In a small Mexican town with a sizeable English-speaking population and bilingual schools, some native Spanish speakers develop native-like proficiency in English. Interviews found that the only Spanish speakers acquiring much English attended bilingual schools and frequently had close friendships with native English speakers and favorable…

Describes a longitudinal evaluation of two approaches to educating language-minority students--transitional bilingual education and a new approach, bilingual immersion. Students achievement on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills was traced from grades four through seven, and results indicated significant effects favoring bilingual immersion in language…

Reports on an investigation of learning-strategy applications in elementary French, Japanese, and Spanish immersion classrooms. Focus is on identifying strategies that more and less effective learners use for classroom reading and writing tasks in the target language. Think-aloud data from 3rd-grade and 4th-grade students were quantified and…

A case study examined interactions between elementary school staff and 18 Mexican American parents during the school's conversion to a dual language program. Although parents were included in program planning, parental satisfaction and involvement declined with time. Analysis suggests that parents were alienated as educators' ideals were…

A study interviewed 360 parents in three California school districts that did exemplary jobs in informing parents of the option of requesting a waiver from English immersion requirements of Proposition 227. Results clearly show that the best informed parents in an atmosphere of complete disclosure were those who chose a waiver and bilingual…

Investigates the nature of cohesion, content, and grammar emergent in children's essays, with emphasis on understanding of cohesion and coherence. Conceptual definitions of these constructs are summarized into a picture-based narrative writing task for elicitation and scoring criteria for quantification. First and second graders from an immersion…

Examined how teachers were impacted by California's Proposition 227, highlighting changes in teaching styles and beliefs about the proposition and its effectiveness. Teachers had to change their teaching strategies to accommodate the new curriculum. They were not sufficiently trained for immediate implementation of English-only education. Teaching…

We examined standards used by Canadian universities and British Columbia school districts to verify the language competence of French Immersion (FI) teachers in a time of shortage, confirmed by 56 per cent of school districts surveyed. Parents and Directors of Human Resources agreed on their minimum expectations about French teachers'…

Second language acquisition research has led to a major emphasis on the need for learners to experience the target language (TL) in use if they themselves are to become users of the language. At the same time, there is discussion of the role of the first language (L 1) as a tool in the processing of language/culture experiences. Achieving optimal…

A 1992 Canadian study and 1994 followup investigated the high school experience of six Anglophone French immersion students who participated in a pilot program in French immersion in elementary and junior high school and continued immersion study in high school. Data were gathered during the students' tenth grade, primarily in semi-structured…

Three studies are presented, each of which is a comparison of the acquisition of an aspect of the French verb system by three groups of speakers. The speakers are: young Anglophones learning French as a second language in an early French immersion program in Montreal; young monolingual Francophones attending elementary French language schools in…

The level of bilingualism of high school students entering Ottawa bilingual programs after having attended early- or late-immersion French programs in elementary school was evaluated by comparing student test scores to outside criteria. On a reading and grammar-based test, the immersion students did not perform as well as native francophone…

An immersion program in a public elementary school in Montgomery County, Maryland, uses French as the medium of instruction in academic subjects. The program is based on the theory that language is learned best when there is a need to understand and communicate in that language. All students are eligible for enrollment in the multi-age classes.…

A program for early identification of children who are a high risk for failure in a primary French immersion program was undertaken in Ontario, Canada. As the last year of a three-year project, the investigation was designed to identify a set of variables predictive of success or failure in the primary program. The predictive validity of measures…

The goal of this study is to discover the phonetic difficulties encountered in the acquisition of French as a second language by English-speaking children. The children are studying French in a total immersion situation without benefit of structural exercises or special French language laboratory classes. Of particular interest here is the extent…