Time and the Distribution of Time in L2 Instruction

Abstract

LAURA COLLINSUniversity of VictoriaRANDALL H. HALTERConcordia UniversityPATSY M. LIGHTBOWNConcordia UniversityNINA SPADAMcGill UniversityIn the French primary schools of Quebec, increased popularity inexperimental programs that provide young Francophone learners withintensive ESL instruction has been accompanied by increased variationin the way the instructional time is distributed. In a massed program,students complete the regular curriculum in French in 5 months andspend the remaining months learning English. In a distributed pro-gram, the intensive ESL instruction is spread across the full 10 monthsof the school year.Within the cognitive psychology and general education literature,there is substantial evidence in favour of distributed over massedpractice. There has been less research in the language programevaluation literature contrasting the learning outcomes of studentsreceiving similar amounts of L2 exposure in different distributions, butthe findings suggest an advantage for massed learning. The presentstudy compared the learning outcomes in two versions of the massedprogram and one version of the distributed program of students of thesame age and L1, with similar amounts of prior exposure to English.Pretest and posttest measures from 700 students revealed superioroutcomes for the massed learning conditions. The interpretation of thefindings takes into account selection criteria, overall instructional time,and instructional practices in the different ESL programs.