Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2015

In this article we analyze teachers’ beliefs about learning different languages in multilingual education, which include forms of immersion in the minority and the majority languages. In this study interviews were held with 51 primary school teachers from the Basque Country (Spain), and Friesland (The Netherlands). In both regions three languages are taught: majority, minority and English. Based on the teachers’ views we obtain interesting insights into the native speaker ideal, pupils as multilingual speakers, and the proficiency levels for each language. The teachers also expressed their ideas on teaching through the minority language and through English, as well as their beliefs on cross-linguistic use of languages and how that is related to the multilingual repertoire. The social context is believed to have an important influence through the parents, the media, and the status of the languages in society. The article concludes that beliefs are still largely monolingual and seem to only gradually change to more multilingual views.

Subject-matter specialists teaching content via a foreign/second language in higher education often exhibit a meaning-based pedagogy, unsystematically attending to inaccurate language. This observational study examined whether two foreign-language-teaching-trained instructors teaching content in English in a Mexican undergraduate program would emulate these instructional patterns, or would attend to language favouring language-and-content-integrated pedagogy. In the study, over 400 instructional episodes, video-recorded during 18 hours of regular-classroom teaching, were analyzed using the COLT observation scheme (Spada & Fröhlich, 1995). Results showed that the foreign-language educators favoured content, erratically attending to inaccurate language during communication breakdowns. Language attention occurred reactively through word translations, lexical-gap scaffolding, and isolated explanations for non-target phonological forms. These instructional patterns may result from the language teachers’ newly assumed content-based instructional roles. To favour language attention during subject-matter teaching, language instructors need training and curricular support that helps them draw on their foreign language teaching experience as they deliver content.

This article describes the efforts undertaken by a grassroots, non-profit association established to promote French-second-language learning in Canada, and how those efforts have contributed to the advancement of Canada’s official languages policy. After identifying the historical context in which the immersion approach to second language instruction was developed, we use a historical institutionalism theory with an archival research method to examine texts produced by Canadian Parents for French over the past 38 years to see how the organization has contributed to the growth of English-French bilingualism within Canada. We then note the continuing challenges to universal access to French immersion programs which the association has identified. This article demonstrates that stakeholders can play an important role in the successful implementation of a policy and offers examples that may be relevant for international audiences seeking to promote language learning.

This article reports on case studies of university students participating in the University of Ottawa French Immersion Study (FIS) program, the largest tertiary immersion option in Canada. This program allows Anglophone students to complete an undergraduate degree while taking academic courses in their second official language (French). Semi-structured interviews with case study participants were used to analyze immersion students’ accounts of their experiences within this program. Findings focus on the interactions offered to FIS students and their role in shaping students’ identities and orientation to French and Francophones. Through the FIS, students are able not only to acquire linguistic and disciplinary knowledge, but also engage, often for the first time, in in-depth and daily interactions with the French community. As a result, their discourse reflects an identification and coming together with the Francophone community thereby seeming to bridge a gap between English speakers and French speakers typically found in elementary and secondary immersion programs.

Demographic changes in the Canadian population have also brought a more diverse community of learners to French immersion programs. This study responds to the changes in the immersion student population by comparing the French and English proficiency of three groups: Canadian-born English-speaking students, Canadian-born multilingual students and immigrant multilingual students in Grade 6 early French immersion. The quantitative data from English and French tests showed that the immigrant group outperformed the Canadian-born English speaking and the Canadian-born multilingual groups on French proficiency measures of reading, writing, and speaking, whereas there were no significant differences among the groups on the English test components.

This article describes the interaction between mathematics and language, based on an analysis of how individual learners solve word problems in English as a foreign language (L2). It reports on a study conducted to investigate how the L2 influences mathematical thinking and learning in the process of solving word problems and how the construction of meaning unfolds. The research generated the Integrated Language and Mathematics Model (ILMM), which facilitates the description of the interplay between mathematics and language. The empirical results show, inter alia, that CLIL learners tend to use the given text more profoundly for stepwise deduction of a mathematical model, and conversely, mathematical activity can lead to more intense language activity. Furthermore, effective mathematical activity depends on successful text reception, and problem solving in a L2 provides additional opportunities for reflection, both linguistically and conceptually. The ILMM makes a major contribution to conceptualising content and language integration.