No abstract

No abstract

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 established foreign languages as a core curricular content area; however, instructional emphasis continues to be placed on curricular areas that factor into state educational accountability programs. The present study explored whether foreign language study of first‐year Grade 3 foreign language students who continued their foreign language study through Grade 5 in Louisiana public schools contributed to their academic achievement in curricular areas tested on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program for the 21st Century (LEAP 21) test. Notable findings emerged. First, foreign language (FL) students significantly outperformed their non‐FL peers on every test (English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies) of the Grade 4 LEAP 21. Second, the present research suggested that regardless of the test, whether the Grade 4 criterion‐referenced LEAP 21 or the Grade 5 norm‐referenced ITBS, at each grade level FL students significantly outperformed their non‐FL counterparts on language achievement tests.

The primary goal of this research was to compare the improvement in the second language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing among fourth semester French students enrolled in a content course taught in French and similar level students enrolled in a traditional fourth semester French course where the focus was primarily on the teaching of the language itself. The research used a non-equivalent pretest-posttest design and the results were analyzed using an analysis of covariance to determine mean gain scores of intact experimental and control sections of fourth semester students on the MLA Cooperative French Test. Results showed significant improvement for the experimental group in three of the four skills (listening, speaking, writing) and in two (listening and writing) for the control group. When compared to each other, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in the speaking skill while the latter significantly outperformed the experimental group in the writing skill. Attitudinal results showed a significantly more positive attitude toward the study of French among the experimental group. The study is important because it challenges the conventional assumptions regarding the way L2 skills are acquired and improved, and offers the student a valuable time and money saving option since he or she might be able to study a specific content while simultaneously improving L2 skills.

Several non-traditional methodolo-