French immersion students' language growth in French, perceptions, patterns and programming

grantor: University of TorontoThis action research study aims to investigate how eighth grade French immersion students perceive and understand aspects of the French grammatical system and how programming decisions, particularly group work, might assist or hamper the development and application of this knowledge. A sociocultural framework, based on the Vygotsky and Leont'ev, is used to observe students and the second language learning process. Questionnaires were used to collect data about students' understanding of aspects of the French language, their learning preferences, and strengths and weaknesses in using French. The study uncovered a wide range in students' metalinguistic knowledge and misconceptions that some students had developed about grammatical functions and relationships between words at the sentence level. Based on these results, functional-analytic materials designed to teach students about the use of the passe compose and the imparfait were used in the program. A pre-test, an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test were administered to the class to measure growth. Students made and maintained gains in their use of passe compose and the imparfait, and, at the end of the year, scored higher, although not significantly so, on a comparison test with two classes from the same school. Data from a composition task show how students' understanding of these aspectual markers developed. Throughout the year, students were also audio-taped as they completed collaborative activities with a focus on form: a language production task, a metalinguistic task and a proof-reading task. The interactional data showed that communicative activities could be designed that provided students with the opportunity to study form and function links, as predicted in part by Swain's output hypothesis. Students could provide appropriate feedback to one another and appeared to deepen their understanding of how aspects of the language "worked". There was evidence that by working together students collaborated, co-constructed knowledge and were able to achieve greater accuracy than by working alone.Ed.D