Immersion Teachers Research Articles

The Practicum: An Essential Component in French Immersion Teacher Education

The Practicum: An Essential Component in French Immersion Teacher Education

Immersion Teachers: What Can We Learn from Them?

ABSTRACT Although French immersion student performance has been studied extensively for over 20 years, immersion teachers' practices and beliefs have not. By examining descriptions of immersion teaching, we can identify several principles of practice that can be generalized to all second‐language learning situations.

Walking on Water and Other Characteristics of Effective Elementary School Teachers

ABSTRACT A growing number of foreign language programs are serving children in grades K‐6 nationwide. Because good teachers are the key to the continued growth and success of elementary school foreign language programs, there is concern about the number of teacher candidates, the number of programs that prepare them to teach, and what these future teachers should learn. There is a configuration of skills and knowledge that all teachers preparing to teach in elementary school foreign language programs should acquire. Although certain program models may require greater emphasis in some skill/knowledge areas than others, the core areas remain constant across program models. Immersion teachers, who in most states must also be certified as elementary teachers, share in this core of knowledge and skills. This paper discusses the skills needed by teachers and the programs that might address those needs.

Training French Immersion Teachers for the Primary Grades: An Experimental Course at The University of Western Ontario

ABSTRACT The fact that French immersion programs in Canada have undergone such rapid expansion in the last few years attests to the enormous success and general approbation that the immersion phenomenon has enjoyed. In the rush to put the program in place, however, one necessary factor to ensure its continued success has been overlooked: the training of immersion teachers. In this paper, the authors outline a course designed to prepare primary immersion teachers, and discuss general implications for the training of teachers competent to meet the challenge of immersion programs.

Predictors of transfer out of early French immersion programs

ABSTRACTThis study examined the factors that best predict which elementary schoolchildren will ultimately transfer out of a French immersion program. At the end of one school year, French immersion teachers nominated poor-achieving students who might transfer to an English stream and who may elect not to leave the program. All of the children were immediately tested and parents and teachers were interviewed. The status of the project children was monitored over the next year to determine which children transferred to an English stream. Analysis of the pretransfer data indicated that although cognitive-academic variables may be necessary conditions for transfer, they are not sufficient conditions. Specifically, while the children who transferred experienced academic problems, these were no more severe than those of children who did not transfer. Rather, the transfer children were unique in terms of their poorer attitudes, motivations, and nonacademic behaviors. This pattern of results was found for the teacher, parent, and child data. The analyses suggest that attitudinal and motivational factors are of primary importance to the continuation of second-language study by young learners.

Immersion programs: The Irish experience

The continuous decline for over 30 years in the number of Irish immersion schools might suggest that the Irish home-school language switch program has been less successful than its more recent North American counterpart. In fact the Irish experience has often been used to illustrate the potential dangers of bilingualism in education. The present paper examines the evidence for negative effects associated with Irish immersion education and concludes that even in earlier immersion schools, many of which operated with minimal parental support, there is little evidence of detrimental academic effects. Present-day immersion schools are very different from many of the earlier immersion schools in that parents are strongly committed to Irish. The available evidence suggests that in these schools, as in immersion schools elsewhere, children achieve fluent L2 skills at no cost to their L1. Many Irish immersion teachers emphasized the need for a supportive home environment if children were to succeed in an immersion school.