After immersion: Maintaining the momentum

Abstract

Surveys of recent graduates of French immersion programmes in Canada have found relatively few of them making substantial use of French in the years immediately following their schooling. What factors appear to be influencing this phenomenon? Do these young adults risk losing the second language skills that they have invested so much time in developing over their school careers? What advice can one give to those who wish to maintain their skills but have so far found little opportunity to do so? In this paper, these questions are considered in the light of the views of the immersion graduates themselves, the literature on second language retention, and some case studies of adult Canadians who have been engaged in maintaining or improving the French skills they first learned at school.

Reading Strategies in French Immersion Science Classes: Preparing Our Students for Tomorrow

“…However, we concur with authors such as Harley (1994Harley ( , 1998 and Swain (1996), who draw on observational research studies completed in FI (e.g., Harley, Allen, Cummins, & Swain, 1990), to show that the task of teaching language, including linguistic precision as well as reading and communication strategies, is undertaken almost entirely by teachers of Français, the French-language course in immersion schools, and English language arts. In fact, it seems that despite research supporting an instructional focus on both content and language, subject-area teachers are still predominantly favoring content.…”

New Gaelic Speakers, New Gaels? Ideologies and Ethnolinguistic Continuity in Contemporary Scotland

“…Johnstone's (2001) comprehensive review of research on immersion education internationally found the extent of linguistic attrition after completion of immersion programmes to be widely variable. Harley's (1994) meta-analysis of language practices among former French immersion students in Canada shortly after they had graduated from high school found greater use of listening skills than of reading, speaking or writing, while MacFarlane and Wesche (1995) found low levels of French language use among former immersion students after high school.…”

“…On the basis of various meta-analyses of the effectiveness of French immersion education in Canada (see Harley, 1994;MacFarlane and Wesche, 1995;Johnstone, 2001), Edwards (2010b, p. 261) notes that in spite of their greater command in the target language, immersion pupils generally appear not to seek out opportunities to use their second language to a greater extent than, for instance, students studying it as a subject. As Baker (2011, p. 265) phrases it, there is always a chance that '[p]otential does not necessarily lead to production; skill does not ensure street speech' (see Fishman, 1991Fishman, , 2001a.…”

Immersion education outcomes and the Gaelic community: identities and language ideologies among Gaelic medium-educated adults in Scotland

“…It is therefore remarkable that this particular system was subsequently replicated as a strategy for minority language revitalisation in diverse contexts internationally. Various meta-analyses of the system have demonstrated that French immersion students who develop bilingual competences nevertheless tend not to use French to a great extent outside of class, or after completing school (Harley 1994;MacFarlane and Wesche 1995;Johnstone 2001).…”