Relationships between cognitive and linguistic processes and second language production in French immersion programmes

Some researchers believe that all French immersion students speak the same way and that they make many transfer errors (borrowing English structures). Although these beliefs are not founded on rigorous observations, current teaching strategies emphasize repeating correct patterns rather than teaching according to student's individual differences. My study posed two main questions. First, are there individual differences in the quality of French spoken by French immersion students? Second, do individual differences in cognitive and linguistic processes influence the type and frequency of errors observed in French immersion students' language production? To analyse individual differences in linguistic processes, I used variables from verbal learning theory that measure Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic processes. I analysed differences in cognitive processes with the PASS (Planning, Arousal/Attention, Simultaneous and Successive processes) cognitive theory. PASS is operationalized in the Cognitive Assessment System test (CAS). These theories generated a secondary purpose for the study: to verify and explain the findings of Jarman's (1980) study concerning the parallelism between Paradigmatic and Simultaneous processes, and between Syntagmatic and Successive processes. Data came from 89 girls and 63 boys from anglophone families in grade three French immersion schools in British Columbia. I analysed four areas of individual differences (Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic processes; Simultaneous and Successive processes; Planning; and Attention), and the relationship between these processes with Vocabulary, Grammar, and Transfer Errors in oral and written French language production. LISREL measurement models did not converge due to variables' low correlation. Relationships between the variables were not found probably because of low reliabilities of the CAS measures. A subsequent analysis used observed variables' models (multiple regressions), rather than latent variables' models. The strongest relation was between Planning and Attention, and Transfer Errors. Grammar Errors, rather than Transfer Errors prevailed. Consequently, I suggested teaching methods reinforcing communicative sentence structures. As in Jarman (1980), cognitive and linguistic processes were not demonstrably parallel. Contrary to what verbal learning researchers thought, various linguistic processes' measures are not equivalent. Linguistic measures' constraint level as well as Planning level affected my results. For further research, I proposed a model of linguistic tasks of various constraint levels.Education, Faculty ofGraduat