evaluated for a few years. (MSE)

The Language and Culture Initial Teacher Education: Primary (LACITEP) program in Australia, a preservice teacher education program designed to train elementary school teachers as specialists in Japanese language teaching, is described. In the partial immersion format, at least half the courses are taught in Japanese. Courses in the first year…

Reflects on the achievement in math and science of Australian students in an immersion French program. The immersion math students outperformed mainstream students at a level not significantly different, and by the end of the first year, the science students performed as well as their mainstream counterparts, indicating that immersion students…

This book emphasizes the process of learning in immersion programs, particularly those related to reading. It explores language learning processes and experiences among French late immersion grade 9 students and Australian teachers completing a university-based Chinese immersion graduate diploma. Using students from each group as key informants,…