Integrating Formal and Functional Approaches to Language Teaching in French Immersion: An Experimental Study*

Abstract

This experimental study was designed to evaluate the effect on French language proficiency of an integrated formal, analytic and functional, communicative approach to second‐language teaching in French immersion. The impetus for the study arises from research indicating that immersion children show persistent weaknesses in their grammatical skills despite the fluent, functional proficiency they achieve in their second language. The experimental materials, which consist of a curriculum unit focusing on the conditional, were designed to provide opportunities for students to use the conditional in natural, communicative situations; reinforce their learning with systematic, linguistic games; and encourage their metalinguistic awareness. They were also designed to encourage integration of concepts learned in other subjects with language learning and to promote group work and cooperative learning. Pre‐, post‐, and follow‐up tests of oral and written French were administered to Grade 7 early French immersion Experimental and Control classes. The results showed that the Experimental group performed significantly higher in writing both in the post and follow‐up testing. Although this was not found for speaking, an examination of the individual class data revealed greater and more consistent growth in speaking for the Experimental than for the Control classes, suggesting that they benefited somewhat from the experimental treatment in this domain as well.

Research on form-focused instruction in immersion classrooms: implications for theory and practice

“…Activities promoting noticing and language awareness appear to have had less emphasis than production activities and, furthermore, the production activities emphasised communicative meaning-based practice much more than controlled practice. Because activities promoting noticing, language awareness and controlled practice were more apparent in the study on second-person pronouns and in both studies on grammatical gender, I would argue that more opportunities for noticing and language awareness, in addition to controlled automaticity practice and provision of feedback, might have been more effective at helping learners in the Harley (1989) and Day and Shapson (1991) studies to restructure interlanguage representations and proceduralise more target-like uses of tense and aspect.…”

“…I acknowledge, however, that a multitude of factors, well beyond instructional variables, can affect learning outcomes in classroom intervention studies. For example, in both the Harley (1989) study and the Day and Shapson (1991) study, comparison teachers reported that they too were teaching the target forms. In both studies, learners exposed to the experimental treatment did in fact continue to progress throughout the study, but the significant effects were neutralised by improvement made by students in comparison classes.…”

“…Similarly, Day and Shapson (1991) described the principles on which their instructional treatment was based as follows:…”

“…For these reasons, Day and Shapson (1991) conducted a quasi-experimental study using six experimental and six comparison classes at the Grade 7 level (12-13-year-old students) to test the effects of form-focused instruction on the use of the conditional. The thematic context involved the planning of an imaginary space colony and thus integrated concepts from the science class.…”

Oral Corrective Feedback Strategies in EFL. A Pilot Study in Chilean Classrooms

“…Students often complain that they do not want to participate in class because they do not have the tools to communicate effectively and they do not want to make mistakes. According to some researchers (Day & Shapson, 1991;White 1991;Ellis, 1997), if teachers correct students' errors, they are likely to disappear with time. However, the literature on error and feedback is mixed; authors such as Krashen (1982) and Truscott (1999) state that teachers should not correct errors because these will not produce results that instructors expect in terms of accuracy.…”