Learners' Experience of Immersion Education: Case Studies of French and Chinese 9781853595622

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Learners' Experiences of Immersion Education

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM Series Editors: Professor Colin Baker, University of Wales, Bangor, Wales, Great Britain and Professor Nancy H. Hornberger, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA Other Books in the Series At War With Diversity: US Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety James Crawford Becoming Bilingual: Language Acquisition in a Bilingual Community Jean Lyon Bilingual Education and Social Change Rebecca Freeman Building Bridges: Multilingual Resources for Children Multilingual Resources for Children Project Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition J. Cenoz, B. Hufeisen and U. Jessner (eds) Dual Language Education Kathryn J. Lindholm-Leary English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language Jasone Cenoz and Ulrike Jessner (eds) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Colin Baker An Introductory Reader to the Writings of Jim Cummins Colin Baker and Nancy Hornberger (eds) Japanese Children Abroad: Cultural, Educational and Language Issues Asako Yamada-Yamamoto and Brian Richards (eds) Language Minority Students in the Mainstream Classroom Angela L. Carrasquillo and Vivian Rodriguez Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire Jim Cummins Language Revitalization Processes and Prospects Kendall A. King Language Use in Interlingual Families: A Japanese-English Sociolinguistic Study Masayo Yamamoto Policy and Practice in Bilingual Education O. García and C. Baker (eds) Reflections on Multiliterate Lives Diane Belcher and Ulla Connor (eds) Studies in Japanese Bilingualism Mary Goebel Noguchi and Sandra Fotos (eds) Teaching and Learning in Multicultural Schools Elizabeth Coelho Working with Bilingual Children M.K. Verma, K.P. Corrigan and S. Firth (eds) Young Bilingual Children in Nursery School Linda Thompson

Please contact us for the latest book information: Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon, BS21 7HH, England http://www.multilingual-matters.com

BILINGUAL EDUCATION AND BILINGUALISM 32 Series Editors: Nancy H. Hornberger and Colin Baker

Learners' Experiences of Immersion Education Case Studies of French and Chinese Michèle de Courcy

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS LTD Clevedon • Buffalo • Toronto • Sydney

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Courcy, Michèle de Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education: Case Studies of French and Chinese/Michèle de Courcy. Bilingual Education and Bilingualism: 32 Incudes bibliographical references and index. 1. Immersion method (language teaching)–Case studies. 2. French language–Study and teaching–Immersion method. 3. Chinese language–Study and teaching–Immersion method. I. Title. II. Series. P53.44.C67 2002 418’0071–dc21 2001041011 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 1-85359-561-6 (hbk) ISBN 1-85359-560-8 (pbk) Multilingual Matters Ltd UK: Frankfurt Lodge, Clevedon Hall, Victoria Road, Clevedon BS21 7HH. USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA. Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada. Australia: Footprint Books, Unit 4/92a Mona Vale Road, Mona Vale, NSW 2103, Australia. Copyright © 2002 Michèle de Courcy. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. Typeset by Florence Production Ltd. Printed and bound in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press Ltd.

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Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix 1

Language Learning in Immersion Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Language Learning in Australia: Setting the Context . . . . . . . .1 Aims of this Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 Existing Research on Immersion Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8 Australian Immersion Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

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How and Where the Research Was Done The Research Approach . . . . . . . . . . . The Settings and the Students . . . . . . The French Immersion Setting . . . . . . The Chinese Immersion Setting . . . . .

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Learners’ Responses to the Learning Context Sources of Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scripts for School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Role of the Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . Response to the Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . The Role of Fellow Students . . . . . . . . . Discussion and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . .

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Language Learning Experiences . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Making Sense of the Classroom Not Making Sense . . . . . . . . . . Producing the Second Language Summary and Discussion . . . . .

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Contents

Reading and Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . What Do We Know Already About Reading and in Chinese? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How the Data Were Collected . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reading in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Writing in Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reading in French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Writing in French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Language Learning Processes and Strategies . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Learners of Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jane: Pictures, sounds and stories . . . . . . . . . . Tamara: Living in a comfortable world . . . . . . Patrick: Seeking for perfection . . . . . . . . . . . . Norman: Building blocks and blackouts . . . . . The Learners of French . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter: Using a second language to learn a third John: Getting by with help . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Helena: Wonderful words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melissa: Aiming high . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Discussion and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Appendix A: Transcription Conventions . . . . . . . . . Appendix B: Translation of Classroom Activity Sheet

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References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .152 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .161

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Preface

Why would an Australian be interested in researching and writing about immersion education in the 1990s? Surely the coals of this topic have been well and truly raked over by now? And why late immersion? And why immersion in French and Chinese? I hope readers of this book will agree that the questions I have been asking in the research for this book provide, not answers, but more questions, and that especially in the area of classroom and learning processes, there is much that we do not yet know about learning a language in late immersion. Until 1989, I had not heard of French immersion. I was then studying in Queensland for my Graduate Diploma in Applied Linguistics, and teaching adult ESL after a decade of teaching French and Music to high school students. One of my lecturers was starting an experiment as a piece of funded research. He would be teaching the course ‘Fostering Emergent Literacy’ to a group of second year Bachelor of Education students in a Language Other Than English (LOTE) and investigating the outcomes in terms of both content and language. The language chosen (based on the number of volunteers who had already studied a particular LOTE) was French and I was asked to provide the tutorials. The results of this project were impressive, and we wrote an article about the experience (Chappell & de Courcy, 1993). During the semester we ran this course, we took our students on a visit to the one French late immersion school which was then operating in Queensland. There we observed Maths and History being taught to the students entirely in French, even though English was the students’ native language. The students had not had any instruction in French before they started in the program. My students and I could talk of nothing else all the way back to university on the bus. Thus began what was to consume my intellectual interest for the next seven years – an interest not in the outcomes of such a program, but in vii

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Preface

the processes. Why were the students taking the program? What kept them in it? And, most interestingly – how did they learn what they learnt, both in terms of content and in terms of language? Finally, a topic which will be turned to later in the book – is the process different in languages not so close to English as French is? Michèle de Courcy Bendigo, 2000

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Acknowledgments

With the data for this book being gathered in language classrooms several years ago, and with these data being thought about and sifted over in the intervening years, it is inevitable that some of the data have been made public before now. However, these data have been removed from the context of the work in its entirety. The purpose of publishing this monograph is to give a broader perspective and clearer contextual framework for data which are perhaps difficult to consider in isolation from that context. Earlier versions of some parts of this book have been published elsewhere, and I would like to acknowledge those sources. Earlier versions of many of the chapters were published in de Courcy (1995d). The data relating to the French immersion students in Chapter 4 were originally published in de Courcy (1995c). An earlier version of the section of Chapter 3 which relates to the Chinese learners was published in de Courcy (1997c). Some of the data on reading and writing in Chinese from Chapter 5, and the case studies of the learners of Chinese from Chapter 6 were originally published in de Courcy (1997d). I would like to take this opportunity to thank those colleagues who attended the seminars and conference presentations where I discussed the work in progress on each of the areas investigated in the book, and gave me such valuable feedback. I would also like to thank those colleagues who commented on earlier written versions of the parts or whole of this book, especially Des Power, Sharon Lapkin, Mike Breen, Alastair Pennycook, Claudette Tardif, and the anonymous Mulitilingual Matters reviewers. Their constructive comments have been invaluable. My thanks also go to my husband, Phill, for his support and encouragement, and to my colleague, Paul Morris, for the photograph reproduced on the cover of this book. My most particular thanks, however, must go to the teachers and students who let me into their classrooms and their lives to allow the data for this book to be collected. ix

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Chapter 1

Language Learning in Immersion Programs

Language Learning in Australia: Setting the Context Even though Australia is physically isolated in terms of contact with large groups of speakers of other languages, and has only one official language, English, it is made up of many different cultural and language groups, and is developing even closer links with the outside world. Today, more than 60 languages other than English are studied in Australian schools, many of them in language maintenance programs for children of immigrants (DEET, 1988). The languages with the longest tradition in Australian schools are French and Latin, with French having been taught in schools since about 1824. Australia is a federation of states within the British Commonwealth. Funding for education is collected from taxation and distributed to the states by the federal government. Education is then controlled at a state level and schools are run by the state, churches of various denominations and other private organisations. Only state schools provide free education; other schools charge fees, but are still heavily subsidised by the tax payer. Curriculum and standards are administered at a state level, though the federal government has some say in matters of policy. Funding from the federal government is also available for special initiatives, and this is the usual way for the federal government to ensure its initiatives are followed. In Queensland, the state in which the immersion programs described in this book are located, education is controlled by the Department of Education, under the Minister for Education. In Queensland state schools, students traditionally began the study of a foreign language in Year 8, the first year of secondary school, and learnt this one language compulsorily for one year. After this first year, they could choose whether to continue with the language or not. If they 1

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Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education

continued, their language studies could be completed either in Year 10 or in Year 12. However, in recent years, the Australian federal and state governments have, to an increasing extent, developed policies in favour of offering all children the opportunity of learning a second language. Initiatives at federal and at state level are aimed at ensuring a larger number of children gain proficiency in a Language Other Than English (LOTE). The White Paper, ‘Australia’s Language: The Australian language and literacy policy’ (DEET, 1991) replaced the former ‘National Policy on Languages’ (Lo Bianco, 1987) and is currently under review. As well as the initiatives at federal level, policy at the state level is also changing to provide some support for the teaching of languages. As stated by the then Queensland Minister for Education, ‘all young Queenslanders should have the opportunity to gain the intellectual, cultural and economic benefits of an education in a foreign language’ (Braddy, 1991:2). Five languages, French, German, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese have been selected for support in Queensland. Thus the debate about which languages should be taught in Australian schools has largely been taken out of the hands of language educators by government policy. However, the traditional debates continue ‘about which is the best method, which the best age to start learning language and so on’ (Braddy, 1991: 6). One particularly successful model for developing students’ proficiency in second languages which has been implemented in Canada and many other countries is ‘immersion’. As the public and political emphasis is currently on higher proficiency in second languages for young Australians, immersion programs could be one way to achieve this aim. An initiative of the Languages and Cultures Unit of the Queensland Department of Education was the expansion of immersion programs throughout the state, in response to a recommendation of the Ingram and John report (1990: vi). At the time of writing there were seven immersion programs either running or in preparation in Queensland secondary schools – three in French, one in German, one in Indonesian, one in Chinese and one in Italian. One of the French programs is in a private boys’ school. In considering immersion programs in Australia, it is important to be aware of the reasons for which these programs were set up. In Canada, French immersion programs help children to gain proficiency in the second official language of the country in order to communicate with and understand their fellow Canadians and gain employment working with them. Thus, French immersion education in Canada is ‘endoglossic’, 2

Language Learning in Immersion Programs

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3

where the ‘foreign’ language learnt by the country’s children is one which is used in that country. In Australia, there is only one official language, English, and students learn other languages in order to reach out to the world. Queensland is closer to Asia than to Europe, hence the increasing emphasis on learning the languages of our region as well as French and German which were traditionally studied in Queensland high schools. In Queensland high schools in 1993, the last year of my data collection, late partial immersion programs in French, German and Indonesian were receiving government support. However, in spite of the popularity of Asian languages with Queensland parents and students, authorities had been wary of setting up immersion programs in East Asian languages in schools. There was a belief that character-based languages were ‘too difficult’ to be learnt in an immersion situation (personal communication, Chinese Language Adviser, 11 March 1993). However, in 1993, Japanese late partial immersion programs were running in the Faculties of Education of two Queensland universities and a Chinese immersion program in one. The Chinese program ceased at the end of 1993. Now convinced that it is possible to run an immersion program in a character based language, the government allowed the first Chinese late partial immersion program to begin in a high school in the Wide Bay region in 1994.

Aims of this Study As a delivery system immersion has been shown to be effective in getting many students to the point of being able to communicate in the second language. However, we still know little about students’ immersion learning processes and experiences. In this study the aim was to explore these processes from the perspective of the learners. Why is it important to explore learning from the learner’s point of view? Language educators and trainers of language educators need to explore the processes involved in second language learning; as Brown (1987: 2) states, ‘teaching cannot be defined apart from learning’, or, in the words of Martel (1982: 59), ‘teaching is allowing others to search, i.e. learn’. Brown (1987) goes on to say that teachers’ understanding of how their learners learn will determine their philosophy of education, their teaching style, approach, methods and classroom techniques. In second language education, Brown’s view of teaching and learning could be problematic in the sense that there is still no clear understanding of how second language learners learn the languages which they are 3

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Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education

studying. Brown states that ‘language acquisition is no simple, onedimensional reality. It is “slippery” in every way’ and as a consequence of this ‘slipperiness’, ‘many of the pieces of the language learning puzzle are not yet discovered’ (1987: 3). The available information about how learning of Asian languages takes place is especially limited. Ellis (1986) is concerned that the focus of much research has been on how second language learners acquire grammatical sub-systems, ignoring other aspects of language. He states that ‘in order to probe second language acquisition, it is necessary to probe the internal mechanisms that are responsible for processing input data’ (Ellis, 1986: 287). The primary research strategy used in my research was to explore the learners’ approach to their new language in depth. By focussing on two languages, strategies which are essential to the general process may be able to be separated from those which might be language- or learnerspecific. Both generalisable and specific strategies could be examined by studying the processes which learners use in very different languages; Chinese and French. The principal question that will be explored in this book is: • How do learners in immersion programs experience the process of learning a second language? Other questions which helped to focus the collection and analysis of data are: • How did the learners respond to the learning context? What aspects of the context created in the classroom did students feel were helpful to their language learning? What aspects were not helpful? • What experiences do they consider important for learning the language? • What are the processes involved in reading and writing in immersion programs, especially in languages that use non-roman scripts or different orthographies? • What strategies do students use to make sense of the content being delivered in the target language? What can be learned about the process of learning a second language from the experiences of Queensland learners of French and Chinese in immersion programs? How did these adolescents and adults go about confronting the problems of learning a new sound system, and, hopefully, a new view of the world and, in the case of the learners of Chinese, a new script? What can be learned from them that will enable language educators to improve the experience of current and future language learners? 4

Language Learning in Immersion Programs

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5

As stated by Fröhlich (1976: 225), ‘it is hoped that . . . investigations into the language learning process will result in making language learning a more accessible and enjoyable task for a larger number of people than is presently the case’. Before going further into the details of this study, it will be helpful to define what is meant by ‘immersion’. The learners in this study were all in an ‘immersion’ situation. That is, the students came from the Australian majority language group (English) and participated in the second language learning program on a voluntary basis. The emphasis in an immersion program is not on studying the language, but on studying the content of the curriculum in the second language. The students take the regular school curriculum, but they study it in a foreign language, not their mother tongue. (For a more detailed definition of immersion, see Genesee, 1983: 3–4; Johnson & Swain, 1997.) The first French immersion program was set up in 1965 in St Lambert, a predominantly English-speaking suburb of Montreal, where, in response to parental pressure, the kindergarten program of one school was run in French, rather than in English. The success of this experiment led to immersion spreading throughout the Montreal area, and across Canada. Today, there are schools offering immersion programs in many languages (but predominantly in French) to students in every year of schooling from kindergarten to University across the whole of Canada. Immersion schools have also been set up in many areas of the USA and Europe. Immersion programs fall into a number of different categories, and are classified using a combination of the terms full or partial, and early, middle or late. In an Early Full (or total) Immersion program, the pupils are initially taught for their entire school day in the target language. Instruction in the first language generally begins at around Grade 2. In a partial immersion program, the students’ day is divided between instruction in their native tongue and instruction in the target language. Both full and partial immersion programs also have provision for language arts instruction in the target language. The other terms, early, middle or late, refer to the stage of the children’s schooling at which immersion is introduced. Early immersion starts in kindergarten or Grade 1, middle immersion starts in Grades 4 or 5, and late immersion typically starts in Grade 6 to 8. However, the Chinese late immersion program in this study started at university graduate level. Figure 1.1 is a graphic representation of the typical organisation of an early, full immersion program, adapted from Genesee (1983: 5). This is 5

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EARLY FULL IMMERSION 100

Time %

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Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education

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Figure 1.1 Early full immersion the pattern of schooling followed by the majority of children in immersion in Canada. Figure 1.2 shows the typical pattern of a late immersion program as implemented in Canada (Genesee, 1983: 7). I will later provide a graphic representation of how late immersion is implemented in Queensland, Australia. It must also be stressed what immersion is not. The immigrant child who is being educated in a normal mainstream classroom, in a country where his or her mother tongue is not the majority language, is not in immersion. Such a situation is described rather as submersion and can sometimes lead to a phenomenon known as ‘subtractive bilingualism’ (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1979) where the child not only does not learn the majority language well, but also loses ability in the mother tongue. This phenomenon has also been noted by Wong-Fillmore (1985: 18) in her research about Cantonese and Hispanic immigrant children in the USA. Immersion programs are also sometimes confused with bilingual programs, such as those run in the north of Italy, i.e. the schools in the Ladin valleys of Alto Adige. In such programs, the school day is divided between the two majority languages of the district. The difference between such a program and an immersion program is that at any one 6

Language Learning in Immersion Programs LATE PARTIAL IMMERSION 100

Time %

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Figure 1.2 Late partial immersion time, some of the children in the class would be being educated in their native tongue. This contrasts with immersion programs, where there is rarely a child in the class who speaks the language of instruction as his or her native language. It would appear that such a phenomenon as ‘immersion’ would have already received a great deal of attention from researchers, and the reader may be wondering why it was felt necessary to conduct this particular study, in this particular way. Most of the research that has been conducted so far about immersion programs concentrates on outcomes, that is, on evaluating the foreign language proficiency and content area knowledge of immersion students. Little has been written about the process involved in the acquisition of the target language, though interest in process is increasing. Also, although much research has been conducted in Canada about immersion programs, very little has been written about the Australian experience, which is a recent phenomenon compared with immersion in Canada. Another reason for undertaking my research was that the bulk of the Canadian writings deal with early full immersion, where the students begin their study in the foreign language in primary school. As noted above, the majority of immersion programs in Canada are of this type. 7

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Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education

However, the bulk of the Australian programs are either early or late partial immersion programs.

Existing Research on Immersion Programs In this section, I will discuss some of the research that has already been conducted into immersion programs. I will first focus on research that could be called ‘outcomes focussed’. More ‘process-oriented’ research will then be discussed, followed by work with an ethnographic orientation. An attempt will be made to take an historical perspective in tracing the development of the types of research conducted. After surveying research conducted overseas, I will then discuss some of the research which has been conducted into immersion programs in Australia. As stated by Weber and Tardif (1987: 1), ‘most of the research in the area of French immersion education has been more concerned with student achievement than with classroom process’. Lapkin et al. (1990: 638) note that ‘during the 1970s, research on immersion education focussed on program outcomes’. Early research in immersion was directed at answering parents’ and educators’ concerns about the children’s progress while they were in immersion. The first concern was whether the children’s first language development would suffer if they were doing all or most of their school day in French (or another language). There was found to be not only no detrimental effect on first language development (Genesee, 1983; Genesee et al., 1985; Lambert & Tucker, 1972), but indeed some positive effects (Harley et al., 1986). English language proficiency was tested in a number of different ways, including using the Canadian Achievement Test appropriate to the age of the students, and the specially designed tests described in Harley et al. (1986). The main areas tested were reading vocabulary, reading comprehension, spelling and writing. The second concern addressed by researchers was whether the children’s content area knowledge would suffer in those subject areas which they had studied in a foreign language. Swain (1985), Krashen (1984) and Genesee (1987) report that immersion students do as well as or better than those educated only in English. Eckstein (1986) reports the same effect with primary school students in early German immersion in Australia. The third concern was whether the programs would be successful in terms of the foreign language proficiency that would be gained by the students. Krashen (1984) reports that, although the immersion students

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Language Learning in Immersion Programs

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speak with a ‘foreign’ accent and do not usually achieve full native-like competence while they are in the program, they nonetheless achieve a much higher level of competence than those who merely take French as a subject. Genesee (1983) and Genesee et al. (1985) report that native Englishspeaking immersion students do as well as francophone students on tests of receptive skills (listening and reading) in French. They do consistently better in French on all skills than similar students who have come through traditional core French programs. French proficiency was tested using cloze tests for reading, a listening comprehension test and the Test de rendement en français (a standardised test for native speakers of French) appropriate for their grade level for the productive skills of speaking and writing. Most of the above research was concerned with students in early immersion programs. Evaluations of late immersion programs have generally compared students and graduates of late immersion programs with those from early immersion. Lapkin et al. (1990) suggest that information on comparative performances of early, middle and late immersion students was important for administrators who needed information to help them make program choices for their schools. Lapkin et al. (1983) was one of the earliest evaluations of a late immersion program. Day and Shapson (1988, 1996) found that both early and late immersion programs in British Columbia were effective in terms of achieving provincial goals in French language. Students also did well on tests of English reading, science and maths when compared with students in the regular English program. The French language proficiency of early and late immersion students in Ottawa was compared with francophone students by Pawley (1986). The immersion students did not perform as well as the native speaking students, but performed creditably. In another study in Ottawa, Morrison and Pawley (1986) evaluated the French language proficiency of immersion students in Grade 12. Late immersion students were compared with early immersion students. The early immersion students scored slightly more highly than the late immersion students on most tests; however, both groups showed high overall proficiency. In Manitoba, Stennett and Earl (1983) evaluated the Grade 8 students who had just completed the first year of a late French immersion program. Students’ reading and listening ability in French was considered. Their results on English reading comprehension, mathematics and IQ tests were compared with those of other Year 8 students in the same

9

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school. The immersion students were found to be generally of above average intelligence, though with some variation within the group, and progressing well in French in their academic subjects. The second phase of outcomes-focussed immersion research in Canada, which began in the 1980s, was concerned with the students and teachers and how various factors connected with them affected the outcomes of the programs (Lapkin et al., 1990). This stage of immersion research involved the use of attitudinal questionnaires, surveys and classroom observation. For example, researchers examined the socioeconomic background of the students, the attitudes of the students and their parents towards immersion and towards French-speaking people, the IQ of the students, their motivation, whether early, middle or late immersion was used, students’ language use, and so forth. The researchers in some cases attempted to find a connection between these variables and the eventual proficiency levels of the immersion graduates. An example of the type of research carried out during this phase is that of the team led by Wesche at the University of Ottawa in the late 1980s (Wesche et al., 1986; Wesche, 1990). This research was conducted with students at four Canadian universities and examined the students’ French language proficiency, attitudes toward French and their use of the French language. Comparisons were made between early and late French immersion students, between students at different universities, and between students from areas outside Ottawa/Carleton. It was found that ‘early immersion students perform better than late immersion students on listening and speaking tests’ but that there are ‘no significant differences on any written measures’ (Wesche et al., 1986: 97) Differences were also found between students at the University of Ottawa and other institutions, with the Ottawa students using French more and taking or intending to take more courses in French than former immersion students at the other institutions surveyed. The 1985 pilot study, reported in Wesche et al. (1986) was the forerunner of several years of evaluations of language proficiency and attitudinal surveys at the University of Ottawa. The sheltered programs at Ottawa described in Wesche (1984) help to cater for the need for second language maintenance and extension of former French immersion students. A different perspective was taken by Olson, (1983) who was concerned with issues of equity as they relate to French immersion programs in Ontario and has conducted surveys of parents of children in immersion programs. He stated that ‘empirically, French immersion classes are elite and class-biased’ (Olson, 1983: 85). His surveys found that parents placed 10

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their children in immersion programs because of ‘increased access to job opportunities’ rather than for a desire to ‘reduce racial tension and promote unity’ (Olson, 1983: 85). He also mentions problems of bias against the programs by non-French-speaking staff members and the effect on the English stream of the brightest and best being educated in French immersion. However, Lapkin et al. (1990: 650) note that: even if the over-representation of children from higher SES backgrounds is a constant, there can be wide variation in the student mix in immersion programs, including substantial proportions of students from working class backgrounds. Some research has also been conducted to evaluate the French language proficiency of students from a non-English speaking background, called ‘heritage language background’ in Canada (Bild & Swain, 1989). Lapkin et al. (1990) note that the area of heritage language children and students with specific learning disabilities has received little attention to date and warrants further investigation. Only one study concerned with outcomes of Chinese immersion was found. Tang (1988) evaluated the San Francisco Cantonese immersion program, but from the point of view of the parents and the School Board, not from the point of view of the students. The immersion classroom itself was not a source of data for the research. The data consisted of the outcomes of interviews with parents and school personnel and students’ results on aptitude tests. The research did not indicate what happened in the immersion classroom. Also, the San Francisco program is not strictly immersion as it was defined earlier in this book, that is, a program in which students volunteer to undertake 50% or more of their instruction in a language other than their mother tongue. In the San Francisco program, a large number of the pupils are from Cantonesespeaking families and have been enrolled in the program for reasons of cultural and linguistic maintenance. As I define it, a high proportion of the students are therefore not in immersion. As stated above, having outlined the types of outcomes-focussed research that have been conducted in immersion programs, I will now outline some of the studies which can be considered to be more concerned with process than with product. It seems that once initial concerns about language development had been dealt with, research in immersion moved into a different phase. Research is now being directed into finding out about the teaching/learning process. For example, Klinck (1987) examined student talk in bilingual programs; the research technique used was observation of the teachers’ error 11

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correction of Grade 9 students. Klinck’s research linked the product to the role the teachers played in this discourse. Teachers’ language in bilingual programs was examined by Hamayan and Tucker (1980) in an attempt to find a relationship between formal language input and second language achievement. Again, the concentration of this research was on the contribution of the teachers’ language. The language samples collected were from bilingual classrooms (containing native speakers of French and native speakers of English), and from all-French classrooms. An important example of research conducted in immersion classrooms was the immersion classroom observation study conducted as part of the Development of Bilingual Proficiency project, reported in Allen et al. (1990) and Swain and Lapkin (1989), among others. The COLT (Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching) scheme was developed by the project team and based on the principles of communicative competence and practice of communicative language teaching. The COLT scheme was used for observation of 19 early total immersion classrooms in the metro Toronto area. The purpose of the observations was to obtain information about the following aspects of classroom treatment: ‘vocabulary instruction, tu/vous input, error correction, and restricted/sustained talk by students’ (Allen et al., 1990: 64). The researchers found that vocabulary instruction was rather restricted in immersion classrooms, with planned instruction being limited to the interpretation of words encountered in written texts. The teaching of vocabulary was also restricted to the word level, with little attention to wider contexts of language use (Allen et al., 1990). With regard to the use of tu (second person singular, familiar) and vous (either second person singular, polite or second person plural), Swain and Lapkin (1989: 156) note that ‘there was on average less than one instance per day of the use of vous as a marker of politeness’. The students, then, tended to use tu for the singular even to their teachers, and vous only for the plural. Allen et al. (1990: 67) state that ‘only 19% of grammatical errors overall were corrected, and corrections were often made in a confusing and unsystematic way’. Swain and Lapkin (1989: 155) observe that ‘such a lack of consistent and non-ambiguous feedback surely cannot be an aid to learning’. They then provide suggestions for ways of correcting errors in student output, while still maintaining the focus on meaning which is paramount in an immersion class. With regard to restricted/sustained output, the observations revealed that there was very little opportunity for sustained talk by students 12

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during the portion of the school day conducted in French. Students’ responses tended to be minimal and restricted to answers to the teacher’s questions. This teacher question–student short answer pattern was also found in the lessons observed by the current author in the ethnographic study which served as the ground work for the current research (de Courcy, 1992b). Other studies of immersion classrooms using discourse analysis include Carlson (1992) who investigated patterns of discourse in French immersion classrooms, in teacher–student and student–student interactions. Froc (1995) detailed patterns of error correction in French immersion classrooms. The recent work of Tarone and Swain (1995) has explored patterns of first and second language use by immersion students, concluding that the increased use of the first language for peer interactions is a result of the restricted lexicon of the immersion classroom. Lyster’s work (1987, 1992, 1994a, 1994b) concentrates on the language produced by French immersion children in the classroom. In 1992 he observed immersion teachers as they trialed the use of a set of materials designed to improve students’ sociolinguistic competence. The students were tested to gauge whether there had been any improvement in the appropriateness of their utterances after using the materials. The results showed a substantial improvement in the post-test results of the experimental group who had used the materials. The results of this main part of Lyster’s study do not apply directly to the current study. However, the qualitative data collected in order to enrich understanding of the quantitative data do provide further insights into what goes on in the French immersion classroom. He focussed in particular on how teachers correct students and on the techniques some teachers use in order to elicit more language from their students. These results provide further support for the ‘comprehensible output’ hypothesis (Swain, 1985, 1993) which will be detailed in Chapter 4. As stated by Barthomeuf (1991), research reports on group activity in second language classrooms are neither very numerous nor very conclusive. He feels that as nearly all the studies which do exist were conducted outside the framework of the habitual activities of the classroom, the pertinence of their conclusions is limited. Barthomeuf’s study involved the observation of children working in groups in their normal classroom environment (early French immersion). He aimed to find out a classification of the sort of language the children used while participating in a group, and a classification of their types of interaction. Like de Courcy (1992b, 1993) he found many examples of the use of ‘private speech’ (Vygotsky, 1962) to sustain and guide the thoughts 13

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of these immersion students. Heitzman (1994) also explored patterns of first and second language use and private speech in a Spanish immersion program. The reader may by now be wondering whether any research has been done in immersion classrooms using a similar, ethnographic, orientation, to that taken by the current author. In fact, very little ethnographic research has been reported in immersion classrooms to date. Some examples will be discussed below. Cleghorn and Genesee (1984) conducted an ethnographic study in an early French immersion school in Montreal. Such issues as relationships among the teaching staff, use of French in the school, and positioning of the French immersion staff vis-à-vis the English staff were explored. Another study which focuses on the experiences of the teachers is the book edited by Bernhardt (1992), which is a collection of studies conducted in early immersion classrooms in the USA. In particular, the book focuses on teachers’ beliefs and practices and reflections on pedagogy. An English late immersion program in Hungary was the setting for research conducted by Patsy Duff (1995, 1997). She explored the cultural practices of teaching history in Hungary and how these were transformed by the context of the immersion program. However, the researchers whose work is most relevant to that described in this book are Sandra Weber and Claudette Tardif (Tardif & Weber, 1987). They report the results of a two-year ethnographic study of a French immersion kindergarten. The research investigated ‘the child’s experience of French immersion kindergarten and the processes by which children find and construct meaning in the second language classroom environment’ (Weber & Tardif, 1987: 1). They report that ‘making sense of what is going on in the classroom is often very much a collective process, a fact almost totally ignored by second language immersion research’ (Weber & Tardif, 1987: 4). The reports provide the reader with much rich data about what the experience of immersion is like for kindergarten students. The authors note that ‘whatever goes on when the group is seated together is everybody’s business’ (Weber & Tardif, 1987: 7), and wonder whether the same would be the case with older students. Weber and Tardif conclude that ‘what becomes important in considering the nature of sense-making in the immersion classroom, is the interaction between teacher talk and student talk and the overlapping between the two’ (1987: 12). ‘The meaning of the immersion kindergarten experience is dependent on how the participants define the situation’ (Tardif & Weber, 1987: 24). The work of Barthomeuf and Weber and 14

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Tardif was conducted with early French immersion students. My work was concerned with the experiences of students in late immersion, in high school and university, and with Chinese as well as French. One study has been located which reports research conducted with Chinese ‘immersion’ students. Liu (1992) conducted a study which aimed to describe and analyse the experience of one teacher and three of her students involved in an intensive summer ‘immersion’ program. An ethnographic approach was employed to explore the situation. The situation explored in Liu’s study differs from that explored by the current study in that the ‘immersion’ program was for only two months. The students I worked with had been in immersion for a much longer period, and this book covers one year of that period. Also, the summer ‘immersion’ program was an intensive residential program rather than a content-based immersion program as defined for this study in the Introduction. The experience of learning Chinese in such a setting would be different from learning in a partial immersion program. Also, Liu’s study was more focussed on exploring teacher-student interactions, whereas the current study is focussed on how the students experience the process of learning in immersion. The main weakness of Liu’s study was the researcher’s reliance on collection of data in her informants’ second language, Chinese. The data were then translated by the researcher for presentation in the thesis. Can we be sure that the informants’ feelings have been accurately reported? Liu acknowledges this deficiency herself, but was constrained to collect data in Chinese because of the ‘no English’ policy of the language school. However, the two studies share a common orientation and some common data collection and analysis techniques. All the research surveyed above was conducted in immersion programs overseas. I will now turn my attention to research conducted into immersion programs in Australia. An outline of the history of immersion/bilingual education in Australia, and the range of current programs and evaluations of them is found in de Courcy (1999).

Australian Immersion Research In this section, I will focus on research into the particular programs which are the focus of this book, but also mention some other Australian research as well. Research into the French immersion program discussed in this book has been reported in Berthold (1989; 1991; 1992) and de Courcy (1991; 1992b; 1993; 1995b). Michael Berthold was concerned with evaluation of 15

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students’ academic achievement and surveying students’ attitudes to the program. My research was classroom based and explored students’ learning experiences and learning processes in immersion. No formal evaluation of the students’ proficiency in French has been published to date. Students’ academic achievement has only been evaluated internally, using school-based assessment. Each of the formal studies will be dealt with briefly in turn. Berthold’s earliest research was concerned with the academic achievement in Mathematics and English of the first cohort and was conducted in 1985. This has been published in Berthold (1992). Students’ grades obtained as a result of school based assessment in Maths and English were examined. It was found that the immersion students did as well as or better than the non-immersion students in Maths and English. This is perhaps not surprising as this first cohort comprised an elite group of high achieving students. No matching of students or classes was used to compare immersion students with non-immersion students of similar ability. It is also not stated whether the immersion students sat the Maths exams in English or in French. Berthold (1991, 1992) also reports the results of a survey conducted in 1988 with students at the French immersion school. Data were collected by administering a discrete-point questionnaire to the students in the program. This survey aimed to find students’ reasons for joining the French immersion program, reasons for remaining in or leaving the program and opinions about their French immersion experiences. Results indicated that students took on the program and stayed in it for the intellectual challenge and academic benefits of being part of a group of motivated students. Most students were pleased with the program and would recommend it to others. De Courcy (1991) reports the results of interviews conducted in 1990 with a sample of students in each year of the program and immersion graduates. These group interviews were unstructured and used openended questions to elicit as much as possible about the students’ experiences. The methodology was based on that suggested by Spradley (1979) and Measor (1985). The study aimed to find the students’ views of the highs and lows of the program in order to inform those schools setting up other immersion programs. The findings of this study indicated that the students found the program positive in terms of group cohesion, mixed gender socialisation, close bonds with teachers, collaborative learning, improved concentration, learning to think in more than one way, learning to study, and the challenge – the program was not boring. The negative aspects 16

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were the competitiveness of some fellow students and being marked as different from other students in the school. In 1986, Michael Clyne published a volume called An Early Start, which consisted of research conducted at Bayswater South Primary School in Melbourne, Victoria. An early partial immersion program in German has been running at this school since 1981. Some of the issues dealt with in An Early Start were the development of the children’s ability in German (their second language), the effect of the program on the children’s first language skills and cognitive abilities, and the children’s reactions to the program. Clyne (1986: 58, 1991: 61) presented four stages in the children’s interlanguage development. These stages are as follows: Stage 1 One- or two-word German utterances, formulaic responses or else no answer in German. Stage 2 The matrix language is English, but individual German words are transferred. Stage 3 An attempt to speak German, with frequent code-switching to English within sentences. Stage 4 The matrix language is clearly German, with occasional English words transferred and sometimes integrated into the phonological/ grammatical system of German. It was found that children were generally moving to Stage 3 during the third year they were in the program. Anne Eckstein, who studied the children’s English language development and curriculum content knowledge found that as with other research into immersion programs, ‘English language development has been shown to be comparable with that of monolingual peers, even in curriculum areas learnt exclusively through the medium of German’ (Eckstein, 1986: 96). As well, she found that the children ‘gained cognitive benefits from their experience’ (1986: 97). An historical perspective on changes that were made to the curriculum and teaching strategies at Bayswater South was provided by Fernandez (1992). She reports on case studies of three families whose children were involved in the program, and also explored the perspectives of the principal and teaching staff. Those who responded to her questionnaire were all very enthusiastic about the program. Another program which is currently being investigated is that at Camberwell Primary School, a French bilingual program in Victoria (Burston et al., 1996; 2000). Classroom observation, parental questionnaires and interviews, student testing, interviews and think-aloud protocols are 17

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being used to collect the data. Results relating to the children’s interlanguage development are reported in de Courcy et al. (1999). We used the same stages presented by Clyne, above, to analyze our data. We found the children in the French program to be more advanced in their language development than those in the German program, possibly due to the greater amount of time devoted to the program. Our results relating to the children’s development in mathematics, the main subject area taught through French, are reported in de Courcy & Burston (2000). This paper focuses on the difficulties the children face when solving word problems in their second language. Other reports on immersion learning in Australia have been provided by Read, (1995, 1996) who summarises Australian developments and research in late immersion education, especially in the area of immersion in Asian languages at Australian universities. One of the studies surveyed is de Courcy and Birch (1993) which investigated reading and writing strategies employed by students in a Japanese late immersion program. A replication of this study with the students who are the focus of this book can be found in the chapter on reading and writing. My earlier ethnographic work at the French late immersion school (de Courcy, 1992b, 1993, 1995b, 1997a) was an initial study into the experience of second language acquisition. This study examined the experience of adolescent learners in French late immersion programs. One feature of that experience which was identified relates to how students were able to work together in producing language. Issues identified in this earlier work were followed up in the research presented in this book. This introductory chapter has surveyed the context of language learning in Australia, and the immersion situation in particular. I have then outlined some of the research which has been conducted into immersion programs overseas and in Australia. In the next chapter I will describe the two educational settings in which the data were collected, the learners with whom I worked, and briefly describe the ways in which the data were collected and analyzed. In some chapters, the French immersion setting will be presented first; in others, the Chinese setting will be first. In Chapter 3 will be found the learners’ reactions to their particular learning contexts. Issues to be discussed are the role of the teacher, the role of their fellow students and their response to the curriculum. Chapter 4 discusses the language learning experiences of the students – how they made sense of what was going on in the classroom, what they did when things did not make sense, their use of private speech, and the roles of comprehensible input and output. 18

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The particular issue of literacy in the new language will be dealt with in Chapter 5, where the learners’ reading strategies will be described, as well as their approaches to writing in the new language. Language learning strategies and processes are the focus of Chapter 6, where the learners’ strategies are first described in general, and then each learner‘s particular approach is presented as a collection of eight small case studies. Finally, Chapter 7 will attempt to pull together the various threads that have been followed in the course of writing this book, and suggest some directions for future research.

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Chapter 2

How and Where the Research Was Done

The Research Approach The approach adopted for this study grew from the work of authors such as Weber and Tardif, 1987; Tardif and Weber, 1987 and Breen (1985) who have begun to construct a new way of looking at second language classrooms. The approach is a synthesis of phenomenology, sociology and ethnography and the focus is on ‘describing and understanding experience in context, and on discerning the meaning of situations to the people living them’ (Tardif & Weber, 1987: 3). The questions guiding this study were focussed on the interrelations between learners and environments. The data needed to answer the question were collected in the situation as it was lived and experienced by the learners. Therefore mainly qualitative rather than quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were chosen for the research. The techniques and procedures involved in collecting and analysing the data will be briefly described at the beginning of Chapter 3. As the context of the situation in which the research is carried out is of central importance in this research orientation, a detailed description of the settings and the participants in the study will be presented in the following sections. The factors governing the choice of settings and participants will be outlined, and the curriculum followed by the students, the classroom settings , the teachers and the students will be introduced.

The Settings and the Students Two settings were chosen for study: a French immersion school and a university campus with a Chinese immersion program. The French immersion school was chosen for this study for a number of reasons. 20

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First, I had been involved in research at the school since 1990 and was well-known to the teachers, administrative staff and students. A good working relationship had been established with all the above parties over the years. Second, there was a large pool of students from which to choose key informants and thirdly, a body of in-depth background knowledge of the setting had been built up over the years of involvement at the school. The Chinese immersion program was chosen because it was at the time of writing the only immersion program in Chinese in Queensland and I had access to it as a member of the teaching staff. Having chosen the settings for the research, my next task was to choose the classes to be studied. Two groups of students were chosen for study: Year 9 French immersion students, and students from the Chinese immersion class. Learners in their second year of intensive language study were chosen for the project. The reason for this choice was that in the observations and interviews for the researcher’s previous studies into language learning in immersion (de Courcy, 1991, 1992b) it was found that learners at this stage of the learning experience were able to reflect best on the experience, to be most aware of what was happening to them linguistically, and to provide the richest data about their language learning. Students in the first year of the programs were still struggling with the language, and language learning seemed to happen at an ‘out of awareness level’ for learners in their third year. Another difference between the learners was the Chinese learners’ knowledge of language teaching methodology and learning theory. This made them very perceptive about what was happening in their own language classroom. Although there was a difference in age between the two groups, it was felt that the following aspects could be common to both groups: (1) Both groups had well developed literacy skills in their first language, which for most was English. (2) Both groups were at a similar stage in their learning of their second language. They were all commencing their second year of intensive study of French or Chinese at the beginning of 1993. (3) Both groups received approximately 53% of their instruction through immersion in a second language. (4) Language learning is said to be influenced by the degree of right brain/left brain lateralisation found in an individual. This lateralisation is believed to make it difficult for people to acquire an authentic accent in a second language after they reach puberty. It 21

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would be reasonably assumed that for members of both groups language functions would be already lateralised to the left (Brown, 1987; Krashen et al., 1979). Now that the classes to be researched were decided, the next task was to select the key informants, with whom I would work most closely during the project. During the period of ‘prior ethnography’ (i.e. familiarisation of the researcher with the sites to be researched), classes involving both groups were observed and students were informally interviewed. It was originally my plan to work with three learners from each class. Five key informants were initially selected from the Chinese group and four from the French group to allow for possible attrition and loss of informants. However, as the study progressed, it was possible to collect and analyze a large amount of data from two male and two female informants from each group. Therefore, data from a total of eight informants will be presented. Of the Chinese group, Zoe was originally an informant, but had to drop out because of the advanced state of her pregnancy. This accounts for her presence in some of the interviews. Key informants were selected from the pool of volunteers after a period of observing them working in the classroom setting. Informants were chosen on the basis of their perceived differing learning styles. A full description of the settings can be found in the next two sections. For each setting, the physical location, curriculum, timetable, class, teachers and key informants will be presented.

The French Immersion Setting The French immersion students involved in the study attended a state high school situated in a middle class suburb of a coastal city in Queensland, Australia. There were four students acting as informants for the study, all in Year 9, which is the second year of high school in Queensland. The school is what is described in the immersion literature as a ‘dual track’ immersion school, which means that there are some students studying the core curriculum in French immersion and others studying the same material in the regular English-medium program (Swain et al., 1981). The program follows the principles for immersion outlined by Baetens-Beardsmore and Swain (1985). About 60% of the students attending the school come from local feeder primary schools, with the remainder coming from further afield. The 22

How and Where the Research Was Done

school has a total enrolment of 1150 students, approximately 140 of whom are in the French immersion program. Students are selected from a pool of volunteers after interviews with the students and their Year 7 teachers. Criteria for selection include average to above average ability, combined with qualities such as persistence and a desire to succeed. The school has been running a late partial immersion program since 1985 and the program is described in detail in de Courcy (1997a). The students who volunteer for the immersion program begin their study in French in Year 8 and continue in French until the end of Year 10. Slightly more than half of their total subject load is delivered in French during the three years of the program. Figure 2.1 is designed to compare the amount of exposure to French of these students with late immersion students in Canada. Note that only some of the students at the school will have studied French before beginning the program. In Year 9, about 53% of the students’ total contact time at school (excluding sport) is in French. They follow the same curriculum as the students in the regular English stream, except that for them the core curriculum – Mathematics, Science, Social Science, Physical Education theory and French – is offered in French. The immersion students study all their other subjects in English. These other subjects are English, Sport, and a range of electives, including, for example, Science Enrichment,

LATE IMMERSION IN QUEENSLAND 100

Time %

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23

90

Immersion

80

French

70

English

60 50 40 30 20 10 0 (6)

(7)

8

9

10

11

Grade level

Figure 2.1 Late immersion in Queensland 23

12

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Business Principles, Japanese, etcetera. There are currently two French immersion classes in each of Years 8, 9 and 10. In Year 9, although the French immersion students are able to take various electives in English, each class remains together as a group for delivery of the core curriculum, which continues to be offered in French. The timetable of a typical student in the class involved in this study is presented in Figure 2.2 below. The subjects in italics are offered in French, those in plain font are taught in English. Period

Monday 8:50 Roll marking

Tuesday 8:50 Roll marking

Wednesday 8:50 Assembly and Team meets

Thursday 8:50 Roll marking

Friday 8:50 Roll marking

1

9:00 BP

9:00 Maths

9:20 PE

9:00 English

9:00 Speech and Drama

2

9:40 French

9:40 English

10:20 Science

9:40 Maths

9:40 B.P.

10:40 11:10 Soc. Ed.

10:40 11:10 B.P.

11:00 11:30 Soc. Ed.

10:40 11:10 PE theory

10:40 11:10 Soc. Ed.

4

11:50 Maths

11:50 Speech and Drama

12:10 Science

11:50 BP

11:50 Science

Lunch 5

12:50 1:40 English

12:50 1:40 French

12:50–3:00 Sport

12:50 1:40 French

12:50 1:40 English

2:20–3:00 Speech and Drama

2:20–3:00 Science

Sport

2:20–3:00 Soc. Ed.

2:20–300 Maths

Break 3

6

Figure 2.2 Timetable of a Year 9 French immersion student Notes: BP is Business Principles; Soc. Ed. is Social Education; PE is Physical Education. Speech and Drama, BP and Soc. Ed. are electives. Other students take different electives such as Music, Japanese, Home Economics, etc. Subjects offered in French are in italics. 24

How and Where the Research Was Done

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25

One difference between being an immersion student in a Queensland high school and studying in the regular stream is that immersion students work with fewer teachers than their English stream peers. Normally, high school students would have a different teacher for each subject on their timetable. The students in the immersion class in this study had the same teacher for French, Maths and Social Education. She is a native speaker of French. Their Science classes were shared between two other native speaking teachers, one male and one female. The male Science teacher also took the class for PE Core. The students at this school have reported forming a close bond with their teachers with some reporting that the immersion class and teacher become like their family. The effect this close bond has on their learning is reported in de Courcy (1991, 1992b, 1995b). The classroom where the observations and videotaping took place was T10, in ‘The Temporaries’, also known as ‘T block’. ‘T block’ consists of five demountable classroom buildings on the far western edge of the school. Most of the French immersion lessons take place in these rooms. There are louvre windows down two sides, a blackboard at the front, and a pinboard across the back wall. On the walls are French posters, either purchased or teacher-produced. The purchased posters carry antismoking and other health messages. The teacher-produced posters outline the rules of the classroom and suggest phrases to use when answering or asking questions. During most of the observation period, there were also posters on the pinboard showing the circulatory and digestive systems, as these were the topics being covered in the Science lessons under observation. There were 20 students in the Year 9 French immersion class involved in the study: 9 girls and 11 boys. There was one native speaker of French in the class. The students acting as key informants for the study were Peter, John, Melissa and Helena (pseudonyms). The students were all aged 14 at the beginning of 1993, except for John, who was a year older than the others. All the key informants were native speakers of English, except one. Peter’s first language is Hungarian and this was still his home language. John’s parents speak Afrikaans and German but he speaks only English at home. Peter volunteered for French immersion for a challenge. John joined because a friend suggested it and he thought it would be fun. Melissa said that when she was very young her mother was learning French and she really liked listening to it. Since then she has always wanted to learn French, so she chose immersion. Helena wanted to learn a European language and, like Melissa she liked the sound of the French language. 25

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She also thought that immersion would be ‘something different than going to a normal school’. To date, to my knowledge, there has been no publication of any results of systematic testing of Queensland immersion students’ proficiency in French either during their enrolment as immersion students, or on completion of the program. Therefore, any comments about students’ proficiency in French are informal and based on the researcher’s observations of language behaviour and administration of a cloze test to the four key informants. A cloze test containing 41 blanks was used for the think-aloud protocol which was used to investigate the reading strategies described in Chapter 5. This cloze test was chosen because scores were available for evaluation of students’ performance on the test in comparison with Canadian late immersion students of a similar age. The students’ scores on the cloze test used for the think-aloud protocol were as follows: Helena 10; Melissa 15; John 15; Peter 16. Students’ results on the test should not be used as statements of proficiency, however, as they did not complete the test under the same conditions as their Canadian peers. The test was administered under think-aloud protocol conditions rather than under strict test conditions. However, comparing the above results with those of students in Canada who have taken the same test, as shown in Table 2.1 below, can give us an indication of how these students are doing in comparison with their peers. According to data supplied with the test, a sample of 87 Grade 8 Late Immersion students in Ontario obtained a mean of 13.60 on the cloze test, compared with a mean of 14 for the four Queensland Year 9 students. Grade 8 students in Ontario are of a similar age to Year 9 students in Queensland. Scores for both groups were calculated using the exact word scoring method. Judging by their cloze test results, there does not seem to be a wide range of proficiency among the four key informants. I will now present the setting in which I collected the data on Chinese immersion Table 2.1 Comparative data: Test de Mots à trouver, Niveau B Grade

Region

Program

Mean score

SD

N

8

Ontario

Late immersion

13.60

3.19

87

9

Queenland

Late immersion

14

2.71

4

26

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27

learning. As with the French immersion setting, the physical location, curriculum, timetable, teachers and key informants will be presented.

The Chinese Immersion Setting The students in Chinese immersion were completing a Graduate Diploma of Applied Linguistics (Chinese) at an Australian university. There were a total of 13 students in the class, four of whom were chosen as key informants for the study. The Graduate Diploma formed the second half of a two year program which aimed to retrain teachers as teachers of Chinese. The students were all experienced teachers who had been released from classroom duties for the duration of the program. They were still on contract to their employer while studying for their diploma. In the first part of the program, the students received six weeks of intensive instruction in Chinese and language teaching methodology at the university. They were then assigned to teach English in China. The group of teachers who were assigned to Shanghai left for China in March 1991, to teach English as a second language in high schools and tertiary institutions for the rest of the year. They returned in December 1991. Those students who were assigned to schools in Wuhan stayed on campus studying Chinese and language teaching methodology until they went to China in September 1991. They returned from China in September 1992. While in China all the students also received instruction in Chinese from tutors on a one to one basis. While in China they also had to complete assignments on language teaching methodology and Chinese language. A second group of teachers destined for Shanghai commenced their six-week intensive course in January 1992. Figure 2.3 below shows the students’ movements in 1991–92. When the students returned from China, they were required by their employer to have their Chinese language proficiency tested. On successful completion of this first year of the course, students were awarded a Graduate Certificate of Applied Linguistics (Chinese). At this point, they could opt to return to a teaching position. If they opted to continue to train as teachers of Chinese, they returned to university and undertook a partial immersion program. This program began in 1991. Of the original cohort, those who went to Shanghai returned to Australia at the end of 1991 and completed their Graduate Diploma at the end of 1992. The students involved in the 27

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Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education

Dates

1st Shanghai group

Wuhan group

2nd Shanghai group

Jan. 91 to Feb. 91

Six week intensive course

Six week intensive course

Summer holidays

March 91 to Sep. 91

Teaching in China

Studying Chinese in Australia

Teaching in Australia

Sep. 91 to Dec. 91

Teaching in China

Teaching in China

Teaching in Australia

Jan. 92 to Feb. 92

Summer holidays

Teaching in China

Six-week intensive course

March 92 to Sep. 92

Studying in immersion in Australia

Teaching in China

Teaching in China

Sep. 92 to Dec. 92

Studying in immersion in Australia

Studying in immersion in Australia

Teaching in China

Jan. 92 to Feb. 93

Summer holidays

Summer holidays

Summer holidays

March 93 to Dec. 93

Teaching in Australia

Studying in immersion in Australia

Studying in immersion in Australia

Figure 2.3 Movements of Graduate Diploma (Chinese) students current study were either members of the group who returned from Wuhan in September 1992, or of the group who returned from Shanghai in December 1992. In first semester (February to June), the students attended classes from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, five days a week, except on Tuesday which was a half-day. Their timetable for Semester I is reproduced below in Figure 2.4. Subjects delivered in Chinese are in italics; those in English are in plain text. Approximately 53% or 18 hours of the program was delivered through Chinese immersion. Of the remaining hours, nine were in English only, and seven involved a mixture of Chinese and English. The subjects studied in first semester in the Graduate Diploma of Applied Linguistics (Chinese) are described briefly here: (1) TT51242: Applied Linguistics and Materials Development. This subject is also offered in the regular Graduate Diploma of Applied Linguistics, but was modified to meet the requirements of the Chinese course. 28

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Time

Monday

8:30 9:30

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

TT51242 Sociocultural Discussion

TT51242 Sociocultural Discussion

TT51242 Sociocultural Discussion

TT51242 Sociocultural Discussion

9:30 10:30

TT51242 Sociocultural Discussion

Self Access

PC Lab Free Writing

PC Lab Self Access

10:30 11:30

TT51242 Materials Development

PC Lab Word Processing

PC Lab

PC Lab Dictation

11:30 12:30

Conversation Tutorial

PC Lab Word Processing

Pronunciation Tutorial

Pronunciation Tutorial

12:30 1:30

Lunch

PC Lab Word Processing

Lunch

Lunch

Conversation Tutorial

1:30 2:30

Pronunciation Tutorial

PC Lab

TT51242 Materials Development

TT51242 Theme

TT51242 Theme

2:30 3:30

PC Lab Dictation

TT51242 Materials Development

TT51242 Theme

TT51242 Theme

3:30 4:30

PC Lab Self Access

Self Access

Conversation Tutorial

Pronunciation Tutorial

5:00 8:00

Tuesday

29

TT51252 Research Methods

Figure 2.4 Timetable: Graduate Diploma of Applied Linguistics (Chinese) Note: subjects offered in Chinese are in italics

(2) TT51252: Research in Second Language Teaching. This subject was taken by the Chinese students along with the students in the regular Graduate Diploma program. It was therefore offered in English. (3) Chinese Language Study (non-credit companion course). In the second semester, July to November, the following program was offered: (1) TT51262: Language Learning Case Study. Students were required to 29

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Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education

attend seminars during the last four weeks of term. They were required to write a 4000-word case study in English based on their experience of learning Chinese in China and in the immersion program. (2) TT51272: Language Teaching Case Study. Students were to decide on a topic on which to complete a piece of individual research. They attended classes on Thursday evenings in July and August. During the remainder of the semester (late August to late October) they consulted a project supervisor on an individual basis. On successful completion of the above two subjects, students were eligible for the Graduate Diploma of Applied Linguistics. However, in order to work as teachers of Chinese language, they would be required to undertake a proficiency test in Chinese, therefore, to further develop students’ proficiency in Chinese in preparation for this testing at the end of semester and to further develop students’ knowledge of second language teaching methodology the following subjects were also offered: (3) Second Language Teaching Methods. Half of the course was offered in English and half in Chinese. The two halves covered different topics. (4) Language Practice/Language Tutorial. This course was content-based, with themes being drawn from aspects of Chinese culture and civilisation. A further requirement in the course was for the students to organise and stage a five day exhibition to demonstrate communicative teaching of Chinese. They set up a large room in the university with a number of Chinese learning centres. Students and teachers of Chinese from schools in the surrounding area were invited to participate. This Ni hao 93 exhibition ran for one week and was well-received by all who participated. In Semester II, the students followed the timetable set out in Figure 2.5. Subjects offered in Chinese are listed in italics. All the teachers who taught the Chinese sections of the course were native speakers of Chinese, mostly from the Peoples’ Republic of China. I taught the group myself in English for Materials Development and shared the teaching of the Research Methods course with the course coordinator. There was a large turnover of staff on the program during 1993. One of the Chinese teachers along with the original course coordinator left the program in June, at the end of Semester I. Another of the Chinese teachers left in August and was replaced by a native speaker. Few of the Chinese teachers had any experience of teaching Chinese as a second

30

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Time

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

8:30

Language Practice

Language Practice

Language Tutorial

9:30

Language Practice

Language Practice

Language Practice

10:30

L2 teaching Methods

Language Tutorial

Language Tutorial Group A

11:30

L2 teaching Methods

Language Tutorial

Language Tutorial Group B

12:30

Lunch

Lunch

Lunch

1:30

Exhibition Preparation

L2 Methods English T4

2:30

Exhibition Preparation

L2 Methods English T4

3:30

Exhibition Preparation

5:00– 8:00

Monday

Tuesday

31

Language Teaching Case Study October only

Language Learning Case Study July–August

Figure 2.5 Timetable: Graduate Diploma of Applied Linguistics (Chinese), Semester II, 1993) Note: Subjects offered in Chinese are in italics

language. In common with the teachers in Liu’s study (1992), if they had any experience in teaching a foreign language, that language was English, and their experience was mainly with teaching English literature. Classes were conducted in either of two rooms. One was a small ground-floor classroom. In an attempt to create a language rich environment the walls of this room gradually became more and more covered with student work and purchased posters as the year went on. Examples of calligraphy produced by the students and their teacher took up one

31

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corner. Maps of China and the world (printed in Chinese) occupied another. Posters of an exhibition of Chinese artefacts and other pictures collected in China were used to brighten the other walls. Students’ posters produced for seminars they presented were also on display. The other room was a computer laboratory, with 15 personal computers arranged around the walls of the room. There was also a printer and a whiteboard. The computer program, JIEJING (Chappell & Yates, 1989), was used throughout the course to assist the students in their reading and writing of Chinese characters. JIEJING uses the basic writing principles used in character-based languages to input text. Users must follow correct stroke order in order to input characters. There were 13 students in the class, four of whom were chosen as key informants for the study. They were: Norman: Norman had been a teacher of Citizenship Education who had been working for many years in a high school in a small coastal town before joining the program. He was 38-years-old, married, with two children. He taught in Shanghai, China. Jane: Jane was a primary school teacher who had worked for several years in Aboriginal communities in the far north of Queensland. She had also taught in Africa. She was 37 and single. She taught in Shanghai, China. Tamara: She was 30-years-old and was a teacher librarian in a coastal town before going to Shanghai to teach. While there she met and married a Chinese doctor, who has now joined her in Australia. She hopes to return to China with him to study acupuncture. Patrick: Patrick was 36-years-old and was principal of a country primary school before joining the Chinese program. His wife was also in the program. They went to Wuhan to teach. At the end of the Graduate Certificate program, the students’ proficiency in Chinese was tested. The format used was the trial version of the Australian Second Language Proficiency Ratings (ASLPR) for Chinese as a Second Language. The key informants’ ratings in March and November of 1993 are set out in Table 2.2. As can be seen by the above descriptions, the Chinese immersion group appeared less homogeneous than did the French immersion group. They had received a more varied exposure to the second language and the class covered a wider range of proficiency levels than the French immersion class appeared to. It is interesting to note that the ‘Wuhan group’, of which Patrick was a member, was perceived by the ‘Shanghai group’ to have a much higher language proficiency than themselves. This perception does not seem to be borne out in the results of the proficiency testing. 32

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Table 2.2 ASLPR proficiency ratings, Chinese group March 1993

Jane Tamara Patrick Norman

November 1993

S

L

1+ 2+

1+ 1+ 2 1+ absent 2 1

2

R

W

S

L

R

W

1+ 1+

1+ 2+ 1+ 2

1+ 2 1+ 2

1+ 2 2 1+

1 1 1+ 1–

1

This issue, along with many others, will be discussed in the following chapter which deals with the students’ responses to the particular learning context in which they found themselves. Issues to be discussed are the students’ perceptions of the role of the teacher, their response to the curriculum, and the role of their fellow students in the learning situation.

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Chapter 3

Learners’ Responses to the Learning Context

In Chapter 3, I will first outline the sources of information used in this study, and the ways in which I went about collecting and analyzing the qualitative data on which my findings were based. The bulk of this chapter will then be devoted to presentation and discussion of the findings which relate to the following questions: How did the learners respond to the learning context? What aspects of the context created in the classroom did students feel were helpful to their language learning? What aspects were not helpful?

Sources of Information As stated in the introductory chapter to this book, this study was conducted in order to uncover the meanings attached to events observed in the classroom, not from the point of view of the researcher, but from the points of view of the learners themselves. An attempt was made to locate the research in the learners’ experiences of classroom language learning. In this section, I will describe the ways in which the qualitative data used in this study were collected and analyzed. Rather than relying on interview data alone, data were also collected in the context in which the learning took place – that is, the language classrooms. It has been stated that the way much research into classroom language learning has been conducted seems ‘to neglect the social reality of language as it is experienced and created by teachers and learners’ (Breen, 1985: 141). I decided for this study to take up Breen’s challenge and explore learning in the ‘classroom as coral gardens’ as described in his 1985 article, using mainly qualitative techniques. The ‘coral gardens’ metaphor sees researchers seeking to find the meanings participants place on classroom events and behaviours and how they relate to language learning. 34

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One of the main characteristics of qualitative research is that the researcher relies on more than one instrument or technique. Researchers are encouraged to use ‘triangulation’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985: 283; Wolcott, 1988: 192) to build validity into their work, by never relying on a single instrument, observation or approach. As stated by Spradley (1979), when we merely observe behaviour, without also treating people as informants, our knowledge of their culture becomes distorted, because we only use our view of their culture, rather than theirs. We may attach wrong meanings or significance to observed happenings. In order to answer the questions posed by this study, it was necessary to ‘ “borrow” other people’s experiences and their reflections on their experiences’ (van Manen, 1990: 62). The database consisted of ‘original texts on which the researcher can work’ (van Manen, 1990: 63). These original texts were collected in the form of transcripts of taped interviews, videos of classroom interaction, field notes taken while observing classes, learner diaries, and taped think-aloud protocols of reading tasks in the second languages. The think-aloud protocols were only used for the exploration of reading strategies, and the conduct and analysis of these protocols will be found at the beginning of Chapter 5. Having decided on the data collection methods, sampling decisions needed to be made. Collecting qualitative information from a large number of students would have generated too much data, therefore, in order to gain a thorough understanding of the experience of second language learning in immersion, a small number of students was selected for in-depth study. It was decided to analyze and report on data from four students from each immersion program. To allow for possible attrition and loss of informants, more than four students from each program were initially asked to volunteer to participate in the study. During the period of data collection, the full complement of participants was not always present, due to illness, family vacations or whatever. Therefore data from those students who had participated in the most data collection procedures were included in the final analysis and reporting. Because of the small number of informants used, my results may be criticised for their lack of generalisability. However, I reiterate that I am talking about the learning experiences of the eight key informants in this study. I am not trying to generalise even to the whole class, let alone all immersion students. We should note here that ‘generalisability in research is more than a matter of counting. Quantification of any set of data does not ensure generalisability to other contexts, nor does a large sample size: 35

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Population characteristics must be carefully considered when selecting a sample from which to make statistical inferences’ (Lazaraton, 1995: 465). Lazaraton (1995: 464) notes that ‘perhaps the most frequent criticism leveled against qualitative research is that the results obtained are not generalizable to other contexts’. She notes that ‘qualitative researchers strive for transferability of findings’, and cites Davis’ (1992) caution that ‘the degree to which working hypotheses can transfer to other times and contexts is an empirical matter, depending on the degree of similarity between the two contexts’ (1992: 606). This is why it is necessary for qualitative researchers to provide a ‘thick description’ of the context(s) in which they collected their data. A description of the settings was provided in the previous chapter, and in this chapter will be found ‘vignettes’ of typical lessons in each of the programs. After gaining entrée to the research sites and attending to ethical considerations, I was able to commence data collection. Observation was the first stage of the research. This followed Corsaro’s recommendation that the researcher engage in ‘prior ethnography’ in order to ‘diminish obtrusiveness’ and ‘allow for cultural accommodation and informational orientation’ (Corsaro, 1980, quoted in Lincoln & Guba, 1985: 251). Non-participant observations of each class were conducted over six days in April. Field notes were written while observing and later typed into the database. Key informants were selected on the basis of these observations and after discussion with the students’ teachers. The learners were chosen to reflect a cross section of ability levels, with neither the ablest nor the weakest students in each group being selected. After initial observations were completed, individual interviews with each key informant were taped and transcribed in full. Each interview lasted for approximately half an hour and the techniques described in Spradley’s ‘The ethnographic interview’ (1979) were used. That is, the interviewer would first ask a general ‘grand tour’ question, for example: ‘So what can you tell me about being in an immersion program? What’s it like?’ (Interview with Helena, 15 June 1993). The interviewee is then allowed to speak until that topic is exhausted, with the interviewer asking questions for clarification, or more information, such as: H: . . . and we’re always helping each other. R: uh huh. So how do you help each other? (Interview with Helena, 15 June 1993). 36

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Always, the interviewer’s aim is for the interviewee to speak more than the interviewer, and for the interview to have the feel and flow of a natural conversation. The interviewee should not be asked leading or closed questions, but invited to speak freely. As the study progresses, interviews become more structured and focussed in line with analysis of earlier transcripts of observations, journals and interviews. During one of the interviews, a ‘think-aloud protocol’ was conducted in order to discover more about the reading processes used by the students. This protocol is described in the chapter on reading strategies. Interviews were used as a research technique because the researcher ‘cannot stand aloof as an observer . . . but must enter into intersubjective dialogue with the people in the research situation’ (Aoki, 1979 : 60–61). The purpose of interviewing was to uncover ‘the intentions and interpretations invested in classroom activities and contents by its participants’ (Breen, 1985: 151). Next, during July, August and September of 1993, seven one-hour lessons were videotaped (three Chinese and four French). The purpose of the taping was not only to have a record of classroom interaction, including non-verbal interactions, but also to provide a stimulus for discussion in the next round of interviews. To overcome potential problems of retrospectivity, a ‘stimulated recall’ interview format was used for these. The idea of stimulated recall is to confront the informants with a situation so they can ‘live it again’. This took the form of playing back a videotape of several lessons to a group of students who had participated in the lessons, and questioning them about particular incidents. As van Manen (1990: 67) states: It is imperative to stay close to experience as lived. . . . Ask the person to think of a specific instance, situation, person or event. Then explore the whole experience to the fullest. The stimulated recall interview was conducted with four students from each class during September and October. Each interview lasted for approximately 45 minutes. The students of Chinese were required to keep a journal of their language learning experiences. A course requirement was that they write a ‘Language learning case study’ based on these journals. The students allowed me access to both their case studies and their journals for the purposes of this study. The journals allow us to see the students’ reactions to events at the time they happened so they could be compared with the observational and interview data. Instead of journals, the students in the French immersion program wrote answers to a series of open-ended questions relating to their 37

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language learning experiences. They then talked through these answers in a half-hour interview in December, the end of the school year, with the two female students interviewed together, and the two male students also interviewed together. As each set of data was collected, the tapes were transcribed verbatim. The transcription conventions developed by Atkinson and Drew (1979) were used for all interview transcriptions in order to show pauses, emphasis and other potentially significant aspects of the discourse recorded. To aid the reader, these are included in the Appendix. The transcripts were then returned to the key informants for amendment or acceptance. Only after the transcripts were verified did analysis commence. The only exception to the rule of verbatim transcription was the videotapes of lessons. A running account of events happening at particular tape counts was prepared. In addition, some of the recorded interactions were transcribed verbatim. As well as data collecting, data analysis was also ongoing throughout the project. I was guided in data analysis by the principles outlined in Lincoln and Guba (1985), Miles and Huberman (1984) and Glaser and Strauss (1967). They recommend that data analysis be an iterative, ongoing process, continuing throughout the study. Rather than being left until all the data were collected, analysis was conducted after each stage of data collection. After transcription and verification of the data an initial search for ‘themes’ (Spradley, 1979) was made. The aim was to find common themes across the data provided by all eight learners if possible. Each theme was then subdivided into several categories. The transcripts were then read and reread many times both during and after the period of data collection to check and cross-check the categories. Changes to, and refinement of, categories were made as data collection and analysis proceeded. Themes and categories which were emerging from the data were discussed with the informants during subsequent research stages. ‘Memos’ (Miles & Huberman, 1984) about the data were written in the researcher’s journal in order to clarify final categories. Miles & Huberman (1984, p. 69), reproduce Glaser’s definition that ‘a memo is the theorizing write-up of ideas about codes and their relationships as they strike the analyst while coding’. They add that memos ‘do not just report data, but they tie different pieces of data together in a cluster, or they show that a particular piece of data is an instance of a general concept’ (Miles & Huberman, 1984, p. 69). This process of analysis, the reading and rereading of the data, and analysis by hand, was the first 38

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stage of analysis, when initial categories were being sorted out. I’ve called this ‘by-eye’ analysis. During the period of data collection, all the transcriptions were entered on a computer database. When the final ‘by eye’ analysis was complete, the ISYS Full Text Retrieval System (Odyssey, 1992) was used to sort and display the data in each category. ISYS searches the database for words and phrases entered by the researcher, who then sorts items on a ‘clipboard’ for eventual export to a file. This method has supplemented the physical ‘cut and paste’ methods used for final analysis by the researcher in previous projects. Once categories were finalised, they were entered on ‘clustered summary tables’ (Miles & Huberman, 1984) as part of the process of data reduction and display. The summary tables displayed the themes, categories, definitions of categories and examples from the data. These were then used as a basis for writing the results. I will now present the results which relate to the learners’ response to the learning context. However, first I will discuss the concept of ‘script’ which proved crucial in my understanding of what was going on here.

Scripts for School Many studies into second language learning fail to take account of the fact that with rare exceptions people do not generally undertake the learning of a second language on their own. Whether in the classroom or in a naturalistic setting, the learning of a new language involves other people – teachers, interlocutors and classmates. As members of a social world, how do we create a situation in which the learning of a new language becomes possible? One of the factors involved in developing this context for learning is that of ‘script’. This meaning of ‘script’ is that used in discourse analysis by such authors as Scollon and Wong Scollon (1995), Ranney (1992) and Hatch (1992). Scollon and Wong Scollon describe schemata or scripts as being ‘an expected sequence of activities’ (1995: 57). Knowledge of such scripts, along with world knowledge and knowledge of adjacency sequences allow a person to interpret discourse. Ranney describes scripts as specific types of schemata which ‘account for stereotypes of routine activities occurring as a sequence of action’ (1992: 26–27). In educational contexts where students and teachers share the same language and have similar cultural backgrounds, a common set of assumptions is likely to underpin the acts of all participants. (Flowerdew & Miller, 1995) 39

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However, in the Chinese classroom under investigation here, the students and teachers might not be expected to have these same shared cultural assumptions about the scripts of their lessons. Thus, the other task faced by the learners and their teachers was that of working out a ‘script’ for lessons being conducted in Chinese at an Australian university. It is this meaning of ‘script’ and the sometimes painful process of developing it which are presented in this section, along with the students’ responses to the learning context. In order to properly understand the students’ responses in the context of classroom activity, an outline of a typical lesson in each of the programs will be presented before a discussion of the results. My research notes on the lesson observed on Wednesday, 28 April 1993 will be presented here as an example of the type of interaction observed in the Chinese immersion classroom. The lesson was in the Sociocultural Discussion Section of the Applied Linguistics and Materials Development Course and dealt with the period of Chinese history when Kublai Khan was ruler: The lesson started badly, with a rather heated argument in English between Teacher F and the students about assessment for this section of the course. . . . The argument about assessment had been going on for about fifteen minutes when one of the students (Patrick) became so sick of it he directed the teacher to ‘shàng kè’, ‘teach’. The teacher then said in Chinese that he would tell them the next day about the date of the exam and what to expect in it. Patrick translated what the teacher said into English. The lesson proper began with the teacher outlining what they would do that day, writing characters on the board as he did so. Once the students perceived that he was dealing with racial groups in China they started to call out suggestions of other groups the teacher might write up on the board. Many times during the lesson, the students (and the observer!) became totally lost with the teacher’s explanation and he resolved the communication breakdown by using English. For example, after a lengthy explanation in Chinese about the Mongolian people, he gave up and explained in English that he was describing a tent and a way of travelling which was like a caravan. During his explanations in Chinese, when the teacher uses a new word, he writes it on the board, and provides an English translation of the word. About half way through the lesson, the following exchange was overheard between two students sitting together 40

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Student 1: [holds her head and asks] Who are they killing? Student 1: [turns to Student 2] Do you understand? Student 2: I stopped listening a couple of minutes ago. The teacher then translated what he had been saying into English. Then he went back into Chinese to continue telling the story. Occasionally a student would repeat a phrase the teacher said. The teacher would then translate the phrase into English. At other times the teacher would repeat a word twice, and if the students shook their heads he would translate the word into English. When the teacher stopped talking the students discussed in English what he might have been trying to convey: Is it like nine heads? or is it that Kublai Khan had nine sons and these are like the nine minorities? The lesson continued in this manner, with the students largely passive, listening and trying to understand the thread of the lesson. When students were obviously not understanding, the teacher would translate into English. The only teaching aids used were a map of China, to which the teacher would occasionally point, and the whiteboard on which characters were written. After the lesson described above, the Chinese teacher and I returned to the office we shared. Over a much needed cup of tea, he explained to me his perplexity over what had happened. I explained that, according to the ‘script’ of the Australian students, because assessment had not been mentioned in the course outline, the students had assumed they would not be assessed for ‘Sociocultural Discussion’.1 However, the teacher, using his Chinese ‘script’, had assumed that there would be an exam and that the students would assume this also! He asked what he would have to do now, according to university regulations, to ensure that an exam could take place. I explained that he would have to draft an outline of what the exam would be like – when it would take place, how long it would be, what sorts of areas it would cover, and its format: essay questions or short answer. The students would then need to all agree to this plan and the details would be put as an attachment to the course outline. This was the first example in the data which illustrated that the teachers and students in this program were going to have to deal with a clash of cultural expectations or ‘scripts’ as well as a new language. We turn now to the French group, and a vignette of a lesson in the French immersion program will be presented in order to contextualise 41

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the discussion. The Science lesson observed and videotaped on Tuesday, 24 August 1993 was noted by the students, researcher and teacher as being fairly typical of their lessons throughout the year. This lesson was the last lesson of the day and will be described in detail here. The topic of the lesson was a synthesis of the digestive system and the circulatory system, both of which topics had been recently covered separately. The teacher began the lesson by explaining the purpose of it and the word ‘synthèse’ (synthesis), which was new. She said: On va faire un synthèse – vous devez mettre les deux systèmes ensemble. [We’re going to do a synthesis – you have to put the two systems together] The teacher then began drawing up the following table (Figure 3.1) on the blackboard. The table was from p. 35 of the students’ Science booklets. These workbooks are prepared by the teachers and teacher aides and are translations of the workbooks used by students in the English stream. (Permission was obtained from the publishers to make these translations). Students are not permitted to write in these workbooks as they are resold to the following year’s Year 9 students. During the Science lesson observed, the teacher spent the first half of the lesson on revision of previous work, using the table below, reproduced on the blackboard. The teacher would ask a question related to the table, and then nominate a particular student to provide the answer. Occasionally, she would allow students to raise their hands to bid for the chance to give the answer. The discourse in this section of the lesson involved long, complex sentences from the teacher, with short, one or two word (minimal) answers from the students. The teacher asked the students twice to cease writing – they would be given five minutes to copy down the answers when the revision session was ended. The teacher explained to the researcher that she insists on the students not writing so that they will listen and concentrate on the lesson. Once during this section a question prompted a student to answer at some length. During this question and answer session, students would turn to their neighbour or turn around in their seats to ask for help with providing the answer, whether they were nominated or not. Sometimes students will raise their hands to volunteer an answer after consultation, sometimes not. 42

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Complétez le tableau ci-dessous: Qu’est-ce qui est transporté?

A partir d’oú?

l’oxygène

des alvéoles dans les poumons

Jusqu’où?

Transporté comment?

le dioxyde de carbone les nutriments les déchets– l’urine

du foie

les hormones

la chaleur

Figure 3.1 Activité 15: Tableau récapitulatif – système circulatoire Note: A translation of Figure 3.1 into English will be found in Appendix B on page 151.

This section of the lesson ended with the teacher allowing the students time to copy the completed table into their notebooks. The students spent about five minutes writing quietly. The teacher moved around the room, saying a word here or there to the students, being jokingly severe with one boy, helpful to others. When most students were finished, she signalled the end of this part of the lesson by directing the students to close their notebooks and their Science books. They were going to start a new section about respiration. She first explained that in English there was only one word for the two concepts involved in «respiration» – «en anglais, on a ‘breathing’» [‘in English, you have “breathing” ’]. This was the only use of an English word by the teacher in the whole lesson. She translates only rarely, and only when she wants to make a specific point like this. At this point she had to interrupt her explanation to send one student outside to pick up papers – he had been disturbing those around him. 43

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Then the teacher returned to the topic at hand. The questioning pattern here was different from that in the earlier revision session – here, the teacher would ask an open-ended question, such as «pourquoi est-ce qu’on inspire et expire?» [‘why do we breathe in and out?’]. These open-ended questions called for much longer answers from the students. After this introduction, the teacher then turned to the board and started to draw diagrams and explanations on the board, still questioning and explaining while she drew. This section returns to the earlier pattern of short questions and answers as before. This was the most common pattern observed in lessons at this school over the years. Then the students copy down the notes, diagrams and homework task from the board, fairly quietly, concentrating on the task. At 3 pm the students started to pack up their things. There are no bells at this school; students are expected to be responsible for keeping track of the time. As the students get ready to leave, they joke in French about the horrible smell that has been wafting over from the nearby sports oval, where organic fertiliser has been spread. They are able to accurately describe the fertiliser (la merde de poules) and its smell in French and take great delight in doing so! In summary, a typical lesson consists of revision of previous work, introduction of new work, a task based on the new work, and setting of homework. This pattern is similar to those lesson ‘scripts’ described in the previous study by the researcher at this school (de Courcy, 1992b). The results of analysis of the data relating to the learners’ response to the learning context will now be presented. The analysis of the data revealed several themes which were common to the learners in both groups. The first theme was that of the role of the teacher. A second theme which emerged was the students’ response to the curriculum, in particular to the goals of the course and the content or topics covered. A third theme was the learners’ response to their fellow students, with the sub themes of the effect on the learners’ experience of different levels of proficiency in the class, the ‘group dynamics’ of the class, the ways in which students helped each other through the experience, and the role of the new language in fostering an in-group. Within each theme, the Chinese group’s responses will be presented first, followed by those for the French group. In the transcriptions of the tapes and in the quotations presented here, normal punctuation has not been used. To aid the reader, the transcription conventions, adapted 44

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from those used by Atkinson and Drew (1979) are found in Appendix A on page 151. An attempt was made to transcribe as accurately as possible the flow of the informant’s natural speech, with all its stops, starts and recursions. Similarly, diary entries are quoted verbatim.

The Role of the Teacher As stated in the introduction to this book, the aim and focus of the research was on the learners. However, the learners kept bringing the focus back on the teacher. For them, one of the most important aspects of the classroom, and something which deeply affected their language learning experiences was the role of the teacher. The researcher found, in common with Tardif (1994: 468), that ‘in the process of gathering data on the [student’s] experience of . . . immersion, much valuable information was obtained on the nature and content of teacher talk in the immersion classroom and on interaction patterns with the students’. Analysis of the data revealed that, according to the students, the role of the teacher involved maintaining the second language context, using good teaching strategies, responding to the needs of the learners, and fostering an atmosphere in the classroom which facilitated language learning. These various aspects will now be discussed, using data from the students to illustrate the points made. The first aspect of the teacher’s role is that of maintaining the second language context. For members of the Chinese group, this was unfortunately one of the weakest aspects of the program. In interviews, the students repeatedly volunteered the comment that a lot of English was used in the class, confirming the researcher’s earlier observations. There was no change in this aspect as the year went on. In March, Norman expressed concern about the amount of English spoken in the class: Well, I really don’t think we’re involved in immersion. Because we don’t speak the second language or the foreign language all the time . . . a lot of us are speaking English . . . I know there’s some English is spoken . . . but I think we should speak MORE of the foreign language and less of the mother tongue. On viewing the videotaped lessons of the Chinese class, I noted that a lot of translation into English was used by both teachers who consented to be taped. Watching a teacher on tape during the stimulated recall session, Patrick commented that: ‘she probably used more Chinese in this lesson than she would normally have done. Quite often if she wants to explain something she goes into English.’ 45

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Only one of the teachers still in the program in September maintained a Chinese context. This was discussed in the stimulated recall interview. Patrick stated ‘Lily uses all Chinese. If you don’t understand she says it louder!’ In his interview, conducted in August, Patrick explained why he felt that Lily’s class was the best for language learning: to me in immersion you’ve got to think Chinese, so you don’t think, translating . . . the best class is Lily’s it’s because she doesn’t slow down . . . her teaching strategies are pathetic, but she makes you THINK Chinese because she speaks SO quickly and goes on and you CAN’T translate and so . . . my Chinese progresses more with HER because I have to think Chinese all the time whereas in the other classes where it’s vocabulary learning, you’re not thinking as much Chinese – you can nearly get to and ask your questions in English whereas if you want to ask something you’ve got to be on CONTENT with Lily – so you speak Chinese and think Chinese. By November, the problem of English use in the class seems to have become even worse according to Tamara, who spoke about it in her think-aloud interview: T: R: T:

R: T:

it just seems like at the end we weren’t- we weren’t learning anything really. and why do you think that was? well, we had a teacher who spoke English, broke into a lot of English. Oh it’d be the simplest thing! you know if someone had a blank look on his- on their face, he’d say it in English what hewhat we were talking about and oh!/ I noticed that in the video, was that normal, did he do that? that was normal, and it got worse towards the end! and Zoe got really angry one day and said ‘oh look, you know, this is a Chinese class, it’s not in English!’

Of all the teachers with whom these four learners had worked, their highest praise was for Ming Qin, who left in the middle of second semester. The students appreciated her clear accent and the amount of Chinese she used in class. In the recall interview, Patrick said that ‘to my mind Ming would have come the closest to real- trying to teach content in Chinese.’ In contrast to the Chinese group, the French group had teachers who were vigilant in maintaining a French context in the classroom. Clear rules were established that if students spoke to the teacher in class time, 46

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they had to do so in French. The public use of spoken English was only allowed in cases of communication breakdown, or outside the classroom. The teacher would typically speak only one or two words in English to the students during a lesson. Students addressed one another in English when they were not speaking publicly. During classroom activities, if a student spoke to the teacher or the class in English, the teacher insisted on French, as in the following example from a Science lesson on 7 May: The students were asked to describe the type of relationship indicated by one of the pictures in their workbook. Peter started to give his answer in French, then switched to English. T: Je ne comprends rien du tout. [I don’t understand a thing] P: But I can’t say it in French! T: Si, tu peux. [Yes, you can] So Peter tried very hard, had his mistakes corrected along the way, and eventually said his answer in French. It was noted during one observation (14 May) that an exercise in the Science workbook had a picture of a coral habitat labelled in English. This did not seem to distract the students from the task at hand. They quite readily used French to discuss the habitat and the environmental factors that impinge upon it. There were rare occasions when the teacher would explain something in English, if the message was just not being understood in French. The girls explained in their paired interview why the teachers would sometimes use English: H: M:

sometimes our teachers will do that, if everyone just sits there and sort of goes [blank look]// yeah because if- they will, because if you say ‘I don’t understand that’ they will re-explain it in French and everyone will still sit there and go ‘no idea’ THEN they’ll explain it in English

As well as the teachers’ insistence on the use of French, the students also monitored one another’s language. Each term, one student was designated as language monitor. If a student spoke publicly in English in the class, the monitor would write that student’s name on the board. When the students were watching the video and explaining the rules for answering questions to me, they explained how the monitor system worked: J: R:

we just answer in French, though. yeah. what happens if you don’t answer in French? 47

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H: P:

she says ‘je ne comprends pas’ or things [like that [but now they put your name on the board and you have to donate 20 cents if you get five times on the board oh. is that/ for a party at the end of the year.

R: P:

The researcher was invited to the party at the end of the year, and can report that enough public English was used in class to help pay for a decent spread of food and drink for 25 people! The next aspect to be discussed, relating to the role of the teacher, is that of teaching strategies. For the Chinese group, there were many changes in teaching personnel during the year. However, of all these, the only teacher they felt had used good teaching strategies was Ming Qin. In one part of their program, the learners of Chinese were having lectures in English about language teaching methodology. However, Patrick felt that in their immersion classroom ‘we were seeing WOEFUL – teaching strategies’. He also stated that: if you ever want to see BAD teaching, it was . . . in that classroom, from ALL teachers . . . if any of the teaching, methodology people came down – and looked at that, the teachers would have to fail, because, there was never any remediation given to poor learners, I shouldn’t say poor learners but people who were coping a bit slow. [Think-aloud interview] There was also a feeling among the students that their teachers perhaps did not really believe in immersion as a method of language learning, and this affected the way in which they delivered their lessons. Patrick said during the stimulated recall interview that: [Chen] doesn’t think that we’re learning . . . she said what we should be doing now is a lot of reading and writing (to form a reasonable vocabulary?) we should be doing much more reading and writing so that we learn the GRAMMAR – structures. And obviously that’s what she wants to do is teach grammar structures so that when we speak it’s spoken correctly? Jane continued, ‘I think that’s one of the big holes in our course, a lot of the teachers, the tutors who were using it didn’t believe in the initial method’. This lack of belief in the immersion method seems to have been common to most of the teachers in the program. They appeared to maintain the 48

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focus on vocabulary and grammar associated with a traditional language-focused course. This was contrary to the aims of the designers of the course, who had intended lessons to be focused on content, not language. The following conversation also shows how what an observer sees is not necessarily what the participants believe is happening: I think Chen Li instead of believing that we could DO Literature or something else, she keeps wanting to do GRAMMAR . . . R: um whereas Xiao Fung was – from my observations of HIM, he seemed to be much more doing, teaching History and teaching Geography when I was with you. Was that right or not? P: on the surface, maybe R: on the surface P: In – he could do a lesson on – the two rivers – the Yangtse River and the Yellow River. Sure that was geography, but his undertone definitely was vocabulary R: mm mm P: and grammar/ J: Chen Li seems to try and reinforce more the vocabulary we’ve done and maybe he did too? P: In my mind Ming would have come closest to real- trying to teach content in Chinese All: mm [of agreement] J: yeah. Like some of the topics, especially the Cultural Rev- I still remember that really well. She really put her heart and soul into that. That was immersion. J:

In contrast to the Chinese immersion group, the French immersion students commented that they had ‘great teachers’ for most of their immersion subjects. Several times during the year the students were asked to clarify what they meant by a ‘great teacher’. Some of the main points were that the teacher needed to speak clearly, explain things well, revise content frequently, use diagrams and gestures, and use words the students could understand. When the boys were asked in their paired interview ‘what makes a good immersion teacher?’ they replied: P:

. . . someone who, speaks clearly and . . . if you ask him a question he’ll explain it he won’t go (la la la) that’s that and beat around the bush.

In the May interviews, when asked how they understood what was going on in the class, the students focused on the role of the teacher. Melissa explained how one teacher explained things: 49

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M:

like with Miss Andrews. She explains it really well and so it makes sure that you understand. How does she make sure that you understand, do you think? well, she talks and, usually, if we don’t understand a word then we’ll put our hand up but she can usually guess which words we don’t understand and then she says what it means and she’ll teach it – to you and usually using different words. So that if there was something we didn’t understand then we’ll understand it the second time uh uh , I see and she goes over the work a lot, too. So that’s important for you? mm mm [affirmative]

R: M:

R: M: R: M:

An example of the explanation technique mentioned above is shown here. The example comes from a Science class on 7 May. T:

Ss:

Tous les chiens se ressemblent – ils forment une espèce. Toutes les vaches se ressemblent – elles forment une espèce. Qu’est-ce que c’est une espèce? [All dogs resemble one another – they form a species. All cows resemble one another – they form a species. What is a ‘species’?] species

Melissa and John also talked about drawings and gestures and word choice being part of good teaching strategies. Melissa said in her May interview that ‘drawings on the board help a lot and most of the teachers do that a lot, because um, it’s- even if you don’t understand the French then you can get a basic idea of what’s going on.’ John said in his May interview that ‘it’s usually teachers’ gestures you can figure out what’s going on and what’s being said, and understand’. Also, ‘the teachers, they’re sort of helpful, well, they try and use words that you know, you understand’. In their paired interview the girls praised one teacher in particular because of her emphasis on systematic revision: H: M:

‘Miss Andrews REVISES everything normally at- (either) the next lesson, at the beginning or at the end/ and at the end normally she goes through EVERYTHING again.

The girls felt that this ‘going through everything’ was what made a good immersion teacher. There was one teacher who occasionally caused them problems. Peter said in the paired interview that this teacher sometimes spoke ‘really 50

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quickly and you can’t understand her’. John had difficulty with her lack of explanations. He said that ‘when she goes to explain something . . . she solves the sum but doesn’t, explain?’ The girls disagreed about the best way to explain Maths. Helena would have preferred the teacher to explain things to the class as a whole on the board. However, Melissa said it was better ‘if she does it individually because if she does it on the board then you get lost and then you can’t ask her?’ The consensus seems to be that in Maths classes for immersion students, it is better to give thorough explanations, then set the problems, rather than set the problems and help those who may have trouble. Their third teacher provoked a variety of reactions from the students, but a pattern gradually emerged as the year went on. Early in the year they found that he spoke rather quickly and was difficult to understand. By the end of the year they did not have the same trouble understanding him, and appreciated his clear explanations and excellent knowledge of his subject. According to the students, another important aspect of the role of the teacher was that of responding to the needs of the learners. Unfortunately, in the case of the Chinese group, this seemed to be more lack of response to their needs. Several of the learners in the Chinese group seemed frustrated that the teachers did not seem to notice how much they were struggling. Observation notes indicated that the teachers did not seem to check whether the weaker students were understanding or not. Teachers would ask in English or Chinese ‘understand?’ but did not ask questions of any but the most able students. This impression was confirmed by the students. In his March interview, Norman made the comparison between student-led seminars and lessons by the teacher: Now I’d like to bring up Patrick as an example, now he’s done a couple of lessons where his pace has been, you know, very slow and he’s always checked for . . . understanding and comprehension; I find that in those situations I learn and I retain and I gain most. That’s where I would tend to be a little critical of some of the situations where things are done in the second language but things go too fast and the instructor doesn’t check for understanding or comprehension. Things did not improve much for Norman over the year. In November he commented that when a teacher checks, to see . . . whether everybody’s comprehended, the signals that were sent out – to – uh – Chen and to, Ming 51

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and to Lily must have resulted in- in their thinking that there was global comprehension and there wasn’t . . . [Lily] used to ask the stronger students and they usually LOOKED, to the stronger students for comprehension. During the stimulated recall interview in September, Jane and Patrick picked up and commented on an example on the video of the teacher not responding to signals of non-comprehension from the students: this says a bit also our ABILITY/ I was going to say you can tell, she’s said something? and there’s just deadly silence from everybody you can see. It’s gone over the top of ABSOLUTELY everybody, but there’s nothing from her to say, ‘OK, let’s go’ [she doesn’t go J: [there’s never a pull-back P: she doesn’t go back and see – ‘look, you haven’t understood, I’d better go back and do it again’ she just keeps on going on and you get, periods of just, deadly silence until someone picks it up and then we’ll gradually/ Z: maybe she thought we all understood it perfectly? All: mmm. J: P:

This lack of feedback or responsiveness on the part of the teacher was one of the reasons students in this class turned to each other for help and correction. This will be discussed in a later section, see p. 000. There was also a problem of culture with respect to the type of feedback that learners and teachers expected. The teachers came from a culture where it was ‘correct’ for a teacher to say ‘WRONG’ to a student. Students in Australian classrooms, however, expect more feedback and reinforcement. In the May interview, Jane reflected on a diary entry she had made earlier in the month: I’ve found I’ve misunderstood a person’s particular um cultural bent in you know being positive or negative in um reinforcement I suppose. I’m essentially quite positive myself, I like to be positive in the classroom and I guess I’m a little intolerant to negative feedback. Patrick said in his November interview that he felt that many of the problems they had with their teachers stemmed from a clash of cultural expectations. In Australian classrooms it is normal for students to express their needs and for teachers to respond to these. However, the opposite 52

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was true for their Chinese teachers who interpreted an expression of needs as an insult. Patrick explained: [if we] said ‘we want such and such and such’ and expressed our needs, to them that was an insult and ALL of them would take an affront to that . . . except for Ming . . . you know, the whole lot of them, even Fung, Chen – Lily, ALL would take an affront to, students who were expressing because their CULTURE doesn’t permit the students to . . . express needs. mm. there’s a real- in the immersion program there’s a real need FOR that, I feel. The informants in the French immersion group, however, felt that the teachers were very much in tune with their students’ ability and level of proficiency. They rarely felt lost because of the teachers’ habit of continually seeking feedback from them either through asking content questions or responding to blank faces with extra input. Note that the teachers ask specific comprehension questions based on the content of what they have said. Melissa said in the paired interview that ‘Miss Andrews if she says something and it doesn’t look like anyone understood then she’ll say “oh do you understand what THIS means?” and that’s – helps a lot, because people don’t want to put up their, hands because it looks like everyone else understands and you feel like an idiot.’ An example of the teacher doing this was observed in a Science lesson on 7 May. The teacher was explaining relations between living and non-living things and noticed that the students were not seeming to understand. She thought that an unfamiliar word might be causing them difficulty, so she asked: T: Ss: T: Ss:

Vous connaissez l’abeille? [Do you know the bee?] [shaking of heads, blank looks] C’est l’animal qui fait le miel. [It’s the animal that makes honey] A bee!

Another very important role for the teacher was that of fostering a supportive learning environment. This is perhaps the aspect of the program which resulted in the most stress for some of the learners in the Chinese group. The students felt that in order for immersion to work, teachers need to be positive, encouraging and supportive. Jane stated in her May interview that making it a comfortable experience depends on so many factors. um. you can be in the class and not really understand what’s going on 53

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but if the teacher’s particularly positive and – and, you know, and encouraging, um, at accepting the fact that maybe you don’t understand but she’s not going to give in or he’s not going to give in yet, um, there are so many factors that would make immersion work. There really are. Jane had some particularly bad experiences in one teacher’s class. She wrote about these experiences many times in her journal, revisiting one particular incident several times. In this incident, instead of helping her to struggle through her answer, the teacher cut her off and turned to a ‘better’ student. In her journal of 4 May she wrote about how this felt: The situation now is class – immersion class . . . and I didn’t even get to finish what I was wanting to say. It was just beginning to come together for me, inside me, but suddenly everything halts as I register biting sarcasm in a comment of spoken ENGLISH – not Chinese – English. I have really been put in my place! ‘SHE’ thinks I don’t understand huh! Well, lots of times I don’t, but this time, I thought I almost had it. Couldn’t I be allowed to at least finish? . . . An immersion class is a horribly, vulnerable place at times like this . . . I know my face is flushing the telltale red of my anger. I can’t control the pouring out of frustration . . . It’s not aggression . . . This is SHAME – CUT DOWN once again in front of the mob! . . . I close up and mentally assume a foetal position, safe from any further sarcasm and negativity. I am not here. In another incident with the same teacher, Jane reported in her diary entry of 13 May that if the teacher had not understood what she was saying, she [teacher] would ‘ask the rest of the group what “she” was saying instead of asking me to repeat in Chinese’. This was very humiliating for Jane. In November, in her Language Learning Case Study, Jane wrote that: eventually when the teacher realised the great variety in levels being dealt with and the level of frustration on the part of some of us . . . classes improved considerably, a situation which had become out of hand because of poor communication and differences in expectations . . . since [then], that teacher’s methods have won my respect and I enjoy the way she challenges thinking. For the French immersion context, one of the things that made the students feel comfortable in the class was that they did not have to work with a great variety of teachers. Helena said in May that ‘it’s sort of like 54

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primary school like you’re just all in the one class, sort of, and you usually have- you don’t swap teachers and that as much because they have to be French’. The teacher who was most praised by the students was the one who was the focus of observations over the school year. The students have already outlined above some of the aspects of her teaching which made them feel comfortable and helped them to learn. The students’ responses to correction will be discussed in Chapter 4, but it is important to note that the environment was supportive enough for students to accept the positive correction and help from the teacher and from their fellow students. Only one example of negative correction was found in the observation notes of the French immersion classroom. One student was persistently pronouncing the final ‘s’ in the word ‘les’. The teacher became a little vexed and said, in English, ‘Don’t say les, les.’ Another student quickly defused the situation by making a joke, ‘she’s in love with Les’.

Response to the Curriculum As stated in the introduction to this chapter, a second theme which emerged in analysis was that of the curriculum, with the sub-themes of goals of the course and content or topics covered. The curriculum followed by the students was described in Chapter 2. Students’ responses to the curriculum were classified under two headings: Goals and Content/ Topics, and will be presented below. As with the previous section on the role of the teacher, results from the Chinese immersion setting will be presented first, followed by results from the French immersion group. Comments on the goals of the course were found in diaries, and in individual and group interviews. The Chinese students indicated their discomfort that there did not seem to them to be a structured curriculum which stated what they should be aiming for. In the stimulated recall Patrick said: P: T: P:

I don’t think anybody has any idea where they want us at the end of the year? so there’s no GOAL set [emphatic agreement] mmm you know what I mean? it’s all this ‘oh we’ll do this, we’ll do this, we’ll do this, we’ll do this and if you learn Chinese well and good’. In his November interview, Patrick said there was a LOT of frustration that came from the organisation of the course in that – at no stage did . . . any of the students see a curriculum 55

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. . . I don’t think, there HAS been one written . . . you know we . . . never . . . saw a course guide- sure there were those things given to us at the start of the year, but it was fairly wishy washy there was no goal set. In her interview early in the year, Tamara felt that ‘a fault of the course is that there’s no structures. There’s no structure’. By her November interview she had clarified what she meant by this. ‘We’ve just sat in a class, listened to someone talk Chinese, understood “oh yeah, this is what it means” (2.0) but- no, no goal, saying you’re- “OK Tamara you’re this on the ASLPR. At the end of this year you’re going to be a- 3+”.’ In the group interview Jane wondered whether the direction of the course suffered ‘from not having enough liaison between the teachers’. She noted that ‘they don’t work together a lot, it seems’. Zoe added that ‘they may liaise but they can’t agree’. The students in the French immersion group were generally happy with the curriculum they were following. As described in Chapter 2, they followed essentially the same curriculum as all other Year 9 students. Peter explained that ‘I think we’re fairly close to the actual ah curriculum that they’re actually doing in general classes. It’s different because it’s in French, of course. No, no not really, actually. I’d say we probably learn the same things as they did out there’ (May interview). John made a similar comment in his interview as well. There were, of course, personal preferences as to subjects. In their paired interview, John and Peter discussed their subjects. John did not like Social Education. He felt that ‘it’s stupid I find it a waste of time it’s a useless subject’. Peter disagreed; he found it ‘use-FUL’. However, neither of them liked what they did in the Friday lesson for Social Education for which they were taken by the assistante. She made them read stories about Lessage the Detective and both felt that they had ‘better things to do in the subject than read some stupid story book’ (John). Peter would ‘rather be reading something about politics or something than just wasting time’. However, personal preferences aside, the students had few complaints about the choice of subjects and content areas. They were basically doing the same as everyone else in Year 9 at their school and felt comfortable with this. The second sub-theme in the area of curriculum was that of content or topics studied. Comments relating to this subtheme were only made by students in the Chinese group. The Chinese students’ lack of choice in the topics to be studied seems to have had a negative effect on their experience and on their learning. 56

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Jane, in her Language Learning Case Study, reflected that she had ‘felt frustration at not being able to have more input into topics chosen in Fung’s classes, but he coincidentally covered areas where I had tinges of experience and then it made a world of difference’. The students seemed to have enjoyed the topics for first semester covered by Fung before he left. Tamara noted in her journal of 30 April 1993 that ‘we are still doing history and I am really enjoying that I find it fascinating and sometimes I get this little glimmer, and I have to pinch myself and say “I am learning this in Chinese’’.’ Geography, on the other hand, had been ‘a bit of a waste of time because we just got a sheet of paper and looked up the Chang Jiang river’. All the students at some time commented favourably on Ming Qin’s unit on the Cultural Revolution. Jane said in her journal that this unit was so effective because Ming ‘really personalised it and made immersion really seem a possibility’. By the middle of second semester, the topics had changed and Tamara commented in the group interview that ‘I think the THINGS we’re learning . . . some of them are so abstract that – I don’t know when I’d ever use it again’. In her diary on 29 July 1993 Jane noted that ‘it’s harder this term with some of the topics chosen’. While the students were watching the video of their classes, a Chinese friend who was in the room waiting for Zoe commented about the lesson content being hard. Zoe agreed, ‘yeah, we get into some deep stuff!’. She later commented that ‘the Chinese economy . . . had no MEANING, no personal meaning at all’. This idea that content needed to relate to one’s personal experience of the world recurred frequently in journals and interviews. As Patrick said in his November interview: I think a lot of the downfall here was, ALL our classes, bar Lily’s class on teaching methodology, was about China . . . so there was . . . a lot of subject material, that was new, and was too far removed . . . from our lifestyle here. Coming to school each day we had to then try and think . . . about China as well? and that just became too difficult, whereas I think . . . maybe the politics should have been done, by looking at Australian politics . . . so it was something we KNEW already? so the content didn’t have to be, learnt as well because, their political system was so different and once we had all the words, and terminology, we could then change over to look at the Chinese thing. Norman would have preferred ‘topics where, we can all, use, our limited language resources . . . talking about your own PERSONAL 57

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experiences in other places, talking about – what, your values are, whatwhat your preferences are, what your TASTES are’. Jane noted in her diary that ‘the more realistic classroom communication becomes and the more frequently it takes place the more blurred becomes the distinction between natural and formal learning eg. with Ming, talks on the economy which had grown ????? [sic] shaped up when these reverted to talks on the matters of the heart’. However, it seems that, in spite of all the topics the students would have LIKED to cover, ‘there’s got to be some, humanities in there because humanities DOES bring out the speaking’ (Patrick, November interview). Another problem in second semester which related to students’ Chinese learning was the amount of time they needed to spend on their two major assignments. These were the Language Learning Case Study and the Language Teaching Case Study, both of 5000 words. These had to be successfully completed in order for the students to obtain the Graduate Diploma. Tamara commented that she had trouble with her ‘goals because I had my – other – this last semester more important things to do’.

The Role of Fellow Students The data obtained from the key informants indicated that, as stated earlier, language learning does not happen alone, and those with whom one is learning play an important role in one’s own learning. Sub-themes which relate to the role of fellow students are the homogeneity or otherwise of the class in terms of language proficiency, the ‘group dynamics’ of the classroom, the importance of cooperation with other students, and the role of ‘in-group’ expressions in promoting group identity. Once again, the data from the Chinese group will be presented first, followed by that from the French immersion students. As explained in Chapter 2, with the Chinese class there were two groups of students – the ‘Shanghai group’ and the ‘Wuhan group’. At the time the two groups began studying together as one class (early 1993), the Wuhan group had been ‘living’ Chinese together for two years, compared with one year for the Shanghai group. Also, one of the members of the Wuhan group, Zoe, had studied Chinese for several years before joining the exchange program. The students’ perception of the two groups was that there was a great difference in proficiency levels between the two groups. However, in observation notes taken in May the researcher noted that there no longer seemed to be such a clear difference between the groups. This 58

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informal observation was confirmed by the students’ proficiency test results. Students’ proficiency in Chinese was tested in February and November 1993. The students were given a communicative test and rated according to the Australian Second Language Proficiency Ratings Scale for Chinese as a Second Language. The test was being developed over 1992–93, and the exchange students were tested during validation trials for the test. When students’ results on the test were tabulated for the class as a whole, it is difficult to see a significant difference between the two ‘groups’. Figure 3.2 shows the students’ test results on the two tests, based on an average of their scores in the four macro skills, Speaking, Listening, Reading and Writing. Certainly, one student (A) from the Wuhan group was outstanding, and two members of the Shanghai group (L and M) were of a fairly low level, but the rest of the class appeared quite homogeneous. For example, in the 2 range, students C and D were from the Wuhan group, and students E and F were from the Shanghai group. Students in the 1+ range are similarly spread across both ‘groups’. However, this study did not aim to describe the class from an outsider’s point of view, but to explore what it was like from the inside. It seems

ASLPR ratings 3 February test 2+

November test

2 1+ 1 10+ 0 A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

Students

Figure 3.2 ASLPR test results 1993: Chinese immersion class Note: February test results were not available for students B and H. Student M chose not to sit the November test. 59

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that from the inside, the class was made up of students with two different levels of proficiency (not counting Student A), and that the students reacted very negatively to this perception. For example, Tamara wrote in her diary of 22 February 1993, that ‘I get angry because the people that can speak very well have had an extra year of Chinese and have been in the program that much longer and have had a [chance] to adapt. When you tell them they have more language they won’t accept it. That makes me frustrated and angry.’ She continued to make similar comments in interviews throughout the year. The other informants also noted frequently that there were ‘varying ability levels’ (Norman, November) in the class. However, as noted above, the groups did not seem very different in terms of formal proficiency measurements. What was it that made the students perceive the groups as different? Tamara hinted at a reason in her comment above that they have had a chance to adapt. Norman also stated in his November interview that ‘the Wuhan group, they were fairly au fait with the whole thing’. They had already been exposed to an immersion experience when they returned from China in September of the previous year, and could therefore have developed a higher tolerance for ambiguity than the Shanghai group. Patrick felt there was another ‘difference’ between the two groups which was not related to proficiency – a difference in attitude and motivation. He said that when the members of the Wuhan group entered the program they did so because of their interest in going on a cultural exchange; except for Zoe they were not interested in becoming teachers of Chinese. Therefore, they were fairly relaxed about the whole process they were living through. The Shanghai group on the other hand, entered the program with the intention and expectation of becoming teachers of Chinese, therefore they ‘got tied up . . . in having to speak [correctly] and having to understand absolutely everything’ (Patrick, November interview). The French students did not volunteer any comments about there being different levels in the class. When they were questioned directly about levels in the paired interview, the girls focussed on pronunciation. Melissa said that ‘some people have got a really terrible accent’ and Helena agreed that this annoyed her. They found it hard to understand how some people could pass their subjects when they obtained low marks in French language exams. Helena wondered, ‘I mean how could they possibly pass everything else if they don’t understand the French?’ However, they accepted having different levels in the class as normal. ‘It’s like that in every class’ (Melissa). ‘Yeah, you have, different people’ (Helena). 60

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In their paired interview, when the boys were questioned about different levels, they attributed any differences to motivation or lack of it on the part of some students. Peter felt that ‘some people are just completely . . . unmotivated . . . just about everyone could get a VHA, straight VHAs if they really, wanted to and studied hard’. (VHA is Very High Achievement, the top grade awarded.) It can be seen from these comments that the students did not see themselves as two groups within one class, but as a normal Year 9 class, where there were some bright, hard working students, and others less motivated and/or perhaps slower. The next aspect to be discussed in relation to the students’ response to their fellow students is that of what they themselves called ‘group dynamics’. Again, results for the Chinese group will be presented first, followed by those for the French group. From the researcher’s point of view (when I was performing my other role as Methodology lecturer), the Chinese group was a difficult class to teach, and from the students’ reactions it seems also to have been at times a difficult class to be in. The main problem with the group was their habit of talking amongst themselves in English or Chinese while the teacher was talking. They all agreed that ‘we show behaviour you just WOULD NOT accept in a classroom’ (Patrick, September interview). However, they felt that this sort of behaviour had become necessary because of the teachers’ lack of checking for comprehension. In her May interview, Jane said that ‘wanting to hear so much people need to talk about things . . . that’s probably the group dynamics’. She added in the September group interview that you don’t get a chance to consult, ‘ “come on we’ve got to cover this, this, this and this” and so . . . we have become rude because there’s a sort of trying to survive, we use each other’. They did not want to become so rude, but they did not see any other alternative. There were also other negative reactions to the group context. Tamara, for one, was ‘not a group person’ and found that for her ‘it was just so foreign to go into THAT GROUP – the group dynamic’ (May interview). While discussing the group, Tamara became so emotional that the tape had to be stopped for several minutes for her to recover her composure. Tamara had found the group dynamic so difficult that ‘just before Easter – I – I sort of stressed out’ and she had to have some time off classes. Patrick also reacted negatively to what went on. When asked in his first interview what it was like to be in that group, he replied ‘I’m in that class, I’m not in that group.’ What was it about the group that produced this effect? Jane wrote in her diary that ‘the humour of our immersion class was sometimes harsh 61

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and even cruel towards some of the folks in the group’. Tamara said in her May interview that ‘you watch their faces when one of us speaks, you know? And they’re laughing at people!’ Tamara also found that she was unable to concentrate properly because of the ‘joking and everything’ (May interview). Norman in particular became the butt of people’s humour because of his personal learning style. The response to the group dynamics seems to have been much more positive with the French immersion group. The students commented that they usually spent their lunch breaks with the people in the class, though John joked in the recall interview that he ‘sometimes [hangs] around with some cooler blokes!’ At break times they ‘just hang around on the verandah outside T block and do some very interesting things’ (Peter, recall interview). Helena noted in her interview that ‘sometimes we feel left out from the rest of the school’ because ‘they’re always mixing with everyone else’. On the other hand, she liked the security of being in the same group of people for the whole immersion experience. ‘It’s good in a way because our class has always been together, so we’ve all become very good friends and we’re always helping each other with it’ (Helena, interview). There was a certain amount of naughtiness that went on in the class, most of which the researcher had not been aware of until the stimulated recall interview was conducted. While watching the video, the students would point out incidents that amused them. Helena wondered whether ‘this is where Julie had the Dolly magazine’. The girls had been reprimanded for their inattention, but the camera had not picked up what they were doing. While watching the video, John would sometimes shout ‘I got him again! YES!!’ When asked what he had done, John replied that he kicked the back of another student’s chair. This was something that went on every lesson between these two students. When the teacher was not looking, John would kick the other student’s chair to try to get a reaction out of him. He said ‘he deserves it’, because he started it. Another of their ‘running gags’ was the battle between John and his neighbour, Tim. One would ‘borrow’ something from the other and refuse to give it back. There would then be a very quiet struggle for the return of the compass or ruler, the aim being to get the item back without being spotted by the teacher. Unfortunately, in the lesson we were viewing, it was Tim who was sent out, even though it had been John who had ‘borrowed’ Tim’s compass. There were also ‘ink ball wars’ which kept the boys amused during quiet spots in the lesson. They would take a ball point apart, soak little 62

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pieces of paper in ink, and shoot them through the empty tube of the ball point. The researcher never saw the ink balls flying, but ‘evidence of an ink ball’ was pointed out several times during the viewing of the video. In the recall interview I asked the students why they misbehaved. They replied it was ‘because it’s boring’ (Peter and Helena). They felt the course could be made more interesting for them if they ‘could use computers or something’ or ‘have – more than a monotonous voice’ (Peter, recall interview). John said that he sometimes misbehaved if he just did not know what was going on. He said that ‘you don’t really want to ask the teacher for help because then everybody thinks you’re stupid?’ This idea of not asking the teacher for help will be explored further in the next section. In this section, the ways in which the students cooperated with each other in their learning will be explored. The Chinese students’ reactions to the group dynamics, reported above, are somewhat paradoxical in light of the data presented in this section. Students commented on their negative reactions to the ‘group dynamic’ and then say that ‘on the other hand, I would not have found the year as interesting without the dynamics and support of the group’ (Jane’s diary, November). How did the learners support one another? One example is where, because of the teachers’ lack of checking for comprehension, the students needed to find a way to make them stop. Patrick described their tactics in his first interview: there’s a real time that- it just becomes too much for everyone . . . everyone will just join in and ridicule the topic or, ridicule something. There’s unity there, because it’s reached too much for ev-er-y-bo-dy. Norman talked in his May interview about some of the ways in which the students help each other to learn with regard to sharing resources and correcting pronunciation. He said: There’s one major thread which binds all of us and I guess that’s the difficulty there is . . . in this situation of trying to acquire a second language . . . We all sort of listen to each other’s tonal intonations with respect to Chinese words, characters and we- if we think WE’RE saying it the wrong way we’ll say ‘oh, I thought it might have been said this way’ and there’s a . . . sharing sort of help process there. Jane spoke at length in her first interview about the sorts of help the learners give to each other. While the lesson is going on they either catch 63

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one another’s eye or ask directly for help. Their classmates will give them either an explanation or a translation: J: R: J:

R:

we tend to use each other a lot too do you? How do you do that? [thinks] um I’ll use Betty for example; I’ll look over at her and somehow you just sort of catch each other’s eyes and you’re looking really puzzled and she’ll quickly just go [mouths words] and she’ll say in her Chinese – you know how you get used to each other’s Chinese? and then if you still look puzzled maybe she’ll give it to you in English. That’s happening a bit amongst us too. yes, I’ve seen people asking, you know, ‘what was that?’

However, various members of the class had more or less tolerance for this sort of behaviour from their classmates. There were some students whom informants avoided sitting next to, because they would ask ‘what was that’ so many times that their neighbour would miss out on the lesson. Patrick, for example, would ‘walk in and see where people are sitting and there are some people I just refuse to sit near’ (September interview) because ‘you would be spending most of your time, helping them . . . that I wasn’t learning’ (November interview). Jane enjoyed sitting near some of the more advanced students because ‘I picked up heaps of things from you guys’ (September interview). There was one student whom she particularly enjoyed sitting with, because he was very clever at making up mnemonics for Chinese words and she found this helped her a lot. In the stimulated recall interview I stopped the tape after seeing Jane and this student laughing together and asked her what had been happening there. She explained: J:

Kyle! Kyle (is full of) little gems throughout the lesson, like . . . he does these translate- like ‘economy’ it kind of sounded like ‘golden chicken’, and he has- and you know you remember a lot of those sort of things, so it’s really handy sitting beside him, because you pick up lots . . .

Jane in her May interview noted other ways in which the group supported each other, in terms of moral support. She noted that even the tougher members of the class will ‘give you a little punch and say “hang in there” ’. She went on to say that: the people in the group are quite tolerant of each other, really, because we obviously have our stresses at different times, you know, and it’s really amazing how supportive . . . people have all got a 64

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different way of supporting each other, too, um, so the immersion classes have been – quite positive for me. Norman also was ‘AMAZED that we’re not at each other’s throats’ and felt that the group worked because of ‘preparedness to listen to everybody’s ideas and values, a preparedness to cooperate’ (May interview). So, in summary, the results relating to group dynamics seem rather inconsistent: while there were tensions in the class because of the perceived difference in proficiency levels and because of some learners’ lack of tolerance of joking around, the students did also mention working together being important to their learning of Chinese. Helena mentioned in her interview that the students were always helping each other. When asked in what ways they helped each other, the students gave a number of examples. They help one another to study outside the classroom. ‘Just if you don’t understand something, like, my friends are always there for me and I’m there for them . . . before an exam, like, we’re always helping each other to study’ (Helena, interview). ‘If I don’t [understand] I just have to, like, phone up a friend or something’ (John, interview). They also help each other to understand what is going on in the classroom. ‘Every so often the teacher might say something and you turn to the person next to you and say “What does that mean? What does that mean?”’ (Helena, interview). Melissa said in her interview that ‘ask your friend, there’s a lot more of that in the French classes because um sometimes it’s hard to follow and usually if your friend doesn’t know what’s going on then somebody else will’. The problem with this system is that some teachers make the students sit by themselves, to prevent them from misbehaving or talking. The students find these lessons a lot harder to understand. As Melissa said: if the teacher makes you sit by yourself, then it’s really hard, because even if you don’t, like, ask your friend ALL the time, then, if you don’t understand ONE word then a lot of the time, like, you miss all of it and you don’t know what’s going on. So most of the teachers understand that and let you talk to your friends. John also used the ‘what did she say’ (Weber & Tardif, 1987) technique. He said in the recall interview that he liked sitting next to Tim, ‘because then if you don’t know the answer then you can TRY to get it together and then we can fail together [laughter]’. Peter then commented that this situation was the main cause of their ink ball wars! Even Peter, who was considered by the others to be really good at French, said in 65

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his interview that he would ask others for help. ‘If you miss something you – you just ask the fellow sitting next to you . . . not always in class, sometimes after class and you just ask them to explain to you.’ The students frequently commented that they did not ask the teacher ‘what does that mean?’ In the paired interview, Melissa said that ‘people don’t tend to put up their, hands because it looks like everyone else understands and you feel like an idiot’. Comments like this were made by the other students as well. The French students did not have any real preference regarding seating arrangements. Sometimes the teachers would seat particular students with other students or on their own as a control measure. When the students were asked how they felt about this in the recall interview, Helena said, ‘it’s good to sit next to friends and that but it doesn’t really matter that much’. Several students commented that they liked sitting next to the francophone student. This was because ‘he’s the nicest bloke . . . he never gets angry. He just helps you and he doesn’t get angry’ (John, recall interview). John also commented in the recall interview that he also liked ‘sitting next to Peter because he knows all the answers [laughs] about everything’. Peter said he preferred to sit near his friends. Observations of the class in operation also revealed cooperation between the students to provide the answer to the teacher’s question. Sometimes the help was solicited, as in this example. The girl (S1) was nominated to answer the question, but asked for and received help from the boy sitting next to her (S2): S1: T: S1: S2: S1:

les vaches utilisent les molaires [cows use molars] les molaires [molars (correcting pronunciation)] parce qu’ils mangent [because they eat] – what’s grass? de l’herbe [grass] de l’herbe [grass]

At other times, students will volunteer help, as in this example: S1: Ss:

c’est [it’s] [shows long and thin with her hands] thin mince [thin]

So, the students liked to sit with their friends, but it was not especially important whom they sat with, as long as they sat with someone. Sitting alone led to poorer overall comprehension of what was going on in the class. Students also helped each other with their study outside of class time. Another aspect of the role of fellow students, was the ways in which they used the second language among themselves. One of the most ‘fun’ 66

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aspects of the Chinese group was the development of what they called ‘class hua’ (class speech or language). These were Chinese words that they put into English constructions. Chinese people did not understand these expressions, but the members of the group derived great amusement from using them amongst themselves. Some examples of these expressions are: •

up yours (a very rude Australian expression);

•

who knows?;

•

ditch pig;

•

(a phonetic transliteration of) tough luck.

At first, the Shanghai group did not understand all the expressions used by the Wuhan group, and vice versa, but they soon taught each other their own ‘slang’ expressions. Jane mentioned in her diary that ‘shang ni de’ had actually helped her to learn the character for ‘up’. She also explained the origins of ‘ta fe la ke’ in her diary – ‘there have emerged many peculiar-to-the-group expressions, such as “Ta fei la ke” which evolved from one tutor’s ability to drop in this expression [tough luck] in English, when we had been expecting Hanyu [Chinese]’. In the group interview, she said that expressions like ta fei la ke ‘that have had some relation to us . . . it’s not even Chinese, but everyone remembers the characters for it’. The French immersion students, rather than having any particular ‘ingroup’ expressions seem to use regular French as a ‘group’ language. The use of French among themselves may play the role of fostering group cohesiveness and separateness.

Discussion and Conclusions What conclusions can we reach about learning together in immersion programs based on these data? The process of learning in immersion was found to be a dynamic interaction between the learner and the teacher(s), the learner and other learners, and the learner and the new language. Aspects of the classroom context on which the students commented and which contain recommendations for pedagogy are discussed here. Insistence on the use of the target language, with the use of English being discouraged, was felt by the immersion students to be an aid to language learning in their context. Code switching (inserting whole 67

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sentences in English) by teachers or students was seen to hinder language acquisition, though the limited use of some code mixing was permitted. Code mixing of a word or two in the students’ native language was sometimes used as a strategy for learning unknown vocabulary or as a quick means of getting the student’s message across. However, the use of or tolerance of code switching by some teachers allowed some students to cling to the strategy of ‘translation’ for the whole year, thereby slowing down their rate of language acquisition. This supports one of the conclusions reached by Wong-Fillmore in her 1985 study. She stated then that the clear separation of languages used in bilingual classrooms was an aid to language acquisition. Once again, it has been shown by this study that presentation of input in the first and the second language is counterproductive in the immersion context. Students will ‘switch off’ the input in the second language when they know it will be provided in their first language if they look puzzled or unresponsive enough. Next, following a curriculum similar to that followed by students in the mainstream was also seen to aid learning. Topics studied in the second language which related to students’ previous experience of and knowledge about the world facilitated language acquisition for all the students in the study. Students preferred to follow the ‘normal’ curriculum, rather than having to relate the new language to unfamiliar topics or ones that they considered irrelevant. Having a homogeneous mix of students in the class in terms of their previous target language experience was seen to be facilitative. Having just one native speaker of French in the class was seen as a help by the learners of French. This may have been because of the quiet, helpful nature of this particular student, however. On the other hand, having students with a variety of different language proficiency levels in the Chinese class was very demotivating. The weaker students became distressed and felt lost if the teacher geared the lesson to the more proficient students. The more proficient students were bored by the slowness of the pace when the teacher pitched the lesson to the level of the less proficient students. This led to neither group being provided with an ideal environment in which language acquisition could take place. For the Chinese group, students felt they would have profited more from their classes if they had been divided into two groups according to proficiency. They acknowledged that this would have involved more expense, but suggested that less time in class, but at their right level, would have been more profitable in terms of language learning. All 68

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found the long hours of roughly-tuned Chinese input to be less than ideal. However, in spite of their proficiency level or their feelings about the differing levels, students in both classes used each other constantly for help in understanding what was going on in the classroom. The observational and interview data indicate that learning in immersion is more of a cooperative endeavour than the teacher-fronted format of the lessons would lead us to expect. According to the students, allowing or even encouraging them to work together to solve problems in the class helped language acquisition. Most of the students found they needed to work together much more in the immersion setting than in a native-language classroom. These results are consistent with an earlier study conducted at the French immersion school (de Courcy, 1995b: 551), which concluded that ‘the tight social group that is formed by students in immersion programs needs to be fostered and encouraged . . . it may be the key to the students’ success in attaining a high proficiency in French’. In order to make sense of input and to produce and thus explore enough language to facilitate acquisition, students need to work in collaborative groupings. Swain suggests that collaborative learning would provide occasions for students to ‘engage in extended discourse which will push their linguistic competence to its limit as they attempt to express their ideas’ (1993: 162). More research is needed in this area of immersion learning. Work in second language classrooms (Long & Porter, 1985) has shown that non-native speakers working together in groups produce longer utterances and more negotiation of meaning than in teacher fronted activities. This study has found that the ways in which learners choose to work together in these immersion classrooms show that there is already the ‘positive interdependence’ among the learners that Swain feels is an important component of collaborative learning. ‘Positive interdependence means that each participant depends in some way on others in the group to learn and complete the task’ (Swain, 1993: 162). This would be acknowledged, fostered and exploited to its fullest if more group activities were included in the classroom. The small experiments with group work made by the French immersion Science teacher involved in this study had been successful enough to be extended further in following years. There are important questions emerging, however, regarding the use of the students’ first language. De Courcy (1992b) found that when they were doing group work the students at the French immersion school would work together in 69

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English and translate their results into French unless they were closely watched and encouraged to use French. Researchers are now wondering whether this insistence on working in the second language actually aids second language learning. Swain (2000a) comments that questions which need to be explored are ‘How is the first language used? When do we call a halt to it?’ She stated in a recent workshop (2000a) that ‘if we were to deny students the use of the first language we would be denying them a key support for their second language learning’. This is an area that is very much in need of further research. Late immersion teachers need to experiment with group work, perhaps following Barthomeuf’s (1991) suggestions for taping the students’ interactions as a way of monitoring their language development. Teachers need to experiment with collaborative activities and explore these additional routes to learning. Students need to be trusted and encouraged to work together as an extension of the informal collaborative learning they already use. The use of effective immersion teaching strategies was also seen to be of benefit. These included the use of diagrams, repetition, and a variety of delivery styles to cater for different learning styles. Patient explanations in the target language were also appreciated. Teachers who were in touch with and responsive to the needs of the learners were also felt to aid language learning. Having teachers who were not trained as teachers of the target language as a second language was seen by the learners to be less than ideal. Teachers of the Chinese class used teaching strategies derived from the ‘intensive reading’ methodology used in China to teach English. This led to a great deal of frustration among the students of Chinese as the methodology was not seen to be appropriate in the immersion context. The teachers in the French immersion program came from a culture not dissimilar to that of the students they were teaching. School for them had involved the same sort of activities as those to which Australian students are exposed. They had also been teaching in the Australian context for several years before beginning to teach in French immersion. They knew the culture of the Australian classroom and understood ‘the rules’. One rule that relates to the current discussion is that Australian teachers expect students to ask them questions, so long as they raise their hands first to ask permission to speak. The Chinese teachers, on the other hand, came from a very different cultural background where the teacher was an authority figure, who expected and received respect and obedience from his or her students. The expectation of Australian students to contribute to course planning 70

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and be able to question the teacher was against all they knew and believed about how a classroom should operate. The section on the Chinese learners’ feelings regarding the role of the teacher has shown some of the difficulties experienced by students and teachers from two different academic cultures in their attempt to teach and learn in a late immersion program. It has been shown that throughout the year, teachers and learners can be said to have been working with different ‘scripts’ – the teachers using their traditional Chinese way of teaching, and the students attempting to learn in their traditional Western context. [This clash of ‘cultures of instruction’ in Chinese second language instruction has also been noted by McGinnis (1994) in a non-immersion context.] It is important for teachers who are new to the immersion context to be made aware of the expectations regarding the ‘rules’ of the classroom in the students’ home culture. However, immersion teachers should not be compelled to teach only according to these rules, as the immersion teacher is also a representative of the culture embedded in the language the students are studying. Teachers need to help their students to interpret not just the literal meaning of the language, but the cultural meanings expressed through it. An immersion teacher will be helped by having the insider’s understanding of both cultures – the students’ home culture and the culture(s) represented by the language being studied. Another pedagogical implication is that teachers in immersion programs need to be open and sensitive to the needs of the learners, providing them with facilitative feedback about the correctness and meaningfulness of their spoken and written output. The use of English (i.e. the students’ first language) by the teachers, and harsh criticism of students have been shown by this study to have a negative effect on students’ experience of an immersion classroom. Students expressed a need to be given feedback about their performance and progress in the language in as positive and encouraging a way as possible. If learners are merely corrected, or told they are wrong, they will not make much progress. Lyster (1994a, 1994b) found that these traditional ways of correcting errors leave the student passive. He states that immersion students with several years experience in immersion know enough about the language in which they are studying to self-correct if given the encouragement and the opportunity to do so. Indeed, Swain and Lapkin’s current research on recasts of learner errors (Swain, 2000b; Swain and Lapkin, 2001), shows that students working together in pairs not only notice the corrections, but are able to incorporate them in their later uses of the same forms. 71

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Students have also expressed the need for teachers to check often for comprehension and to focus more on this than on getting through the content at whatever cost. This relates to one of the problems experienced by the learners (and teachers) in the Chinese immersion program – their differing perceptions of the students’ habit of talking with one another during the lectures, in order to help their comprehension of what was going on. Interestingly, Flowerdew and Miller (1995) note a similar pattern of interaction among students at university in Hong Kong. Is this a more universal reaction to learning in a difficult situation than I had at first believed? Will teachers of students in such situations need to be prepared to accept these different patterns of interaction? Exploration of these questions could be a fruitful line of inquiry. Another communication problem in the Chinese program concerned levels of politeness. Hinkel (1996) reports the results of a survey of foreign students in the USA regarding their attitudes to Western politeness behaviours. He found that the students recognised and understood Western pragmatic norms, but ‘often viewed them critically, compared to those accepted in L1 communities and, therefore, were not always willing to follow L2 polite speech behaviours’ (Hinkel, 1996: 67). It seems that neither the teachers nor the students in this study were prepared to adapt sufficiently to the other’s culture in order to create a new ‘immersion’ culture. Both groups seemed, like the students in Hinkel’s study, to believe their L1 behaviours were ‘more appropriate’. In fact, it seems that the teachers moved further than the students during the year. They accepted being called by their family name only, for example rather than the correct address form in Chinese, which is family name plus the honorific ‘Teacher’. More attention to the ‘Principles of Charity and Humanity’ outlined by Singh et al. (1988) would seem to be necessary in such teaching and learning situations. This is especially so with the increase in ‘cross cultural’ teaching evident in Australia at present, both involving Australians teaching students from Asia and Asian teachers trying to accommodate to Australian contexts. It must be stressed, as well, that running a Chinese immersion program should not be seen as an impossible task because of the problems associated with the program in this study. These problems were a product of the particular context created by these teachers and learners, and are not inherent in such programs. The immersion program run at the University in the previous year with different teachers and learners had been more successful. This judgment is based on results of proficiency testing, observations of classroom interaction, and informal interviews with participating students. There is also evidence presented in Read 72

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(1995; 1996) and de Courcy and Birch (1993) regarding the success of a number of content-based Asian language programs. One of the teachers involved in the Chinese immersion program has recently written of the changes in her conceptions of teaching and learning which she has made since teaching on this course. She writes: I discarded some of these previously held conceptions, modified some others, and acquired some new ones after some seerious (sic) mental debate, though not without some reservation. I now see that there are two main concepts/key issues around which other concepts evolve. One is the truly student-centred approach of making what and how the students learn . . . into the what and how the teachers should teach.2 Providing there is good will on both sides, students and teachers can work together in creating and maintaining a culture and context in which immersion learning can take place. Notes 1. At their university, assessment requirements needed to be written in the course outline or otherwise communicated to the students within two weeks of the commencement of a course. 2. In order to protect the teacher’s identity, more precise details of the source of this quote are not able to be supplied.

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Chapter 4

Language Learning Experiences

Introduction As stated in the first chapter of this book, immersion has been shown to be effective in getting many students to the point of being able to communicate in the second language. However, we still know little about students’ immersion learning processes and experiences. In this study the aim was to explore these processes from the perspective of the learners. The principal question guiding this study was: How do learners in immersion programs experience the process of learning a second language? An earlier study in one language (French) by the present author (de Courcy, 1992b) served as the foundation for the current study. This earlier study was an ethnography conducted with the students of two French late immersion schools and found that the following aspects of the immersion context were important to the learning process: the provision of comprehensible input, opportunities for comprehensible output, the effect on students’ learning of other class members, and ‘private speech’. As these aspects were earlier found to be significant to students’ experiences of immersion learning, the current study proposed not only to revisit these topics with different learners and two different languages (French and Chinese), but also to explore individual students’ experiences in greater depth than in the previous study. The data on which Chapter 4 is based comes mainly from my various group and individual interviews with the students, and from their diary entries and case studies. My aim is for the students to tell the story of their language learning in their own words. Occasionally, I present an extract from classroom observation data, in order to illustrate a particular phenomenon or pattern of interaction to which the students were responding in their stimulated recall session. A description of how the themes presented in this chapter were found is described in Chapter 74

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2. The first experience to be discussed is that of ‘making sense of the classroom’.

Making Sense of the Classroom The principal language learning experience was, not surprisingly, making sense of the classroom. In making sense of what is going on in the classroom the immersion students seem to have passed through four phases. The first stage is a heavy reliance on translation of everything one hears or reads into English: ‘Translation as a receptive strategy.’ During the second stage, learners ‘latch onto’ key words and guess at the meaning of the rest of the sentence: the ‘key word’ strategy. The third stage sees the learners ‘relaxing and getting the gist’. In the fourth and final stage, the learners do not seem aware that they are working in a second language. This is the ‘out of awareness’ stage. The learners did not necessarily go through these stages at the same time, nor did they all reach the final stage by the end of 1993. However, this path to ‘making sense’ does seem to be common for them all. I will now describe these stages and strategies passed through on the way to ‘making sense’ with illustrative quotes made by the learners in their interviews and diaries. As in Chapter 3, pseudonyms are used for students and teachers. The same transcription conventions used in Chapter 3 are followed for the presentation of students’ words in this chapter. Data from both groups will be presented together in Chapter 4, generally in the reverse order from that used in Chapter 3 – that is, with the French students ‘speaking’ first. The first stage was what I classified in my analyses as ‘translation as a receptive strategy’. The fact that translation was the first strategy used by the learners to make sense of their situation may come as a surprise to the reader. In the preceding chapter on the classroom context, it was noted that translation into the mother tongue is generally avoided in immersion classrooms, and that there is an insistence by all the participants on the maintenance of a second language context. Nonetheless, for members of both the Chinese group and the French group, translation was the first way they tried to make sense of what was going on in the classroom. For members of the French group, the previous year, Year 8, had been a fairly confusing time. John said in May that last year he could not ‘remember ever, you know, really understanding what [was] going on’. Helena admitted in her May interview that in Year 8 she ‘was basically translating everything’. She went on, ‘so I wasn’t thinking in French 75

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. . . the words were there and I’d translate them, so I was actually thinking in English’. The other three students volunteered similar comments about how they USED to make sense of what they read or listened to. John explained in his interview why this method was abandoned because it was too difficult: It’s hard to read in French when you don’t understand what’s going on in the book and you’re just trying to piece together, translating into English every time in your mind and . . . you’re reading and then you go ‘ah that means this and that means this’ it’s sort of hard to understand. With the Chinese group, at the beginning of the year some students were still using translation as a receptive strategy. In her May interview, Jane said she was finding class very ‘frustrating’. She gave an example of a class where she knew ‘essentially in English what he was talking about . . . but I think I’m still trying to translate direct – I WANT to know the words he’s using’. Patrick however, was ‘frustrated’ because ‘so many others in the group translate and so it slows the whole process down’. Of the four, Norman was the only student who was still relying on translation for reception right up to the end of the course. Even in his think aloud interview in November, he asked to ‘have a look at the English translation? just quickly?’ More details of Norman’s personal learning style will be given in Chapter 6. From the learners’ comments, it seems that for both groups, translation of whole passages into English is abandoned as a strategy after about a year in immersion. The second stage in the development of the learners’ techniques for making sense was the use of key words. What the students would do is listen or read for certain words which they recognised as being important in the sentence or paragraph. What are these ‘key words’ and how do the students use them? Peter of the French group said that the key words he listened for were ‘the main operating – the main verbs in the sentence, things like that’. Peter tended to translate what he saw as the key words into English so he could understand the rest of the sentence or paragraph. John explained in the December paired interview that if he was reading a difficult passage in French he would use the following technique: Well I’d read it over first and then I don’t understand a word of it so I have to go back . . . the main thing is key words, that’s how you find out what’s going on . . . in the sentence, and you know 76

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usually from the sentence before and the sentence beafter [sic] you can work out what the middle is? [laughs] that’s the only way I figure it out. However, in order to use the ‘key words’ technique, there need to be enough known words in a sentence for students to guess at the meaning of the rest. For Jane of the Chinese group, the beginning of the year was a really confusing time. She said in her May interview that ‘a typical lesson a lot of the time is I suppose sitting there hoping that something’s going to come not really giving up, knowing that a lot of this has to pass over and that now and then there’ll be something to hinge onto’. An example of ‘hinging on’ came in a lesson about ‘The Butterfly Lovers’. This was a story she had read in English some time before. She said she ‘understood NONE of what was being said until I heard the “húdié” [butterfly] and “the students” together and suddenly realised “well that’s that story maybe?” and then tried to hinge what was being said around it’. In her diary she wrote that this was the first time that ‘the Chinese no longer came in piercing bursts of blanks’. Much of the time for Jane there was just too much new language being presented for her to be able to cope. She said ‘that hasn’t been a frustration problem in the classes where there’s ENOUGH Chinese, that I can pick up bits . . . the classes that I’ve had problems with are those where I am just absolutely sinking’. On July 29, she noted in her diary that: I’m still refusing to translate with the result that some sessions are big blanks – have to find a way where I don’t use that as an option out of trying to understand – it’s easy to lose track when there are too many chunks that I’ve not ideas about, but it’s great when there are bigger chunks that just fit into the Chinese naozi [brain] dept – oh for the day when there are BIG chunks that just slot in. Each of the learners in the French group volunteered comments in interviews about how they had to listen really hard and concentrate in order to make sense of what was going on. Helena said in October that ‘if you miss one little thing the rest of the class is completely lost’. In May, Peter had noted that ‘sometimes if you just let your concentration slip for about a second or so you just about miss the whole thing.’ Melissa and John also made comments about needing to concentrate really hard. This stage of using key words seems to have varied from one to several months for the learners involved. However, note that the data indicate that Norman did not seem to reach this stage. 77

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In the next stage of making sense, the students report that they are much more relaxed about the whole immersion process. This is the stage I called ‘relax and get the gist’. The students have realised that it does not matter if one does not understand every word. They can just relax and try to understand the gist of what they are listening to or reading. In this stage of learning, if learners hear or see a word or character they don’t know, rather than looking it up in the dictionary or asking ‘what does that mean?’, they just skip over what they don’t understand and guess the meaning from the context. This is different from the key word strategy in two respects – first, the students understand most of the sentence; there are just one or two words they don’t know. Second, rather than translating the words they don’t recognise, as in the key word strategy, they simply ignore them and guess the meaning from context. Melissa described the process as follows: When you’re listening to the teacher most people they get what they can and if they don’t understand it then, like, just forget it and work out what it is around it, you don’t really . . . pay much attention to the words. Early in the year, Tamara had been very ‘stressed’ at the amount of Chinese she could not understand. She had found the pace of the lessons to be just too fast for her and had become so distressed that she had to take some time out from the course. When she came back she changed her approach to listening in class. Instead of trying to understand everything, she relaxed and was surprised to find that ‘I can get the GIST of what’s going on.’ By late May, Tamara had also changed her approach to reading from a combination of key word/translation to trying to get the gist. As she says, ‘I just started reading it. And if you don’t recognise a character just leave it out and go on to the next lot and then, you know, you can see patterns . . . and, you just, sort of go with it instead of fighting it.’ Tamara found that in the test at the end of the year she was ‘better at listening and reading, I could pick up the gist of it, where last time I couldn’t’. Patrick, too, was using this strategy. He related the following incident: Just the other day Chen Li gave us a piece of paper and we read it and I was really pleased that I’d used a lot of the context clues that I would use in English to read. And there was a hell of a lot of vocab in it, that I had NO idea what it meant, but I understood the story . . . if you don’t know, guess, see if it makes sense. 78

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When learners have reached the final stage, which I called the ‘out of awareness’ stage, they are not aware of any particular strategies they are using to make sense of input; they simply understand it. Not all of the learners in this study had reached this stage by the end of the year. John reported his excitement on the first occasion when things suddenly made sense. ‘This year I read something and I understood it and I was – amazed . . . oh it was great! I mean, yeah, you can understand something and, you know [laughs]’. All the learners in the French group had reached this stage, at least for some lessons, by the time of the recall interview or earlier. In May, Peter reported that ‘I understand more French now. And I don’t have to translate as much because I can understand more and more straight off’. Melissa had noticed a difference between her learning strategies in Year 8 and Year 9. ‘I used to – like, couldn’t live without my dictionary . . . but now it’s so much easier to, like, read it in French and understand it IN French instead of translating everything even in your head. You just live in French and it’s so much easier, much quicker!’ By May, Helena had also found that ‘I don’t have to translate much, so I can think in French and like I can just write straight back in French most of the time’. In summary, clear stages have been identified in relation to making sense of input in the classroom: (1) translation of everything into English; (2) translation/recognition of key words and guessing at the rest; (3) ignoring unknown words and relying on the context to understand the gist; and (4) understanding most things without being aware of any particular strategies. The French learners seemed to have all reached Stage 4 by the end of the year. Of the Chinese students interviewed earlier in the study only Zoe had reached this stage and had reached it before May. The others ranged from Stages (1) through (3), though Patrick reported ‘a time when all of a sudden, things make sense’. As a counter balance to this positive start to the chapter, I have to note that the second common experience was that of feeling lost or stupid when what was going on in the classroom had ceased to make sense. In the next section, the students will describe their feelings and what they did to regain the thread of what was going on.

Not Making Sense Over the course of the year there were occasions when things just did not make sense. The students had the impression that everybody else 79

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was understanding and they were not. How did the learners feel in these situations and what did they do about it? In the recall interview, John described a situation that he felt occurred fairly often. He would feel stupid because everybody else was understanding and he was not: J:

R: J:

In the subjects that are hard you don’t- you just don’t know what’s going on, and then you can’t really- you don’t want to ask the teacher for help because then everybody else thinks you’re stupid? . . . how do you KNOW when other people know or don’t know? because other people will go [shows frantic taking down of notes] and you will sit there going [shows looking around with a blank look] ‘oh, OK’. you know.

Peter once missed a week of school in Year 8 and was really confused about even the basics when he got back to school. He said, he ‘couldn’t understand ANYTHING in class and so I felt really stupid’. The girls also made comments about feeling stupid. In this group, the learners seem to blame themselves if they fail to understand. In the Chinese group, there were also feelings of stupidity. An extract from Jane’s diary graphically illustrates her feelings in the classroom in early May: I’m surrounded by nodding heads. I can no longer even hear Chinese. I’m in the desert back out at T. All around me there are nodding oil donkeys. I can feel I just KNOW that THEY all understand what’s going on. I’m totally lost . . . I want to slink out the door. I don’t want to play this game any more . . . Tell me this is not Chinese you’re talking, these swallowed words and blurred sounds and merged together ups and downs and not distinguishables . . . there’s the familiar ‘hanyu toe tonne’ [sic] (headache) and all the skin is pinching upwards. As one reads on in her diary, the feeling becomes one of anger. This strength of feeling also comes out in Tamara’s diary. In April, she wrote: I sometimes get angry and frustrated because these exercises are too far above me and the lecturer asks you to comment but you cannot think of anything to say. It makes me want to cry, maybe it is good to write this because I am crying now. The data indicated that the Chinese learners tended to blame to teacher, the exercises, the program or some other external feature for their feelings of frustration and stupidity. 80

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What did the students do when things stopped making sense? When members of the Chinese group realised that everybody was lost, they tended to make a joke out of the situation so that nobody would ‘lose face’. In his first interview Patrick described what used to happen: you can feel there’s a sense in the room . . . and everyone will justpeople will start making fun of their own inadequacies. Like you know, ‘I thought they said’ and they’ll say something really bloody stupid. And then everyone just breaks the tension – and there’s no fear that ‘oh everybody else is understanding but I’m not’ and everyone realises that it’s all right. Jane in a diary entry in May noted that Patrick had taken on the role of ‘Acting Pulse Physician’ in that he had developed a sense of when his classmates were losing the thread. In both the French and the Chinese classes, students most commonly used the ‘what did she say?’ strategy mentioned in Chapter 3 when they were ‘lost’. They would also try to listen harder to the teacher and to their fellow students to try to pick up the thread of what was being said. John said he would also observe what everybody else was doing and say to himself: ‘Ok, well, they’re doing that and you’d better do this as well!’ Other coping strategies used when things became tough in the classroom were the ‘avoidance strategies’. One of these was the ‘dictionary strategy’. Many times during observation of both classes and on the video transcripts, I noted that one student or another was ‘looking at his/her dictionary’. Jane explained what they were doing in her diary in November: Dictionaries were saviours in many ways – not only finding out the words not known or checking up on pronunciation, but if class was getting too frustrating, provided an escape, without seeming blatantly rude – after all ye [sic] were still doing Chinese. I enjoyed the connections the dictionary made with characters known and not known, so I always had a ‘something nice’ to do if I was not up to being over-challenged. Another strategy used in the Chinese group was the avoidance of eye contact. Jane noted in her diary that this was signal to teacher and fellow students that one did not want to participate. For the French class, one way of coping with stress was to escape mentally – to think of something totally unconnected with the lesson. Helena and Melissa discussed this in their paired interview: 81

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M:

and when you’re trying to work out what a particular word is, like then you miss it all, or it’s so hard to understand you just don’t get it so you start thinking about what you’re going to do on the weekend! yeah, I just dream off! [giggles]

H:

In summary, not understanding what was going on in class made students feel variously ‘stupid’, ‘angry’ or ‘frustrated’. To overcome these feelings they would (1) listen harder to try to pick up the thread; (2) make a joke to break the tension; or (3) use an avoidance strategy like communing with their dictionaries. The focus will turn in the next section to the third important language learning experience which the learners described, that of their production. Students felt that attention needs to be consistently paid to correct pronunciation and correct form within the context of meaning. When producing output, students have developed retrieval strategies for recalling words or characters they have temporarily forgotten or for being provided with words they do not know. Their comments on this aspect of their learning will now be discussed.

Producing the Second Language As the year progressed, students in the Chinese group made more and more comments about two aspects of learning – the lack of correction of errors in pronunciation and the lack of attention to correct form in their course. Pronunciation will be dealt with first, followed by structure. The students in the Chinese group became more and more upset about their pronunciation, which they perceived as poor, as the year progressed. Near the end of the course, some students commented informally that they felt it was all a plot by the Chinese people, who really did not WANT foreigners to learn to speak Chinese properly. The students in the Chinese group felt that gentle but persistent attention to pronunciation would have improved their acquisition of Chinese. During the recall interview, they discussed this lack of correction. Tamara and Jane noted that the only person who would correct their pronunciation was a fellow student: T: J:

she’d turn around to you and tell you ‘oh you’re not correct’, and ‘you’re not saying that right’ . . . she was quite disdainful in her corrections . . . the Chinese never corrected our pronunciation. 82

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Jane noted that Zoe (who was not the student mentioned above) rather than ‘correcting’ them, would repeat the expression correctly or reinforce it some other way. Jane liked being corrected this way. She noted, however, that there was a negative way of correcting pronunciation. Patrick felt that they probably ‘negatively – correct Norman’. Zoe agreed they did, but ‘only because it doesn’t seem to sink in!’ With reference to pronunciation, Tamara commented in her November interview that: we’re all trying to speak, but . . . all making mistakes – and, I don’t think they were ever corrected – they might have been a few times, but all our tones and- are off. Only one teacher seems to have done any consistent work on pronunciation, and that was Ming Qin. Tamara said in November, ‘now Xiao, Ming, Ming’s really good with tones, now if I look at her work, or if I go back and read mine, I can- I can HEAR her saying those words in my brain. and the way they should sound.’ Jane in her Case Study summed up the feelings of the group: As I continue formal study of Hanyu and listen to some of my classmates’ comments about our poor pronunciation in immersion classes causing abortive Hanyu to become even more abortive, I do not think either accuracy or fluency can be abandoned in favour of the other, and the question about maintaining accuracy is not ‘whether’ but ‘when’ and ‘how’. The situation in the French class was quite different. The teachers gently, but persistently, corrected glaring errors of pronunciation. As noted in Chapter 3, there was only one instance of the teacher negatively correcting a student’s pronunciation of ‘les’. Most of the time, errors of pronunciation were handled as in the following extract from a Science lesson on 7 May: Comment est-ce que le vent influence l’environnement? [How does the wind influence the environment?] S: [indecipherable] T: le vent creuse l’érosion, oui. [the wind causes erosion gullies, yes] Researcher’s note: I couldn’t understand what the [student] said, but the teacher could, and pronounced it correctly. T:

Many times in the class, students were asked to read aloud. The teacher would nominate students in random order to read from their work book. 83

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In the same Science lesson referred to above, the following field note was made: While they were reading aloud, many of the [students] were having trouble with liaison. After they had finished reading, the teacher explained it was les hommes; that h was treated as a vowel in French. She then wrote several examples on the board, and explained the pronunciation principles to the students. So, correction of pronunciation was systematic, consistent and in response to mistakes students were actually making in the class. This did not, however, completely eradicate errors of pronunciation. While the students were performing their oral examination at the end of the year (in the form of one act plays) it was noted that many students’ pronunciation was still strongly influenced by English. The girls commented on this in their paired interview: M: H: H:

H: M:

oh some people have got a really terrible accent and they just can’t pronounce it (like me)// like [S1], I can’t stand [S1] and she sits there, and you’d think by two years of doing French immersion she would have learnt that the word is ‘les’ [lay] not ‘les’ [les]// and oh I can’t- that annoys me! when people pronounce// and [S2] says ‘douze’ instead of ‘deux’, and I can’t stand things like that! it’s just ohh!

Reading aloud itself, however, was not viewed favourably by the French immersion students. Being called on to read was perhaps the most stressful occurrence of any given day. They became very worried about their pronunciation when reading aloud, so much so that they failed to comprehend what they were reading. Helena said in the recall interview that ‘I hate reading aloud in French . . . I get really nervous and every second word I can’t pronounce anything . . . I spend my time trying to concentrate on your own – reading rather than sort of understanding it.’ Melissa stated in the paired interview that ‘if other people are reading aloud in class I don’t get ANY of it, I sit there and check THEIR pronunciation?’ It was even worse if one of them had been nominated to read aloud and then the teacher asked the reader a question about what she had read, because it would not be possible to answer the question: M:

if you read aloud then she asks YOU the questions? [and you sit there and go [mouth open like a fish] 84

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[yeah and you think and you have to read it back again quickly going ‘oh my gosh what’s this?’ ‘I don’t know’ what does THAT mean? I don’t know what I said and it’s like, you read it, but like- you- it goes, straight out your mouth without reading your brain

A similar phenomenon was noticed with the Chinese immersion students. During the think aloud interview, they were able to pronounce most of the characters in the cloze passage. However, being able to pronounce a character did not necessarily mean that the student knew what the character meant, either in isolation or in context. As Tamara said, ‘I can READ it all but I- I can’t . . . tell you exactly what it means . . . I can say these characters, but to put them all together . . . those two might mean something completely different’. Patrick also commented that ‘I, recognise every character there and yet those four characters mean absolutely . . . nothing to me.’ Norman was also able to read fairly fluently aloud through the whole text, but was able to get very little meaning out of it. A second aspect to the theme of production of the second language was that of paying attention to form. For the Chinese group, along with a lack of correction of pronunciation errors was a frustration at what they saw as a lack of structure. They felt that attention needed to be paid to form, in relation to student needs and within the context of meaning, not just in isolated ‘grammar’ lessons. In his November interview Patrick spent some time discussing his disappointment with the Chinese he was able to produce. He said, ‘I was not satisfied with my Chinese because, I know my Chinese is not correct, you know.’ Later in the same interview he said that ‘doing the immersion course has given me the confidence to speak at length, but . . . I wish I could speak better . . . that I could say things better and express myself better.’ His explanation for this was that ‘NO grammar was actually introduced and, group errors, common errors were never isolated and taught.’ He did not mean that they needed an unrelated grammar lesson. Patrick gave a detailed illustration in his November interview of what happened on one occasion when the teacher did respond to requests to ‘give us grammar’. The teacher gave out sheets photocopied from a grammar-translation text book and had the students read them aloud around the class. The sheets were dealing with the structure bao kuo zai nei , ‘including us there are . . .’. This was a structure that Patrick had 85

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wanted to learn and use and so he remembered it. However, Patrick observed that one student, who was always asking for grammar, ‘had no idea, about bao kuo zai nei because, it meant nothing to him he didn’t NEED it’. This led Patrick to conclude that ‘the structured lessons MUST come – from the students’, needs’. This issue will be further explored in Chapter 6, in the section titled Individual Approaches to Learning. What Patrick wanted was for the teacher to say, ‘all of you are making this mistake. I’ve taken down some notes of sentences that you have written, we will prepare those. Now try and give me some sentences USING that, because it is a common, error.’ Tamara in her May interview remembered one lesson early in the year when Lily had done just what Patrick described: And – so the next day we went to lectures and Lily talked and – after that I went home and wrote on it and I could – I felt like I was making some progress. And – then the next day we had to write; we did a writing activity on the board, where we corrected sentences, so I felt like ‘oh well, it’s starting to make some sense’. Norman was also frustrated by the teachers’ lack of correction of his written work. In his November interview he recounted an incident where he wanted his work to be thoroughly corrected, and was disappointed: N:

R: N: R: N:

my writing ability is NOT the best at the best of TIMES -so I sat down and I wrote five letters, five hundred character- you know this took quite a bit of time, I took them to Chen Li and Chen Li corrected them but then I took them to another – Taiwanese, ah student who’s working towards becoming a- a teacher in Queensland, and she- there was still- according to her it was riddled with mistakes? you know maybe Chen Li was correcting for meaning? (1.0) possibly so mm, mm although I did want it for sentence structure, I wanted to be- it was WRITTEN, mode, you know?

In the French class, the same problem was not commented on or observed. The teachers were consistent in their attention to both form and meaning. Examples quoted are taken from Science lessons. During the question and answer sessions in class time, students were keen to respond to the teacher’s questions. During their answers, she would intersperse the correct form of incorrect words or phrases, as in the following example: 86

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T: S: T:

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quels sont les prédateurs de l’homme? [what are man’s predators?] autres hommes [other men] d’autres hommes [providing correction]

After several gentle but persistent corrections of this type, a student would incorporate the correction into his or her answer. The following is an example where the student eventually produced the correct form of ‘on a besoin de’: S: T: S: T: S: T: ... S: T: S: T:

Premier on besoin de nourriture, des animals [first you need food, animals] animaux On besoin d’eau [you need water] on a besoin si tu es dehydrated c’est mal. On aussi besoin [if you’re dehydrared that’s bad. You also need] on a aussi besoin de S’il y a la weather froid [if there is cold weather] Si la température est froide [if the temperature is cold] on a besoin d’habits. S’il a très froid [you need clothes. If he feels very cold] s’il fait très froid. [if it is very cold]

At other times, rather than ‘understand’ or simply provide the French word for an English word spoken by a student, she would ask the student to think about what the word would be in French. In all lessons observed, other students helped out the student who was struggling, as in this example: S1: T: S1: T: S2:

les dents dans le chien [the teeth in the dog] chez le chien [corrects form] sont plus sharp [are more sharp] qu’est-ce que c’est sharp? [what is ‘sharp’?] pointus. [pointy]

As well as this attention to form during content lessons, students also had lessons in French language. The focus during these lessons was on consolidating and expanding the students’ repertoire of tenses and constructions. The students did not comment about this aspect of their learning, except for the following extract from the girls’ paired interview. Helena was trying to explain why she found ‘process’ questions difficult in exams: 87

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H:

for process questions like in the future? I always hate that because I always end up writing in past or present and mm. Do you have any other difficulties with the tense? with past present future? you know I understand it all, it’s just that, you’re in exams thinking ohhh! and you forget it

R: H:

During the think aloud interview, which will be discussed in depth under ‘personal learning style preferences’, the students also showed an awareness of French grammar and structure. The next aspect of the students’ experiences related to producing the second language is what Jane called ‘bridging’. The term readers of this book may be more familiar with is that coined by Merrill Swain in 1985 – ‘comprehensible output’. As Tamara wrote in her addendum to the stimulated recall transcript, ‘just being in a classroom listening to INPUT doesn’t help you LEARN’. The students all spoke of the importance to their language learning of having (or making) opportunities to speak in the second language. For example, Jane said in her diary of 29 July that she tries to ‘make a comment or join in with a statement for the sake of speaking in Chinese’. Tamara in her diary of 22 April noted that ‘I feel like I am not speaking very much Chinese – It isn’t easy in a group to say something. I think that I will have to really try and make myself say something.’ In the recall interview with the French group the issue of speaking in French was discussed: R: P: R: P: H:

what’s so important about speaking French, then? because then you get to learn French more, and you get used to it and so it starts clicking in your head mm. how does it start clicking in your head, do you reckon? well if you speak it a lot you get used to it and it just [sticks there [yeah

On viewing the videotapes of their lessons, the French immersion students were surprised to see how much they actually said in the lessons; how many questions they answered. John and Helena discussed this: J:

H: J:

Yeah. I didn’t think I speak that- I don’t- when I’m class I don’t think I speak French at all – most of the time (I was talking to Tim) ... yeah. I didn’t think I answered that many questions I didn’t think I answered ANY questions! 88

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However, the students felt that it wasn’t simply speaking in French or Chinese that was important. What was needed was for the teacher to ‘bridge’ between what they COULD say and what they WANTED to say. In this aspect of a student’s language learning experience, the teacher understands what a student is struggling to say, and provides the word needed for the student to continue and express his or her meaning. This is related to Swain’s idea of ‘comprehensible output’ where learners are pushed to produce more than they normally would produce (Swain, 1985, 1993). ‘Bridging’ was Jane’s name for the phenomenon. Jane had once tried to get across to a teacher what she wanted, but seems to have little success, judging by this diary entry of early May: I’ve gotten my message through badly about wanting to try to bridge my simple Chinese in these classes – somehow it’s been interpreted as ‘baby talk’ – and learn correct ways of saying things: eg. today we tried to explain that even though we didn’t know how to say ‘selfish’, we did know the vocab for a ‘want want want person’ and wasn’t there some way that instead of just ignoring that offering, couldn’t some association and bridging be brought in . . . However, in spite of her frustration, Jane didn’t give up what she described as a ‘struggle’. In her diary in early May she wrote that ‘it’s the kind of struggle that makes you believe the language thinking gurus might have something when they say that language has got to be squeezed out’. Many examples of ‘bridging’ were found in the observation notes of the French class. The following example from the Science lesson videotaped on 3 August is illustrative of the process. The student initially provides a very brief answer in English, but the teacher gradually helps him to provide a complete sentence answer in French by using ‘bridging’: T: J: T: J: T: Ss: J: T: J: T:

Qu’est-ce que c’est le système circulatoire? John? [What is the circulatory system? John?] C’est le système qui – ah – qui – ah// [It’s the system which – ] //Qu’est-ce qu’il fait?/ [What does it do?] carries it away qu’est-ce que c’est ‘carry’? [What is ‘carry’?] il transporte [it carries] transporter les ah sang [transports the bloods le sang [the blood] sang où? [where?] 89

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J: T:

around le corps, you know, around the body OK essaie. C’est le système, répète, c’est le système qui transporte [OK try. It’s the system, repeat, it’s the system which carries] transporte le sang around the body [carries the blood around the body] OK essaie de le dire – qu’est-ce que c’est ‘around the body’? [OK try to say it – what is ‘around the body’?] autour de le corps [around the body] autour du corps. autour de le corps

J: T: S: T: J:

The teacher didn’t correct ‘de le’ and moved on to veins, etc. Perhaps enough was enough. However, if the teacher had not insisted and drawn him out, John would have left his answer at ‘carries it away’. When the students were watching this section of the videotape, John talked about what had been going through his mind during the above interchange: J: R: J: R: J:

R: J: R: J: R: J:

R: J:

R: J:

I hate it when she does that keeps asking you the question so what was- what was going on there? oh she asked me what was the système circula- you know ciculatocirculatoire yeah and then I just told her- I said it just takes it around the body and transports oxygen and energy a lot of that scientific explanation yeah it took a while to get out didn’t it? yeah – well I’m not that good at French as you know I don’t speak it at home or anything . . . but you still made a good job of getting all of that out I thought I did? no I don’t know/ yeah/ I don’t know what was going through my mind I just – had to get the answer out before she could ask ME some more I suppose [laughs] just get away from me! why, do you feel uncomfortable when she sort of asks you more and more? yeah – I don’t like – it sort of makes you feel stupid because you can’t even talk- tell her the answer in French you know, it makes you feel stupid mm. I think you did well though well you FEEL stupid, I (do . . .)

At the end of the year in their paired interview, Peter and John joked about being forced to produce more French: 90

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P: J:

R: J: P: J:

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yeah I know, you don’t really answer [the question [you’re not prepared for it, you’re prepared for the answer you’re going to give and then she asks you this and you don’t know it and you look like an idiot, but you would have looked really smart if you had’ve answered the first part of the question, which you did mm mm you answer the first part, really easily, but then she hits you with a second left hand/ shot/ below the belt

However, as stated earlier, the students want French to start ‘clicking’ so they keep up the struggle to produce French. They may not like ‘bridging’ as it makes them the focus of attention, but they always keep trying to give the teacher more language. Sometimes when we are learning a new language there come times when we cannot produce the word we need. When the immersion students were writing or speaking in the second language, there would be occasions when a word or character did not come immediately to mind. What strategies did they use for retrieving words or characters for spoken or written output? The chief retrieval strategy for the Chinese learners was that of ‘association’. Students would remember when, where and with whom they had learnt the word for which they were seeking, and the sound and/or character would come to mind. In her May interview, Jane said, ‘when I – I remember the character, I can see the character in front of me; or there’s an association.’ She did not feel she had explained this well enough and wrote the following note on the transcript: ‘It’s rather like pieces of music/songs – you tend to have associations with times/places you may have heard it and left a strong impression’. Later in the interview she remembered a specific example of how she and Tamara could remember words from the places where they had learnt them. ‘We had dinner with some Chinese people one night and talked about- I can remember the one about the apricots and almonds, we can really remember that! . . . you actually go back to places.’ Tamara in her diary wrote about a similar experience: When I remember a word I remember where I learnt it. Today I was writing in class and it was the word ‘ran hou’ which in chinese [sic] means then or later. I always think of Jane who taught me that at Kong Kou Park when we went to see the light festival. 91

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In the classroom, learners of both classes were seen to have a main strategy with regard to the recall of words in the second language – they would insert an English word into their sentence. With the French students, the expectation was that the teacher would supply the French word for them. I questioned the French students about this in the recall interview: R: P: J: R: H: J: H: J: R: J: R: J:

and when you do speak French, I notice sometimes people will put an English word in, what happens then? oh you just can’t think of the word in French you have to say it in English yeah and she usually tells [you the [and then [the teacher] will tell you what it is/ yeah or you just go oh you-just-ask-a-question-like ‘what is this in French?’ uh huh in French mm and that’s OK? (gives you the) French stuff

It was noted in observations that Peter of the French group would really try very hard to get his answer out in French without using either of the above two strategies. In one lesson, he gave an answer in English and the teacher asked him to say it in French. The other students groaned, ‘oh no, he’ll tie himself in knots!’ The process he used was discussed in his May interview: R:

P:

R: P: R: P: R:

Now, I know you in class, you- you’re really good at answering, and sometimes you get stuck for a word. And that- you know you’ll be about half way through your answer and you get stuck for a word. How do you get the word back? Where do you- how do you go about finding that word that you can’t remember? um, I sort of stumble, and think of it in English, and just think, and think, and it just comes to me from thinking about it in English, basically. uh uh. And then I just remember it eventually. There isn’t- you don’t have a particular// Don’t have any process or anything like that/ No particular strategy 92

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no no. You just, sort of/ remember it remember it, OK suddenly it hits me

Helena, however, tended to ‘try to rephrase my sentence like in really simple French where I can still give the meaning, but if I’ve got a sentence I might say a word in English and then my teacher can tell me what it is in French’. As noted in Chapter 3, the use of English by the students seemed to be tolerated by the teachers in the Chinese immersion program. However, several examples were noted in the video transcripts of students either directly asking the teacher how to say something in Chinese, or else pausing and waiting for the teacher to supply the correct Chinese word. Finally, evidence of the students’ growing bilingualism was discussed. This was shown through code mixing and switching between the two languages and private speech in the second language. Over the course of the year, the students noted examples of their emerging bilingualism in French and Chinese. These examples included code mixing and the use of private speech in the second language. Code mixing refers to the insertion of one or more words from one language into speech or writing in another language. Code mixing may be conscious or unconscious. It may also happen that the use of a word in, say, French, will cause a person to switch from speaking in English to speaking in French. This is referred to as code switching (Genesee, 1989). Most of the evidence for the students’ developing bilingualism consisted of examples of code mixing. Examples of code mixing observed during class time consist mainly of the deliberate insertion of an English word during a student’s speech. The purpose of this code mixing is either to have the teacher provide the unknown word in the second language or to simply get one’s message across quickly. Genesee (1989) notes that the mixing typical of bilingual language development does not only consist of complete words, but that elements of the phonology and syntax of the other language may also intrude. Many examples of involuntary code mixing were observed and discussed in the interviews and diary entries. In November Patrick recounted a recent example: P:

like, [my wife] noticed it the other day I was talking to [my daughter] and I said a sentence to her and I can’t remember exactly 93

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R: P:

what the sentence was (3.0) but one of the words in the sentence that I used, was Chinese oh I see and I (was) just with her (and said) and I didn’t even pick it up myself, the sentence was ENGLISH, but I had substituted a Chinese word in

Patrick concluded from this that ‘it’s got to the stage- it’s really got to the stage that now if I want to talk Chinese, I THINK Chinese’. Similar examples were noted by the French immersion students. The girls discussed the issue in their December interview. Helena said that ‘it’s just like, you say little things and you don’t realise it?’ She gave an illustration of this: H:

R: H: M: H: R: H:

like if you’re talking to your friends and – you’re having a conversation and then if you just say ‘why?’ I always end up going ‘pourquoi’ uh huh? and if you’re speaking to, people who don’t speak French they just go [‘what?’ [‘pardon?’/ and you go ‘oh! sorry!’ like, you know so, it’s words like ‘pourquoi’/ just little things//

John provided another example during the boys’ paired interview: sometimes when we’re just fooling – just like- when you speak a bit the same word over and over in class you sort of- like when someone asks you a question you sort of go ‘oui’ instead of ‘yes’ Melissa found that her code mixing occurred ‘especially if you’re writing, I do it more in writing’. She said that it did not usually happen to her with talking. She gave several examples of the intrusion of French into her English writing: M: H: M: H: M: R:

in English and for ‘and’ I always put [‘et’ [yeah so do I! I always do that! and you put different endings like for ‘ic’ you always put q-u-e at the end of it/ yeah/ and then you get mixed with the spelling too with words that are like [yeah] similar like classic mm mm 94

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M: H:

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I always like- can’t remember if it’s q-u-e or/ yeah.

An example of the ‘q-u-e’ ending intruding in speech came from Peter in the boys’ paired interview where he stated his belief that ‘scientific principles like Physics and, Chemistry and that are straightforward, logique’. Jane’s diary contains many examples of code mixing, where rather than translating and explaining a concept in English, she simply inserts the Chinese words. The following is a good example: I lived close to markets and directly outside the school gates were permanent vendors, prepared to strike up guanxi with the wy gor ren [sic]. Guanxi is a very Chinese concept, involving ‘you do something for me and I’ll have to do something for you’. Wai guo ren are foreigners, or literally, ‘outside country people’. Patrick also spoke about this aspect of his speech in his think-aloud interview. He felt that there were some things that were better expressed in Chinese, and came to him more naturally in Chinese. For example, shu hua in his brain was CHINESE calligraphy, done with a brush, not Western ‘calligraphy’ done with a pen. He gave several more examples: P: R: P:

R: P: R: P: R: P:

somehow in my, brain I now have worked out- because of the course, such things that are JUST Chinese. mm mm? and I can say that- and some words, I think EVERYBODY -even people who can’t speak any English, SHOULD be able to understand, some of them just seem so NATURAL and so, let’s see a much better way of s- it’s really as if the Chinese is a better way of expressing. mm mm? that idea. mm mm well, the (chair’s) hua le, you know, are you aware of broken? mm mm like the- the chair’s hua le, the (push bike’s) hua-anything’s hua le, I mean, that to me – I expect everybody should be able to understand, you know? just like tai gui le [too expensive] too, yeah

Students also gave examples of their use of French or Chinese in their heads. Helena said that: 95

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sometimes if I’m um thinking something then I’ll like- for some reason I’ll just like translate it in my head, like I’ll translate whatever I just thought or whatever, I sometimes do that. Melissa said that she was not aware of this because ‘I wouldn’t realise it because I was thinking it’. However, her next sentence indicated that she must think in French sometimes because ‘you don’t realise that you’re speaking it until someone goes – “what?” so you don’t really realise that you’re thinking.’ During the boys’ paired interview they were asked about talking to themselves in French, and provided some examples: R:

J: P: R: P: R: J:

R: J:

OK other people have said that like when they’re playing-playing sport or just walking around, they’ll talk to themselves about what they’re doing, in French yeah I’ve done that. you’re just thinking about it// once I played basketball in the back yard and just commentated on the game in French mm mm? but that’s about it yeah. and what have you done, John? what you just said? basically. can’t remember when, but you know, I know exact- sort of moments when you’ve done it like you know. when you’re, trying to learn a bit and you just sort of, think of it in French instead of English. mm mm? and you just sort of keep thinking about that, and someone will come up to you and you’ll start talking in English and that will just wipe out of your mind as quickly as it turned up, you know.

There were not so many examples of private speech in Chinese found with the Chinese group. Tamara did write about it in her journal on 30 April: I had a dream that I said a sentence in my dream some of the words I didn’t know in chinese [sic] so I put them into English. What was it my subconscious was saying to me? . . . I have internalised, I know I have. I find myself talking chinese [sic] but I must admit not as much as I did in China. Perhaps this was because of the comparative lack of input in the second language for the Chinese learners when compared with the French learners. 96

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Summary and Discussion The most important language learning experience was the process of making sense of input. All the learners seemed to follow a similar pattern of development, though not all had reached the final stage observed by the end of the year. The pattern was that learners started by trying to translate everything they heard. Then they would focus on key words. Next they would relax and try to understand to gist of the input. The final stage was an ‘out of awareness’ understanding of the input. As noted in the section on ‘translation as a receptive strategy’, translation was officially frowned on by the teaching staff in these programs, and, as discussed in Chapter 3, not even encouraged by the students. However, the first stage they all went through, usually silently, in their heads, was that of using translation of what they were hearing into their first language as a means of understanding it. Teachers in bilingual settings, who share a common language with the students they are teaching, have been observed to check their students’ understanding of words by having them translate them into the other language (Hornberger, 1990: 224) and teachers in the programs I researched have also been observed to do this in the interests of efficiency. My earliest publication of the French immersion students’ data reported in this chapter (de Courcy, 1995c) was greeted with disbelief by one immersion teacher (Arcidiacono, 1996), and I responded by stating my belief in the strength of my method and my confidence of the truth value of the words of the students themselves (de Courcy, 1997b). So often, it is not acknowledged that, even though the teachers in immersion programs do not usually translate, the students certainly do. Researchers such as Cohen (1994b, 1998) and Kern (1994) are also finding the use of large amounts of translation as a receptive strategy by the immersion and other foreign language students with whom they work. Cohen recently noted that one of the skills immersion students develop is that of being extremely rapid mental translators (personal communication, July 1996). I believe it is important for immersion teachers and students to be aware of what these students have experienced, so that all can have some insight into the process of learning in immersion. It is particularly important for students to see how necessary it is to abandon the translation stages as quickly as possible if they wish to reach the ‘relax and get the gist’ or the ‘out of awareness’ stages. As the students tell us, though, this passage through the stages was not necessarily free of trauma. All the learners also mentioned their 97

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feelings of ‘stupidity’ when they were not able to make sense of the input. The first and second stages see learners feeling quite lost until they learn to adapt their learning strategies for ones that are more appropriate to the context. One of the features of immersion classrooms, which several authors – notably Krashen (1981, 1984, 1985) but also Swain (1985) and WongFillmore (1985) – have mentioned as important in the acquisition of second languages, is that ‘comprehensible input’ is provided. The aim of providing comprehensible input is that the students should be ‘actively involved with the input’ (Krashen, 1981: 46). Written or spoken language is monitored and modified by the teacher in order to provide input which is a little beyond what the students are currently capable of. Krashen terms this ‘i + 1’ (1985). The information presented on ‘not making sense’ has indicated the importance of fine tuning the input. We have seen how the students feel when the input has been too far above their current comprehension level. The students’ reactions add further weight to the arguments in favour of providing comprehensible input. As Ellis (1985) states, input is a cooperative endeavour, involving both students and teachers. ‘In this interaction the teacher makes certain formal and discourse adjustments to ensure understanding, while the learner employs certain communication strategies to overcome problems and maximize existing resources’ (Ellis, 1985: 82). The students felt that when they were expected to passively receive input, they were not learning optimally. Students need to work with their teachers and each other in order to make sense of input. Closely linked to comprehensible input was the opportunity to produce language. This involved paying attention to correct pronunciation and use of correct form. Students also needed the teachers to ‘bridge’ between what they were able to say and what they could learn to say, that is, to provide them with opportunities for comprehensible output. In the section on ‘producing the second language’, we read of the importance the students placed on corrective feedback from the teacher in the areas of pronunciation and structure. This issue has also been discussed in other bilingual education contexts. For example, Patsy Lightbown (1990) describes the work that she and Nina Spada conducted in primary school intensive ESL classrooms in Quebec, using the COLT scheme. Classroom observations revealed little focus on form or correction of errors, and testing of students showed them to have good fluency and vocabulary, but poor accuracy. Lightbown concludes that it is important to provide ‘some formal, analytic teaching that can help students 98

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see where their use of the target language differs from that of native speakers’ (1990: 91). This also relates to the work of Lyster and of Swain referred to in Chapter 1 in the section on process-oriented research in French. Current research by Swain and Lapkin (2001; Swain 2000) is particularly focussed on the role of feedback – the title of their forthcoming paper is, ‘What two learners notice in their reformulated writing, what they learn from it, and their insights into the process.’ In the same section, I also discussed the students’ feelings regarding what Jane called ‘bridging’. I noted then that ‘bridging’ is better known in the literature as ‘comprehensible output’. Swain states that comprehensible output, or ‘o + 1’ relates to the ‘i + 1’ of comprehensible input and means that ‘learners should be pushed to move in their output a little beyond what they normally would produce’ (personal communication, 31 January 1992). In this way, the learners have to try out hypotheses about how the new language works. In receiving feedback from their interlocutors in the form of correction or comprehension, the learners add to their store of knowledge about the new language. The important factor in ‘comprehensible output’ or ‘bridging’ is that the learners do not want to be satisfied with what they can do in the language. They want to be pushed to produce more complicated, correct, or ‘adult’ language. This also relates to the Vygotskian concept of ‘scaffolding’ where learners are aided through their Zone of Proximal Development, by a more experienced helper. However, to paraphrase Swain (2000b) using Jane’s analogy, it is important that the ‘bridge’ is small enough – if the feedback given is too far in advance of where the students currently are, it will be rejected, and the students are less likely to progress. However, output which facilitates language acquisition involves more than just speaking or writing the language. ‘Producing the target language may be the trigger that forces the learner to pay attention to the means of expression needed in order to successfully convey his or her own intended meaning’ (Swain, 1985: 249). Swain and Lapkin are continuing to explore this hypothesis in their experimental work in immersion classrooms (1995). Swain (1993) and Lyster (1994a) recommend that teachers first pay attention to their students’ utterances and give them opportunities to think about and correct what they have said. Second, because students’ utterances in teacher-fronted activities tend to be telegraphic, Swain recommends the incorporation of more opportunities for students to produce extended output, especially collaborative group work. She suggests that the sort of communicative group activities where students 99

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discuss aspects of the target language may be the most valuable for the purpose of extending students. Lyster (1994a) also suggests that cooperative activities such as Jigsaw activities are an aid to acquisition in the immersion setting. Also revealed in the section on ‘producing the second language’, was the students’ use of ‘private speech’. Vygotsky (1962) states that there are four stages in the development of speech. The first is the ‘primitive or natural stage’ (1962: 46) which corresponds to ‘pre-intellectual speech and pre-verbal thought’. The second stage he calls ‘naive psychology’, and during this phase the child uses correct grammatical forms without really understanding the reasons for them. The third phase is that where the child ‘uses external aids for the solution of internal problems’ (Vygotsky, 1962: 47). In this stage we see the child counting on the fingers and talking to him or herself out loud; so-called ‘ego-centric speech’. Muriel Saville-Troike (1987, 1988) has published research in which she demonstrates the use that children make of this ‘private speech’ in the development of competence in a second language. However, the immersion students involved in my research have passed through this stage of linguistic development in their first language and would no longer be expected to use egocentric speech. They have reached Vygotsky’s fourth stage. The fourth stage is that which has the most relevance for this research and is called the ‘ingrowth stage’. As Vygotsky states: The external operation turns inward and undergoes a profound change in the process. The child begins to count in his head, to use ‘logical memory’, that is, to operate with inherent relationships and inner signs. In speech development this is the final stage of inner, soundless speech. There remains a constant interaction between outer and inner operations, one form effortlessly and frequently changing into the other and back again. Inner speech may come very close in form to outer speech or even become exactly like it when it serves as a preparation for external speech. (Vygotsky, 1962: 47) However, private speech is not used only by children. John-Steiner (1992) researched the use of ‘private speech’ among adults and found that adults use thinking out loud for a variety of purposes. Examples given are self-regulation, labelling, procedural, planning and generative/creative purposes. Frawley and Lantolf (1985) found that adults learning a second language were notable users of thinking aloud for selfregulation. Numerous examples of immersion students using ‘private 100

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speech’ are also found in de Courcy (1993). This is a fertile ground for further exploration of students’ experiences of ‘becoming bilingual’, and the history of research using sociocultural theory and the most recent developments are described in Lantolf (2000). During discussion of the issues outlined in this chapter, it has become apparent that each learner did not approach each task or experience in the same way. In particular, the ways in which the learners approached the think aloud task revealed these differences, especially in relation to second language literacy. These differences will be discussed in the next chapter, on reading and writing in immersion programs. The data also indicated that students had individual approaches to language learning, and it is these individual approaches which will be discussed in Chapter 6.

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Chapter 5

Reading and Writing

Introduction Thus far in this book, I have discussed some previous research into immersion learning in general, and presented the results relating to two of my research questions: How do learners respond to the learning context? (Chapter 3) and, What experiences do they consider important for learning the language? (Chapter 4). The question to be explored in Chapter 5 is that of the processes involved in reading and writing in immersion programs, especially in languages that use different scripts and different orthographies from those used in the students’ native language. Before discussing the method and results of this section of the study I would like to note here the difference between Chinese script and Roman script. In languages which use a Romanised script for their writing, there is a (fairly) regular sound-symbol correspondence. For example, when I was learning Italian, after the first lesson, members of my class were able to take dictation in Italian. Even though we did not know what the words meant, we could accurately transcribe what we heard. In Chinese, there is no such regular sound-symbol correspondence. However, once one has been learning for some time, one comes to realise that most characters have a sound part and a meaning part. These parts to the character are usually called ‘radicals’. Radicals are usually characters in their own right, just written compressed, when combined with other radicals to make a character. For example, this is the character zi ‘child’ . Here it is again, combined with the radical for woman to make the character hao, ‘good’ . Once one knows enough characters, it is possible to guess at the sound of a character, by looking at the sound radical. For example, one of my

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students and I looked at the character for ‘puzzle’

recently and

thought we couldn’t remember how to pronounce the character. The sound part of the character is ‘mi’,

yet we looked up the dictionary,

and, sure enough, the character was pronounced mí. We should have had confidence in our own ability! Yet many students are not given any hints by their teachers about these pronunciation clues, and try to learn each character as a new sound. Ju and Jackson (1995) and Tzeng (1993) explore this issue of phonological recognition (among others) in their studies of Chinese first language reading. As an aside, one fascinating study (Rozin et al., 1971) was conducted in which native speakers of English who were having great difficulty learning to read were taught to read using Chinese characters. Students were told the meaning of the character, which for them was an English word. Students were able to read fluently using Chinese characters rather than English writing. They were able to tap directly into the meaning of the character, rather than having to sound out the letters. Before discussing the results from my own study, I will outline what research has been previously done into the acquisition of literacy in Chinese as a first or a second language.

What Do We Know Already About Reading and Writing in Chinese? Studies of Chinese second language learning have been concentrated in either of two areas: analysis of the difficulties encountered by learners, or a comparison of second language learners with native speakers in terms of the speed with which they recognise characters. The area of inquiry concerned with how learners from Romanised script backgrounds learn languages with ideographic scripts has received comparatively little attention to date. Numerous studies have been conducted in which learners of Chinese as a second language and native speakers of Chinese have been compared as to the speed at which they process characters as compared with Roman script, and the degree of Right Hemisphere/Left Hemisphere lateralisation they display while reading characters. Authoritative examples of this type of study are Tzeng and Hung (1980), Tzeng and Wang (1983), Everson (1988) and Hayes (1987, 1988, 1990). Everson (1994) contains recommendations for the teaching of Chinese as a second language to beginners and advanced students.

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Another study (Yu, 1987) examined, under laboratory conditions, the speed at which non-native speaking subjects can learn characters using a variety of different strategies. It was found that learners’ use of a suggested strategy helped them in the recall of the 21 characters they were required to learn. One interesting conclusion hypothesised by Yu was that perhaps ‘adult subjects could generate their own memory links when learning Chinese characters and meanings, even if not instructed to do so’ (Yu, 1987). Chang Ye-ling conducted interesting work on children’s use of predictive strategies in learning to read Chinese (Chang, 1987; Chang & Watson, 1988). This was a longitudinal study in a Chinese/English bilingual classroom in which the interactions between students and text, students and each other, and students and the teacher were recorded. Students were also interviewed about their experience of Chinese text. Although the students were ethnic Chinese, only one of them was a native speaker of Chinese. The research attempted to find if the use of prediction strategies and predictable materials would have similar positive effects on the reading of beginners in Chinese as it does with beginners in English. ‘The findings of this research support the sociolinguistic assumption that reading and reading instruction that focus on meaning occur in similar ways for readers of languages such as Chinese and English’ (Chang & Watson, 1988: 43). Some very interesting explorations of students’ learning of written Chinese have been conducted by Scott McGinnis. As the result of two studies – a questionnaire survey of students in a number of academic settings, and an ethnographic study of the summer intensive program studied by Liu, which was mentioned in Chapter 1, he reached the following conclusions: (1) Particularly at the lower levels of instruction, Chinese language students in all academic settings view the development of aural/oral skills as more important in their Chinese language learning careers than proficiency in the written language. (2) Exposure to character component structure . . . seems to be of little use to students at the beginning stages . . . Students generally resort to more idiosyncratic methodology, ranging from the very creative (personally concocted stories) to the very mechanical (rote repetition). (McGinnis 1998:10) These seem to relate to the memory links which Yu suggested that students would develop for themselves.

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Some further studies which are pertinent are those by Bell (1991, 1995, 1997) and Crook (1992). Bell used a first person, narrative methodology to deal with her experience of learning to write Chinese (Cantonese) as a second language. She approached the study from a literacy perspective, aiming to find if there was in fact a ‘transfer’ of skills and strategies from literacy in one language to literacy in another. Bell ‘details how the understanding of literacy is an individual construct growing out of personal experiences shaped by societal attitudes’ (Bell, 1991: i). She found that her prior experiences with literacy in English were ‘dysfunctional when facing the task of attempting literacy as understood by a different culture’ (Bell, 1991: i). Crook (1992) explored one aspect of the experience of learning of Chinese as a second language – that of how adult students learn characters. His study was conducted with a similar group of Chinese immersion students to those I worked with. Three members of the group were interviewed about their experiences of learning characters, and the transcripts of these interviews were analyzed and reported from an ethnographic perspective. My own work with learners of Chinese, not in an immersion setting, found that, contrary to published opinion (Brändle, 1981), literacy in a language with a Romanised script was not a help in learning to read Chinese. I found that ‘some (learners) even found their habit of relying on a written phonetic representation of a sound to be a hindrance to learning a character-based language’ (de Courcy, 1995a: 35) Next, I will outline how the data were collected for my investigation of reading and writing in Chinese and French as second language and present the findings of this part of the project.

How the Data Were Collected The data on reading strategies presented in this chapter were obtained in an investigation of the processes the students used to make sense of a difficult reading passage in the language they were studying. Thinkaloud protocols were used to explore these processes, and the passages selected were cloze passages, designed using the every nth word deletion method. The data on writing in the second language is culled from the entire database. Think-aloud protocols ‘use as data, informants’ own statements about the ways they organise and process information, as an alternative or supplement to inferring their thoughts from behavioural events’ (Faerch

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& Kasper, 1987: 9). This introspection can be simultaneous with the event being examined, or involve immediately consecutive retrospection or delayed retrospection. Referring to her work with ESL readers, Block stated that ‘thinking aloud differs from other forms of introspective report because readers report their thoughts and behaviors without theorizing about these behaviors’ (1986: 464). A limitation of such protocols is that ‘processes which are already automatic or are not easily verbalized may not readily be studied’ (Block, 1986: 464). Therefore, it is recommended by experienced users of the technique that think-aloud protocols be done with text processing tasks that contained ‘problems or impediments intended to bring normally covert processes into sufficiently deliberate use so that relevant kinds of selfreport data may be obtained’ (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1984: 379). It was for this ability to bring normally covert processes into the open that the technique was chosen to be used in this study. It was hypothesised that dealing with unfamiliar text would be an important part of the experience of learning a new language. Think-aloud protocols allowed the researcher access to this experience. Block (1986) used think-aloud techniques to study the comprehension strategies of readers of English as a second language. She taped students verbalising their thoughts as they tried to make sense of English texts which included deliberate anomalies (concurrent think-aloud). She found that reading is ‘a process of construction in which the reader is an active participant’ (1986: 485). Cohen (1994b) and de Courcy and Burston (2000) are combining thinkaloud protocols, interviews and classroom observation to explore the cognitive processes and language use of children in Spanish and French early immersion programs as they attempt to solve Mathematics problems written in their second language. Mangubhai used concurrent and retrospective think-aloud methods to collect data about how a group of second language learners construct meanings while listening to the second language, and the strategies that they might be using in the construction of meaning (Mangubhai, 1991: 269). Students verbalised their thought processes while listening to the teacher’s words. In later interviews (retrospective think-aloud), they reflected on the language learning process. Until Mangubhai’s work, think-aloud had only been used for accessing reading comprehension and solution of mathematical problems. The particular think-aloud strategy used in this study was that used by Kletzien (1991) in her work with high school students and replicated 106

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by de Courcy and Birch (1993) with Japanese late immersion students. This technique involved the learners doing a cloze exercise and then immediately reflecting on sections of the task with the researcher. Cloze exercises were chosen because they ‘tap the reader’s ability to make use of syntactic and semantic knowledge’ (Kletzien, 1991: 71–72). The cloze exercise used with the French immersion students was the Test de mots à trouver: Niveau B. This test was developed by researchers at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) Modern Language Centre under 1977–79 funding from the Ontario Ministry of Education. The cloze test was developed from an article in a magazine intended for the general French native-speaking reader. The cloze test used with the Chinese immersion students was developed by the researcher following the same principles as those used for the French test – taken from a magazine for the general reader, and with every nth word deleted. The text was one the teacher had planned to use in class in first semester, but which he had not used. The following principles, suggested by Ericsson and Simon (quoted by Kletzien, 1991: 71) were followed in order to gain accurate self-report data with minimum interference with the students’ performance on the set task: (1) Students did not have to verbalise at the same time as they were performing the task (however, they could if they felt comfortable doing so). (2) The time interval between processing and retrospective reporting was minimised. (3) Only non-specific, non-cuing probes were used. (4) It was made clear to the students that they should focus primarily on the task, rather than on the verbal reporting of their processes. (5) Data from other sources were collected and compared with the selfreport data. During one of the interview sessions, students were asked to ‘think through’ the process of completing a cloze exercise in the language they were studying. They were asked to let their thoughts flow naturally, aloud, if they could, while working through the text (concurrent thinkaloud). Some students were uncomfortable with thinking aloud while they were working. With these students, I allowed them to work in silence for a short while, then tell me how they had completed the section of the exercise just finished. On completion of the whole exercise, the students discussed with the researcher the strategies they had used to find the missing words or characters (immediately retrospective thinkaloud). This ‘protocol’ was tape recorded and later transcribed. 107

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The classification scheme for reading strategies used by Kletzien (1991) was applied to the think-aloud protocols. Definitions of each category and examples of each of these reading strategies were taken from the data and placed on a matrix. Examples of each reading strategy were then identified on the protocol transcripts, the numbers of each strategy used by the various informants were totalled and listed for each participant and for the group as a whole. The percentage of total strategy use was also calculated. The results of this part of the study will be presented in the following order: reading in Chinese, writing in Chinese, reading in French and finally, writing in French.

Reading in Chinese As can be seen from Table 5.1, the principal strategy used by learners in the Chinese group was ‘looking for key vocabulary or phrases’. The heaviest user of this strategy was Norman, followed by Patrick and Tamara. Most of the examples found involved the learner saying that she or he was unable to fill in a cloze blank because of lack of understanding of a key word or phrase near the cloze blank. An example from Tamara’s protocol is, ‘see when you don’t know that character . . .’ The next most common strategy was that of ‘paraphrasing’. If a student provided an English gloss for the phrase he or she was working on, this was also classed as paraphrasing for the purposes of this analysis. An example from Jane’s protocol is, ‘bu tong, ah bu i tong – bu yang, not the same there’s a big difference, yeah.’ Tamara was the heaviest user of this strategy. The students used the strategies of ‘using known phrases’ and ‘making an inference or drawing conclusions’ with almost equal frequency. The two women used both strategies an equal number of times. The two men gave different weight to each strategy, with Norman favouring inferencing and Patrick favouring the use of known phrases. An example of ‘using known phrases’ is Norman’s completion of the pattern (Chinese people) as follows: ‘zhong something, zhong guo ren well that’s easy.’ Jane showed a use of inference in guessing at the meaning of this character (nature) : ‘shen is life and you’ve got heart, so maybe the life force.’ ‘Visualising’ also gained a high total percentage, but it should be noted that nearly all the examples of visualising came from Jane’s protocol. 108

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Table 5.1 Principal reading strategy use, think-aloud protocol, Chinese group Jane Reading Strategy Key vocabulary Paraphrasing Making an inference Using known phrases Visualising Using syntax or punctuation Re-reading previous text Using prior knowledge Structure of sentence Reading subsequent text Using the main idea Structure of passage or paragraph Non-use of strategies TOTAL

n

%

Tamara

Patrick

Norman

Total

n

n

n

n

%

%

%

%

4

11

7

24

4

27

9

39

24

23

3 4

8 11

6 4

21 14

2 0

13 0

2 4

9 17

13 12

12 11

4

11

4

14

2

13

1

4

11

11

9 7

16 19

0 1

0 3

0 0

0 0

1 0

4 0

10 8

10 8

1

3

1

3

3

20

1

4

6

6

2

5

2

7

0

0

1

4

5

5

0

0

3

10

0

0

0

0

3

3

1

3

1

3

0

0

0

0

2

2

1

3

0

0

1

7

0

0

2

2

1

3

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

0

0

0

0

3

20

4

17

7

7

37

93

29

99

15

100

23

98

104

101

Note: The discrepancies in percentages are because of rounding.

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Jane described the character

as follows: ‘when the flash goes off you

get a little brightness and you’ve got that brightness underneath’. Jane’s use of imagery and associations will be further explored in the chapter on learning strategies. Norman used the strategy once and the others not at all. There were nine cloze blanks in the small section of the passage to which the students limited themselves (the first nine lines only). It seems that the exercise chosen was just too difficult for the students to achieve any success with it. However, it did reveal the strategies the students called upon when faced with difficult text. Because of the difficulty of the text, I had to allow the students access to a Chinese–English dictionary. Note that Jane made use of the widest variety of strategies. Patrick had the smallest repertoire of strategies, relying basically on finding out from his dictionary what certain key words meant in the context of the paragraph. However, in relation to dictionary use, an interesting phenomenon emerged during the study. All the students of Chinese were able to look up unknown characters in the dictionary. However, the way in which they looked up those characters seemed to be related either to their proficiency or to the length of time they had spent learning Chinese. Learners with less time learning Chinese tended to look up characters by using the list of radicals at the front of the dictionary. That is, their search was based on what the character looks like. In contrast, learners with a longer experience with Chinese tended to look up the character by what it might sound like. They worked out what it might sound like by comparing it with other characters they knew already. Zoe first drew the researcher’s attention to this in the interview with her early in the project. She noted that: Z:

well once again that’s changed. I used to do it by looking up the radical. And I still DO if I have no idea about the character, but I find now that I know a lot more about the sound element so I’ll look at a character and think ‘well that LOOKS a lot like bao. I know it’s not the bao I know but it looks so much like bao it mustit could BE one of those’, so I’ll go to the dictionary, using- using pinyin, go to the b section first and look through the baos and if it’s NOT there, THEN I go and look up the radical section. Because that way seems faster- if it looks like something I’ve seen before I go and do that first 110

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R: Z: R: Z:

111

interesting and that’s only changed maybe in the last, oh in the last six to nine months I’ve been doing that. so, am I right in thinking that, once you get a greater proficiency in Chinese, the way you go about learning MORE Chinese changes? it seems to have, it has with me, yes

The researcher noted during the think-aloud interview that Patrick used the same two techniques mentioned by Zoe. The other students, however, would only look up characters using the radicals. Now I will turn to a discussion of the students’ experiences of writing in Chinese, which, for this group, meant writing in Chinese characters, as the use of pinyin, which is a romanised transliteration of the sounds of the characters, was not officially sanctioned by the course coordinator.

Writing in Chinese The students in the Chinese class commented on the lack of systematic attention paid to writing in the program. In her addendum to the stimulated recall transcript, Tamara noted that she felt they needed weekly writing exercises. She wrote that ‘in Semester II very little writing has been emphasised (although I have been writing)’. The only way writing was assessed was with writing tests at the end of each semester, which students had difficulty preparing for because they had no clear idea of what they were going to be expected to write on the test. The students were particularly upset by the end of year writing exam. They had expected to be asked to write something about the teaching of Chinese as a second language. Instead, they were asked to write a business letter. Two students simply refused to write the test. Others complained bitterly about being ‘cheated’ of what they felt should have been their rightful mark for writing. Tamara said: It was just so funny you know yesterday in the test. Everyone was saying- someone swore and said ‘why didn’t we learn this?’ and another person swore and said ‘yeah we should have learnt this’ This final exam was a proficiency test administered by specialists from outside the faculty. Patrick commented that ‘the writing in the afternoon was just – a total waste of time. It didn’t – show how much we could do, all it shows is what we COULDN’T do’. Is this reaction to a proficiency test typical of students who have been used to achievement tests? Homework seemed to be rarely set, and when it was it did not seem to be compulsory. Tamara commented in November that ‘Lily gave us 111

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homework and then towards the end no one did it. You know? What’s the point?’ In observations of the classroom the teacher would sometimes say to the students they could write something ‘if they liked’ and she would correct it. However, Norman’s comment on page 86 about the lack of correction given to written work when it was submitted suggests why students were not motivated to submit written work. With regard to the Chinese language itself, students had to make a change to their writing when they arrived back in Australia. In the initial six weeks of the program they had been taught using the character language word processor, then known as JIEJING (Chappell & Yates, 1989), which had been developed by the original course coordinator. This is a program that uses correct stroke order and knowledge of stroke type categories for inputting characters. It is now marketed as the Ziran input system. While in China, very few of the students had access to a computer and to JIEJING so they had to relearn the program when they returned to Australia. Some, like Norman, found the program to be of benefit. Others, like Tamara and Jane, preferred the feel of handwriting the characters. In May, Tamara said in her interview that having to use the computer was stressful because: T:

R: T:

I didn’t have a computer in China, and – I used to write my characters, and I like that. And now I’m using the computer and I don’t think you know that character when you’re using the computer. why’s that? because you’re not writing it. You don’t have the feel of the character. You just put it in – you know, you put it only on the screen and you say ‘Oh yeah, that’s it’, but I’m not – I don’t feel in the immersion program that the Chinese is . . . is sinking in. I know maybe I’m getting more output, like I can – if after a day I can go home and write something about what we did, that’s more output I’m getting from it, but not input. I’m not studying like I did. Jane also commented negatively about the computer program: I didn’t have a computer, and it’s been really interesting coming back and using the computerised program – I know my recognition has increased a lot, but my writing, I’m not, I’m not actually hand writing as much any more as um – that’s where the consistency is a bit of a problem; making sure you’re doing a bit of each thing every day.

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Norman, however, loved the program: I could only READ very simple characters when I came back, this year, I guess, I- there- there’s another plus for JIEJING, JIEJING has helped me a LOT in the recognition of CHARACTERS, just by simply doing- ah WRITING them out, drilling. In his Case Study, Norman stated that every week one of the teachers would give them a dictation which they had to write on the computer. Norman also wrote that he had perhaps become too reliant on the computer program, that ‘writing and reading Chinese has always been difficult for me this year without the aid of the JIEJING computer program’, that purchasing a computer and the program ‘has been the panacea to my unsatisfactory reading and writing of Chinese characters’. The program’s developer claimed that ‘with continued use of JIEJING students expand their recognition and writing ability’ (Chappell, 1990: 12). However, the consensus among the four key informants seems to have been that the computer program helped the students with their recognition of characters, but not with the production of characters in handwriting. Having presented the results for the Chinese group, I will now present the findings on reading and writing in French as a second language, commencing with reading.

Reading in French The most common strategy used by the French immersion students was that of paraphrasing. As noted above, for the purposes of this analysis, instances of the students providing an English gloss to help their thinking was counted as paraphrase. For example, Peter filled in one cloze blank with ‘croyance’ by thinking ‘c’est à mon croyance, that seems to be good, belief’. John was the heaviest user of this strategy. A summary of the learners’ reading strategies can be seen in Table 5.2 below. The next most common strategy was that of relying on a knowledge of key vocabulary to help complete the blank. Note that for an example to be classified as using key vocabulary the reverse may have applied – the student was unable to complete the cloze blank because of lack of knowledge of what he or she saw as a key vocabulary item. Melissa’s protocol provided the following example: ‘the big – something – se travers – don’t know what that word is [aisément]’. Using syntax or punctuation to help fill in the blanks was used especially by Helena, but also by Melissa. One of the many examples from 113

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Table 5.2 Principal reading strategy use, think-aloud protocol, French Group

Reading Strategy Paraphrasing Key vocabulary Syntax Making an inference Structure of sentence Using the main idea Using prior knowledge Known phrases Author’s style Re-reading previous text Reading subsequent text Visualising No awareness Non-use of strategies TOTAL

Helena

Melissa

John

n

n

%

n

%

Peter %

n

Total %

n

%

4 2

15 7

4 8

11 22

17 11

46 30

1 3

6 18

26 24

23 21

11 2

37 7

7 3

19 8

1 2

3 5

1 0

6 0

20 7

17 6

1

4

4

11

0

0

0

0

5

4

0

0

1

3

1

3

2

12

4

3

1

4

0

0

0

0

3

18

4

3

0

0

1

3

3

8

0

0

4

3

1

4

0

0

1

3

0

0

2

2

1

4

1

3

0

0

0

0

2

2

1

4

0

0

0

0

0

0

1

1

1 1

4 4

0 4

0 11

0 1

0 3

0 6

0 35

1 12

1 10

0

0

3

8

0

0

1

6

4

3

26

101

36

99

37

101

17

101

115

98

114

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Helena’s protocol is the following: ‘well I know this has to be a MASCULINE word because of that [mon]’. Each of the boys used this strategy only once in the whole passage. For Peter, almost the whole process of filling in the blanks was out of his awareness. He tended to put his answers in ‘because they just fit’.

Writing in French With regard to writing in the second language, the students were asked in their interviews if they were aware of any changes in their writing over the year of the immersion program. The French immersion students concentrated on the difference between the way they approached assignment writing at the end of Year 9, compared with what they had done in Year 8. In Year 8 they had basically written what they wanted to write in English and then tried to translate it into French. By the end of Year 8 they had abandoned this strategy in favour of writing directly in French rather than effectively writing two assignments. Melissa said in the paired interview that: M:

H: M:

H: R: M: R: M: H: M:

I remember in grade eight our um Science teacher, she used to make us do um – summaries? of everything and I hated it because it used to take like two hours// it is hard to [summarise French [because I’d sit there I would go and put it- you’d have to translate it from French to English first, in the book, then you’d have to write it all in note form, in English, then you’d have to go WRITE it all in English, THEN you’d go write it all in French it used to take SO long and I hated it! and we used to do one about once a week/ yeah I can’t summarise French so when did you stop doing THAT? when did you stop translating [before you [when I finally realised that I could do it straight in French! [laughs] and can you remember when that was? was it like for the USA assignment or// oh no this is in grade eight!/ [grade eight, yeah [grade eight, yeah

However both the girls and the boys noted that there were people in the class who were still doing their assignments the old inefficient way, which they thought was ‘really stupid’. What they were doing at the 115

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end of Year 9 was doing their pre-writing planning in English, then starting to write in French, using their dictionary to look up words they were not sure of. Peter said in the boys’ paired interview that he had always worked this way (writing straight in French). John said it was ‘a waste of time to write it in English because it’s . . . wrong anyway because you know like all the words are wrong and it’s all in the wrong order? . . . I find it’s easier to just write it straight away into French.’ The ‘United States assignment’ that was referred to in the girls’ conversation above was a writing exercise which yielded very good work from all the students. One problem with writing before this was that large sections of student assignments would be plagiarised from books in French. For the major Social Education assignment in the second semester, the teacher took preventative action. The students had to imagine they were visiting the USA, and were writing letters or postcards home. Each student had to write five 100-word postcards or letters from each of five different cities in the USA. They had to write about what they had ‘visited’, and what was good or bad about living in those five cities. There was some discussion about whether students used reference books in English or French for their assignments. For some assignments they were required to refer to at least three books written in French; for others it was up to them. They seemed to prefer to use books in English and then write in French, and with all writing tasks they found it very difficult to summarise; to work out the main points from the background information. Helena spoke about this in the recall interview: H: R: H:

I find it harder for the assignments to use French books becausewhy’s that? it’s just harder to sum it up without plagiarising it but if it’s in English you can sum it up first and then translate it? (1.0) But when you’ve just got this thing in French – it’s harder to sort of sift things out?

Discussion and Conclusions In reading strategies, looking for key vocabulary and paraphrasing were the two most common strategies. The former was used more by the learners of Chinese; the latter by the learners of French. Notable differences between the learners of French and the learners of Chinese which were purely language-related (and not related to culture or 116

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classroom context) were in the area of reading and writing strategies. The strategies of ‘imagery’ and ‘visualisation’ were used very frequently by the learners of Chinese, and only once by one learner of French. The nature of the Chinese written script could account for this difference. The ideographs used in Chinese developed from pictures and there is still a great deal of meaning to be extracted from a character by the use of pictorial imagery. Even though many modern characters now bear little resemblance to the pictures from which they were originally derived, students find that knowing the etymology of the characters is an aid in their retrieval and production. The students also found that passages written in Chinese were often very difficult to decipher because so much of the Chinese culture was embedded in the language. Without an insider’s knowledge of Chinese culture it was difficult to decipher more difficult texts. Students found that the cloze passage used was an example of this. They understood and could read aloud most of the words in the passage, but were unable to get much meaning out of the whole; they would have needed the teacher’s help to fully understand the text. It was noted earlier that use of the Chinese word processor, JIEJING, was integrated into the program. Did students find use of the program to be of benefit? One of the key informants, Norman, relied very heavily on the computer program, to the extent that he was barely able to write characters freehand. He had asked to do his ASLPR writing test on the computer, and when permission to do this was denied, he refused to do the writing test. His final mark for writing was assigned from analysis of a note he wrote to the examiner, explaining why he could not do the writing test. Norman admitted in interviews that JIEJING had been ‘the panacea’ for learning characters. The other students used the program much less than Norman had done. Most of them used it in class, and a little at home, but did not rely on it for writing practice. It seems that from data collected in this study and in a previous study with Japanese immersion students (de Courcy & Birch, 1993) that use of the JIEJING program does improve students’ recognition of characters. However, for written expression, it seems to only help learners to write characters on the computer, but not freehand. To be able to draw characters without the computer still requires practice at drawing characters freehand, not just typing them on the computer keyboard. As noted in de Courcy (1992a) use of the computer does reinforce correct stroke order, but this probably needs to be followed through with practice at drawing characters by hand. 117

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To explain – in order type a character on JIEJING, one only needs to enter the first few strokes of the character, then the correct character can be selected and inserted into the text. The name, JIEJING, means ‘short cut’ in English. When students who relied on JIEJING for writing practice tried to draw characters freehand, they could often only remember these first few strokes and had difficulty filling in the rest of the character. The learners felt that for drawing characters, there is no substitute for practising by hand. Perhaps JIEJING was too much of a short cut? This discrepancy between students’ ability to write using the computer and freehand could account for the difference in their writing scores obtained immediately after their return from China and those obtained at the end of a year using the computer. They felt they were disadvantaged through not being able to use the computer for their test, as there was much more they could write with the aid of JIEJING than without it. Other changes noted over the year with both groups of students were the abandonment of translation as a writing strategy, and the production of written texts directly in the new language. As well, the use of dictionaries changed, especially with the Chinese group, with students changing from looking up a new word via its radicals, to taking the short cut and looking it up by its probable sound. The students in the French group also noted their preference for obtaining ideas for the content of their compositions from books written in English, and then writing in French, in order to avoid plagiarism. They felt they were less able to get to the main points and rewrite in their own words, if they used a French source. All of these findings – use of imagery in Chinese, difficulties associated with computer assisted writing of Chinese, and the use of source materials in one language for writing in another, are worthy of further study.

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Chapter 6

Language Learning Processes and Strategies

Introduction Chapter 6 will explore the language learning strategies and processes which were used by the eight learners in this study. As stated previously, some strategies were found to be common to the learners in a particular group, but each of the students revealed their own individual approach to learning in immersion. The term ‘process’ is used here to refer to operations used by learners to find and/or construct meaning within the context of a particular second language classroom. ‘Strategy’ refers to a single operation which is a feature of the process of meaning construction. Questions which will be explored in this chapter are: (1) Are strategies language specific? Will a ‘good’ language learner of English as a Second Language (ESL) or French be a ‘good’ language learner of Chinese? (2) Are ‘strategies’ an adequate description of how people learn? These questions will first be explored through reference to the literature on strategies, and then in relation to the learners in this study. Interest in language learning strategies has been developing over a number of years. Some of the earliest and best known work was carried out in Toronto in the mid-1970s and published as The Good Language Learner (Naiman et al., 1978). Fröhlich’s thesis (1976) was part of this study and relied on retrospective accounts provided by subjects who had been identified as being ‘good’ language learners. A questionnaire was completed by the interviewer while a taped interview was conducted. Two limitations of the research were that it was not carried out in the context (either of time or setting) in which the language was learned and that it used only data from ‘good’ language learners. 119

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Since these early days, taxonomies of strategies have been developed, first by O’Malley et al. (1985a, 1985b). These taxonomies came out of their reading of the cognitive psychology literature on learning. From this, the researchers devised lists of strategies they felt ‘good’ language learners should be using. They grouped learner strategies into three broad categories – metacognitive, cognitive and socioaffective strategies. Metacognitive strategies involve knowledge about one’s own cognitive processes, the application of this knowledge to learning tasks and the planning, monitoring and self-evaluation of these learning tasks (O’Malley et al., 1985a, 1985b). O’Malley et al. state that ‘cognitive learning strategies are often specific to distinct learning activities and would include using operations or steps in learning or problem solving that require direct analysis, transformation, or synthesis of learning materials’ (1985b: 24). The third category, socioaffective strategies involved social mediation, ‘most clearly evidenced in cooperative learning’ (O’Malley et al., 1985a). The researchers then observed learners and gave them questionnaires designed to find out their strategy use. Then there was a very brief period of strategy training (for some learners only) to see if this would improve the children’s performance. It did, but not to any great extent. Oxford (1989, 1992) has developed even more complicated and extended taxonomies, as a well as a questionnaire designed to develop an ‘inventory’ of a learner’s strategy use. Imagine you were asked to complete such a questionnaire. Would you be tempted to portray yourself in the most ‘favourable’ light? Would you try to look like a ‘good language learner’? What aspects of the way you learn a language might have been left out? How much about your own language learning habits is actually known explicitly enough by you for you to be able to answer a questionnaire? Also, is this all there is to be said about learning a language, and how helpful is the information to language learners? Wenden, for example, raises many questions about the use of research into strategies and its application in the classroom. The results of her research show that learners can tell us more about their language learning experience than merely what strategies they use. She urges teachers ‘to discover what their students believe or know about their learning’ rather than merely transmitting strategies used by other ‘successful’ language learners (1986: 199). One potential weakness of much of the research reported into learner strategies is that it tends to rely on learners’ retrospective accounts. As stated by Block, ‘retrospective reports have the advantage of keeping the process intact and the potential disadvantages of being distorted or 120

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inaccurate’ (1986: 464). This problem seems to be compounded when questionnaires are the only data collection technique used, as they are for many studies. For this reason a researcher may choose to use interviews and observation as well as, or instead of, questionnaires. An advantage of using interviews is that the ‘respondent can move back and forth in time’ (Lincoln & Guba, 1985: 273). However, informants can collate a number of different experiences into one, or alternatively ‘subjects remember what they have done in particular circumstances, and turn this information into a general procedure’ (Wenden, 1986: 196). Wenden goes on to say that ‘retrospective statements can be a mixture of personal fact, inference based on personal fact, and popular belief, with a result that is not at all related to a particular learner’s experience’ (1986: 197). Breen also feels that the way much research into classroom language learning has been conducted seems ‘to neglect the social reality of language as it is experienced and created by teachers and learners’ (1985: 141). Breen encourages us to instead adopt a view of the classroom as a culture to be explored; to discover the social context created in the classroom by teachers and learners. As well as the problems of retrospectivity mentioned above, another shortcoming of much strategies research is that it is not coupled with observation in the classroom, and the learners are therefore not questioned about situations in which they have been observed to act or interact in particular ways. Also, even if not conducted with learners of English as a second language, much of the strategies research involved the learning of Romanised script languages by learners whose first language also employed a Romanised script. What do we know of the language learning processes of adult learners faced with the task of learning a Chinese language and its ideographic script? One of the most in-depth studies is that conducted by Bell (1997), which was mentioned in the previous chapter. A particularly interesting finding of her study was that it was the acquisition of literacy in Chinese that was the most difficult part of her experience of learning Cantonese Chinese. Her interactions and achievements in the Cantonese conversation class had involved similar strategies to those she had usually found successful. It seems that even the tones of Chinese had not made the experience of listening to the new language very much different from listening to any new language. Another revealing study which deals with the learning of Chinese as a second language by adults is the study by Lowe (1987) in which he 121

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describes the experience of a group of language teachers as they reversed roles and became learners of Chinese as part of an experimental project. The learners, teacher, and observer/researcher kept journals of the language learning experience and held a debriefing session at the end of the experiment. Significant experiences were anxiety, motivation and the development of personal learning strategies. Other factors affecting the students were where they sat in the classroom, the need for diversity and responses to specific classroom activities. Students felt that ‘if you know what’s going on in your own learning, it makes you aware of what’s possibly going on in the learners in your classroom’ (Lowe, 1987: 95). However, the journals remained private to the learners, and only the words of participants in the seminar are reported. The purpose of the diary was to encourage self-reflection, not to provide experiential data. A study I conducted in 1992 as a pilot for this one (de Courcy, 1995a) involved a similar group of learners to Lowe’s. In this study, students’ journals were made available to the researcher for study and reporting. Data were also available from classroom observations, as students gave permission for their words to be used in the final report. A group interview also provided further grounding of the research in the lived experience of the learners. For the five learners involved the article reports a number of different approaches to the task of learning Chinese. Most significantly, the two learners identified by the teacher as being the best in the class used widely different approaches – one was very analytical; the other was holistic. All said that their experiences of learning European languages had not prepared them for the ask of learning Chinese, at least at the level of analysis used in the pilot. Also, they found that they were tempted to hang on too long to a Romanised script representation of the character’s sound being related to its meaning, rather than seeing meaning as residing in the ideograph. I will now turn to a discussion of the data obtained in this study, firstly discussing learning strategies in general, and then presenting each learner as a case study of their language learning process. The learners of Chinese will be presented first, followed by the learners of French. For the learning strategies analysis, the complete set of data, with the exception of the think-aloud protocols, was reread searching for learning strategies as defined by O’Malley et al. (1985a, 1985b). This analysis was quantitative in nature. Definitions of each language learning strategy and examples of each were taken from the data and placed on a matrix. Examples of each strategy were then identified on the transcripts, the numbers of each strategy used by the various informants were totalled 122

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and listed for each participant and for the group as a whole. The percentage of total strategy use was also calculated. Tables 6.1 and 6.2 show the principal strategies used by the key informants from the French and Chinese groups as evidenced by data collected from observation, interviews and diary entries. Next, the complete database was again analyzed qualitatively in order to tease out the different approaches to learning described by or evident in each learner. The aim was to have the students and their data tell us more than what strategies they use and how often, but to uncover their individual approaches to learning in a more holistic way. In particular, a search was made for comments about or examples of approaches to language learning not mentioned by O’Malley et al. (1985a, 1985b). The reader will note that there are aspects of an individual’s approach to learning that are shared by (an)other learner(s). However, in the individual case studies presented, rather than seeking for commonalities, an attempt was made to tease out the different approaches to learning described by or evident in each learner. The aim was to have the students and their data tell us more than what strategies they use and how often, but to uncover their approach to learning in a more holistic way. In this section, each learner will be presented as an individual ‘case’. It is also important to note that no one learner is being presented as having been any ‘better’ at learning Chinese or French than another. They are simply different approaches that were used by each learner.

The Learners of Chinese Table 6.1 below shows the breakdown of the different strategies used by the learners of Chinese in learning Chinese. The strategies are listed in the table from the most frequently used strategy in each category to the least frequently used. Many of these strategies reflected the learners’ individual approaches to learning which will be described in depth after discussion of the group as a whole. All the learners relied most heavily on the use of the ‘socioaffective’ learning strategies. These were ‘cooperation’, which involves ‘working with one or more peers to obtain feedback, pool information, or model a language activity’ (O’Malley et al., 1985b: 34); and ‘question for clarification’, where the student asks ‘a teacher or other native speaker for repetition, paraphrasing, explanation, and/or examples’ (O’Malley et al., 1985a: 584). For Jane and Patrick, there was an even balance between their use of cooperation and questioning the teacher. Tamara’s stated preference for working alone was borne out by the data. She only rarely made use of 123

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Table 6.1 Principal learning strategy uses (not including think-aloud data), Chinese group Jane Learning Strategy

n

%

Metacognitive learning strategies Self-evaluation 2 40 Advance 0 0 preparation Self-management 0 0 Delayed 3 60 production Selective 0 0 attention Self-monitoring 0 0

Tamara

Patrick

Norman

Total

n

n

n

n

%

%

%

%

0 5

0 36

15 1

94 6

7 6

44 37

24 12

47 23

8 0

57 0

0 0

0 0

1 0

6 0

9 3

18 6

0

0

0

0

2

13

2

4

1

7

0

0

0

0

1

2

100

14

100

16

100

16

100

51

100

7 0 4

2 3 1

7 11 3

5 7 10

13 18 27

13 7 4

30 16 9

23 17 17

15 11 11

2 13 22 11 4 7 7 9

7 2 1 2 3 4 0 2

26 7 3 7 11 15 0 7

0 7 1 1 4 0 3 1

0 18 2 2 10 0 8 2

7 0 2 3 0 2 2 0

16 0 4 7 0 4 4 0

15 15 14 11 9 9 8 7

10 10 9 7 6 6 5 4

0 0 15

0 1 0

0 3 0

0 0 0

0 0 0

4 0 0

9 0 0

4 1 0

3 1 0

101

27

100

36

100

44

99 157

98

Socioaffective learning strategies Cooperation 15 52 Questions for 14 48 clarification

6 0

100 0

11 11

50 50

15 22

40 60

47 47

50 50

Total

6

100

22

100

37

100

94

100

Total

5

Cognitive learning strategies Translation 3 Deduction 0 Recombination 2 (Hypothesis testing) Repetition 1 Inferencing 6 Imagery 10 Elaboration 5 Contextualisation 2 Note taking 3 Transfer 3 Auditory 4 representation Grouping 0 Resourcing 0 Keyword 7 Total

46

29

100

124

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125

cooperation and was not observed to question the teacher. Norman, on the other hand, frequently asked the teacher for clarification, usually in Chinese, but sometimes in English, as in the following example: N:

What’s the difference in pronunciation between boat and this thing?

The next highest total was for the ‘metacognitive’ strategy of ‘selfevaluation’, which involves ‘checking the outcomes of one’s own language learning against an internal measure of completeness and accuracy’ (O’Malley et al., 1985b: 33). However, note that more than half of the instances of self-evaluation were with Patrick. This aspect of his approach will be further discussed in his case study. The ‘cognitive strategies’ as a group were heavily used by the learners of Chinese. Translation was used most heavily. This strategy involves ‘using the first language as a base for understanding and producing the second language’ (O’Malley et al., 1985b: 33). As for translation, all the learners used translation to some extent, but the heaviest user was Norman, who accounted for more than half of the instances of translation. The next two most used cognitive strategies were ‘deduction’ and ‘recombination’. Deduction involves ‘consciously applying rules to understand or produce the second language’ (O’Malley et al., 1985b: 34). However, note that nearly all of the examples of deduction came from Patrick and Norman. There were three examples from Tamara and none from Jane. O’Malley et al. (1985b: 34) explain that recombination involves ‘combining known elements in a new way’ to construct a meaningful utterance. Patrick was the heaviest user of this strategy, with the other students providing only a few examples. As with the visualisation strategy in the analysis of the think-aloud protocol, Jane featured again as a heavy user of the ‘imagery’ strategy. This involves ‘relating new information to visual concepts in memory via familiar, easily retrievable visualizations, phrases, or locations’ O’Malley et al. (1985b: 34). Ten examples were found in her data, compared with only one or two for the other students. Illustrative examples can be found in her case study, which follows. Jane: Pictures, sounds and stories Jane was a very active learner of Chinese. While the class was under observation, she was one of the few students who would volunteer comments, or try out new expressions in Chinese. She frequently questioned the teacher as to possible uses of a new word. For example, she would ask in Chinese ‘could you say mei you miao?’ Another time 125

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she asked in Chinese whether the new phrase the teacher had been explaining meant ‘egotistical’ in English. She also displayed a high degree of cooperation with other students, principally Tamara and Kyle, with whom she usually chose to sit. She was frequently observed to ask one of the other students ‘what’s that?’ in English, either aloud or mouthing the question. She was also often observed to be working with other students in order to resolve something she or they had not understood. Even in lessons where she was struggling to understand, Jane would always try to contribute as much as she could. Even if she had to insert some words in English into an utterance, she would still try to speak in Chinese. She would try to incorporate words she had just heard into a novel utterance or an elaboration of something the teacher had said. Language learning appeared for her to be an interactive process, where producing output and getting feedback from the teacher or other students was very important to her. She said in one interview that ‘I think my attack on life is very much a- it has to be personal and involved with people’. However, the most striking aspect of her language learning ‘personality’ was in her use of imagery and stories. In her diary she wrote that ‘I tended to latch onto the anecdotal – loved stories brought up by an Irish grandmother and rich story telling background’. As an example, here is how she remembered the characters for Tang Dynasty: J: R: J:

Tang dynasty I just knew from sugar excuse me? Tang dynasty is- tang is also sugar and, we sort of- I just made a connection it’s um- it was very sweet in terms of the cultural sort of impact and that was just a-yeah.

Many of the characters used in writing Chinese have stories relating to their origins. There are books (e.g. Lindquist, 1991) which trace the characters back to their original pictures. Jane found these traditional etymological stories to be very important to her learning and retention of characters. Two examples she particularly liked and which she wrote about in her diary were ‘autumn = a tree on fire, with the leaves in different hues’ and ‘smoking =

fire and a man inside

a coffin – expired from smoking!’ However, as well as the traditional stories, Jane also made up her own stories related both to the sound of the character (as in the Tang example above) or to the image the character conjured up for her. Here are a few examples from her diary: 126

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e.g. the pictorial association of the character for five wu looking like a bomb, having five actual parts to its character (four strokes) and its sound not unlike the word ‘war’ in English; san (3) looking like a sandwich, the two pieces of bread and filling making three. [‘five’ =

; ‘three’ =

She also wrote that: sometimes sounds were associated over to ones we already knew [in Chinese]: ‘the economy’ in Hanyu [Chinese] sounds like ‘golden chicken’ and ‘Marco Polo’ sounds like ‘horse-dog-radish’ Pennycook (personal communication, October 1995) notes that, ‘interestingly, she was able to draw on part of her cultural/personal background to develop useful strategies for dealing with character learning’. Her diary entries and other addenda to tape transcripts contained many other fascinating stories and associations she made for Chinese characters and sounds. She said in an interview, however, that she wasn’t very good at making up stories! Jane’s and Tamara’s use of ‘association’ as a retrieval strategy was described in detail in Chapter 5 above. Jane also liked to remember ‘chunks’ of language which were onomatopoeic. She wrote in an addendum to her interview in May, that: Phrases/chunks were other pieces I latched onto. Like (I don’t know the characters!) wayle qiao dong de gua gua jiao! (In order to be beautiful, shiver shiver) the [Shanghai] girls were into tiny skirts in winter. This focus on the sound of a character was evident with Jane from the very first week of Chinese language learning in 1992. In a comment made to me after a class observed on 24 January 1992, Jane noted that she was finding it very hard to let go of a phonetic representation of the character – she still saw meaning as residing in the Romanised letters, (either pinyin or her own transliteration) not in the character. This reliance on seeing the character written phonetically lessened over the years, but Jane remained very ‘sound oriented’ in her approach to language learning. Some of the other aspects of Jane’s approach to learning which were different from those of her fellows were self-evaluation and delayed production. Although her classmates ‘were getting really stressed over the word “exam” . . . I don’t see it as a particularly threatening thing at 127

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all’ (May interview). She noted that she did not care how well she did, as long as she could see how she was progressing. This was, she felt, because she had spent many years teaching in a culture (Aboriginal communities) where ‘singling out and being BEST is not important and maybe some of that’s rubbed off’. Regarding delayed production, she noted several times that she would have preferred more time at the beginning of the course ‘to listen to sounds and the language instead of performing’. However, seeing Jane in operation in the classroom over the last two years, it is hard to imagine her sitting back and just listening! All of the things that Jane does in learning a language relate to the so-called Good Language Learner strategies. However, she was by no means the most advanced student in the class, nor did she make the rapid progress that could be expected had she been learning a different type of language. She experienced a great deal of frustration (as did her teachers) as they tried to adapt to one another’s teaching/learning preferences. Tamara: Living in a comfortable world Tamara had developed her own personal way of learning of Chinese while living in China. She felt that the strategies she had been using were successful for her and she was very reluctant to abandon them when she came into the immersion program. The conflict between her own personal preference and the demands of the immersion setting caused her great stress at the beginning of the year. Later in the year she had learned to let go, relax and just do her best. However, as the year drew to a close, and the prospect of the Chinese proficiency exam loomed ever closer, she had returned once again to her preferred ways of learning. Tamara was not a ‘group person’ at all. She far preferred working on her own to working in a group. She was well organised and rarely came to class without having prepared the lesson. She liked to look up any new words before she arrived in the immersion classroom. She did not like to have to only rely on guessing at meanings and inferencing. She knew the conditions under which she felt she learned best and tried to arrange for the existence of those conditions. One of those conditions was her need to be able to concentrate. She did not cope well with all the joking around in the class because ‘I need to have my attention on what I’m doing’. She also liked stability and predicability. She did not like it when things changed ‘at the drop of a 128

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hat’. She said in her November interview, ‘how can our whole lessons change? . . . maybe I like stability’. She felt that because her preferred learning conditions had not been met by the course that she ‘went backwards’. In November, she stated that: I came to the conclusion that I could stay home by myself, and do more study and learn more, than coming here . . . and I wouldn’t be, here all day, I’d just I could have a tutor, have an hour with the person and go off and do three hours work by myself and I’d be [further] ahead than this group, because we just sit there and you just sort of ‘oh yeah’ you just sort of take it IN The way in which Tamara preferred to work was the following: T: R: T: R: T: R: T:

R: T:

well, I- I normally get a book, look at the new words, study those so you have the new words separately? oh, well – a text book, and then you know the words- after the passage/ oh right and you go and just look at the new words mm mm? and – you just sort of . . . it’s not that- it’s not that difficult where you just- mainly just come across a new one ‘oh what’s that one again?’ you just go back and look oh I see, right so I- I live in a fairly comfortable world.

However, as she stated herself in the May interview, Tamara was ‘a person that doesn’t give up.’ So she thought ‘I’ve got to keep going and try to adapt’. In her diary on 22 April she wrote: Tonight I realise that I am going through a paradigm shift in learning. I have been fighting and using old study habits from China and now I realise I must try and [adapt] to the new methodology and also towards learning in a group. She did adapt to a certain extent, but still was very quiet in class, speaking less than any of the other informants. The others noted in the recall interview (three quarters of the way through the immersion course) that ‘Tamara has relaxed though she was very stressed at the beginning of the year. She was worried that she had to take everything in’. Tamara agreed and noted that by September if the teacher asked her a question she would say ‘oh, I don’t know, what’s it matter?’ whereas 129

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once she would have gotten upset and thought ‘oh! I can’t do this! I’m going!’ During the year, Tamara arranged for the existence of several conditions which helped her to cope better in the class. One was the arrival in Australia of her Chinese husband. This helped her both with personal balance and with the advance preparation she liked to do. Jane noted in the group recall interview that Tamara and her husband ‘often go through it, so she usually knows here, where she’s at on the page, so that’s probably a relief’. A second factor which helped Tamara was going along to extra Chinese classes on the weekend, run by a very experienced teacher of Chinese. These classes fitted with her preferred way of learning, and she was one of the more advanced students in the class. She said ‘I’m getting a lot more confidence with Harry’. The third condition she arranged was her access outside of class to Chinese language textbooks, which she liked to study on her own. Tamara was a very organised learner, who knew how she learned best, and therefore she arranged things in order to allow her to ‘live in a comfortable world’. Pennycook (personal communication, October 1995) notes that ‘this kind of ‘hard work’ approach is particularly necessary for Chinese, but it is not one that might transfer from current language learning experiences in non-traditional classrooms’. Patrick: Seeking for perfection The strange thing about Patrick’s case study was that the interview data and the observational data tended to contradict one another. In interviews, he came across as a very serious student, concerned about speaking correctly and so forth. However, under observation he was sometimes the class clown. Jane had earlier described him as Acting Pulse Physician. In class, if there was a joke or a comment to be made about anything, it was almost invariably Patrick who made it. Sometimes he made the jokes in Chinese, as part of his hypothesis testing strategy; at other times in English. Patrick also appeared to be one of the more advanced students in the class, and often was able to help those who were struggling with explanations or by asking the teacher a question which would enable to others to hear more of an explanation than they otherwise would have done. Also, in his interviews he talked of how he used inferencing and context clues to get meaning out of spoken or written text. He also made 130

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comments like, ‘to me in immersion you’ve got to think Chinese, so you don’t think, translating’. Yet, in class and in the think-aloud protocol he was constantly checking his dictionary for the meaning of words in context. Sometimes under observation he even read out the dictionary meaning in English for his classmates. In his think-aloud interview, Patrick explained his technique for looking up the dictionary: P:

what I do is go and- and look up, not individual characters because I know what each of the individual CHARACTERS mean . . . but look up to see if the collocationsHe went on to explain that: when I look in the dictionary I always find out things, other words that have NOTHING to do with the text and I start thinking- and, that’s how I build up a lot of my own vocabulary it’s just by looking at- I- I’ll sit here and think ‘oh yeah I’d like to know that’

So, although Patrick talked about the importance of inferencing, he liked to know exactly what a word meant. He was also keen to expand his vocabulary, and he used the dictionary to help him in both these aims. Perhaps the clue to this apparently contradictory evidence is in the amount Patrick talks about self-evaluation. He was very concerned with his proficiency in Chinese, and wanted to be able to use ‘more adult language’. In class he appeared to be one of the more advanced students, especially at the beginning of the year. It was noted that he was able to contribute quite long sentence answers, when other students were still at the one or two word stage. However, in November he said that ‘after three years of Chinese I’m just NOT satisfied’. He said this was ‘because I know my Chinese is not correct’. He added, ‘I wish I could speak better, that I could say things better and express myself better’. Patrick’s learning of Chinese seemed to involve a search, if not for perfection, at least for that elusive quality of ‘fluency’. After the course he was planning on doing ‘some formal study of Chinese’ because he wanted ‘some recognition on paper for what I’ve done’. It was interesting that he did not see the immersion program as ‘formal study of Chinese’. There are many contradictions in Patrick’s data. This has interesting implications for other types of data collection which relate to strategies research. Patrick had been studying language teaching methodology and learning about communicative approaches to language teaching and so 131

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on. However, we must remember that his background was as a learner of Latin. When he did his seminar for the methodology class, he gave a Latin lesson and focussed on the grammar-translation method. He did an excellent presentation. Language learning, in his experience, was to do with getting the right answer, being correct. This search for perfection could also explain his frustration at the perceived lack of structure in the course, and his preference for deductive methods of teaching and learning over inductive, holistic methods. However, we must note that these methods worked for Patrick, who became a fluent speaker and writer of Chinese. Norman: Building blocks and blackouts Norman had very strongly-held beliefs about language learning, and particular, structured ways in which he went about learning a language. The main difference between Norman and the others was in the amount of time and effort he put into preparing for class. If the teacher gave the students a handout relating to the next class, most of the learners would look at it, work out any new or forgotten characters, and wait until the lesson to do most of their learning. There they would rely on inferencing, recombination and questioning to understand the text and acquire the new language. Norman, on the other hand, would retype the whole lesson. He would organise it into columns with the Chinese characters on the left, then the pinyin pronunciation and then the English translation. He wrote in his case study that he ‘would conservatively spend fifteen to twenty hours per week working on characters, sentences and stories’. In the recall interview Patrick noted that ‘he goes though EVERYTHING and translates EVERYTHING’. Norman said in his November interview that he felt that ‘for an immersion event to be successful, there’s got to be a fair bit of preparation take place by the learner, prior to that lesson or event’. However, under observation in the classroom, this huge amount of preparation did not seem to help him to understand the lesson any better than those students who only looked up the new words. If anything, it was ‘information overload’ and made him only more confused. During the lessons, Norman was constantly asking the teacher in Chinese, ‘what’s that character?’ or ‘what does that mean?’, even when the word(s) in question had just been presented or were even on his sheet. He had no strategies for remembering characters he had seen before and forgotten. In the think-aloud he called this coming to a ‘blackout’, where he knew 132

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he had seen a character before but could not remember it. For most of the year the only strategy he used for remembering characters was ‘writing them out, drilling . . . and some tapes’. Towards the end of the course he also started going to Harry’s weekend classes, and discovered that learning the etymology of the characters helped him with ‘memorising, understanding and contextualisation’. During one interview Norman commented, with some bitterness, that he felt his ability to read had been hampered by the emphasis on oral ability while he was living in China. He had not been able to use a dictionary during his time in China. Chinese–English dictionaries have the characters in the Chinese section organised in alphabetical order by the transliteration of their sound in pinyin. Norman, however, felt that his learning had been held back by his lack of knowledge of pinyin. (The original course coordinator had counselled against the use of pinyin, believing it would hamper students’ ability to read characters.) N:

as far as reading goes I didn’t- didn’t get into it at all in fact I could not USE a dictionary [thumps dictionary] until I came back – I couldn’t even use a dictionary because I didn’t use pinyin and the dictionary is based on pinyin, right? so I- I didn’t know how to look up a dictionary the whole time I was over there so there were SO many lost opportunities . . . maybe they weren’t lost opportunities, maybe . . . the best thing was to get an auditory, um, language creation process going? – but I would have preferred to have at least have been given the opportunity to know how to read.

Norman’s approach was very deductive. He felt that ‘you’ve got to provide the correct le- learning strategies for starters . . . I think they’ve got to be given, at LEAST an IDEA of one or two PROVEN learning strategies’ (November interview). He also felt that learners should be provided with ‘the basics’ – rules of grammar and vocabulary. At one stage during the November interview he became quite vehement about this: N:

R: N:

the problems that this course has HAD (2.0) are primarily based in foundations . . . you MUST, you MUST [thumping table] have building blocks upon which you can build and what do you think of as building blocks? [thinks] um, characters

However, in his case study written in November he noted that ‘one weakness I have had as a language learner is that I want to hold onto the Declarative knowledge strategy for too long’. He defined ‘declarative knowledge’ as ‘knowing that’ which to him meant ‘internalised L2 133

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rules and memorised chunks of language’. He also found that he had relied too heavily on using the computer for writing Chinese. When it came to the end of year writing test, which had to be hand written, his writing could only be assessed on the note he wrote to the examiner saying why he could not do the writing test! He wrote in his case study that ‘writing and reading Chinese has always been difficult for me this year without the aid of the JIEJING computer program.’ Norman was a very highly motivated learner, who worked very hard, but who was probably very poorly served by the lack of understanding of Chinese language learning processes. No-one thought to tell Norman that reading about or making up stories to go with characters was a useful way of remembering them. No-one showed him how to look up a dictionary, by using pinyin to help to pronounce unfamiliar characters. No-one told him that writing the characters on the computer would only help him with recognition and not help him to write them by hand. For someone like Norman, with no experience of gaining proficiency in another language before he began to learn Chinese, the results of this study, it is hoped, will provide some clues to teachers and learners about how they might approach the task of learning Chinese. I will now turn to a discussion of the results pertaining to strategies and processes obtained from the French immersion students. As with the Chinese group, the quantitative data will be presented first, followed by the qualitative case studies.

The Learners of French Table 6.2 shows the breakdown of the different strategies used by the learners of French as observed in the classroom and discussed in interviews. As with the section on the Chinese learners above, strategies have been listed in order of frequency of use. The most frequently recorded strategy for the students of French was the cognitive strategy of translation, either as a receptive or a productive strategy. However, as was noted in Chapter 5 above, the use of this strategy decreased as the year went on. The use of this strategy was fairly evenly spread across all four learners, with Helena using it the least. The other cognitive strategy which ranked highly was recombination, where learners try out hypotheses about the second language. Use of this strategy was not evenly spread, with most of the examples coming from Helena’s data. As with the Chinese group, socioaffective strategies were very important to the students of French. Both cooperation with other students and 134

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Table 6.2 Principal learning strategy uses (not including think-aloud data), French group

Learning strategy

Peter*

John

n

n

%

Metacognitive learning strategies Self-management 0 0 Advance 2 33 preparation Selective 0 0 attention Delayed 0 0 production Self-monitoring 2 33 Self evaluation 2 33 Total

6

Cognitive learning strategies Auditory 1 representation Elaboration 1 Contextualisation 0 Resourcing 1 Inferencing 1 Transfer 1 Translation 8 Imagery 0 Note taking 0 Repetition 1 Deduction 1 Recombination 1 (Hypothesis testing) Keyword 1 Total

17

6

Melissa

Total

n

n

n

%

%

%

5 1

42 8

2 0

22 0

1 0

10 0

8 3

22 8

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

3

30

3

8

1 5

8 42

5 2

56 22

4 2

40 20

12 11

32 30

99

12

100

9

100

10

100

37

100

6

1

4

0

0

1

6

3

3

6 0 6 6 6 47 0 0 6 6 6

2 0 2 6 0 7 0 1 4 0 3

8 0 8 23 0 27 0 4 15 0 12

2 2 2 1 1 4 0 1 3 2 8

7 7 7 4 4 14 0 4 11 7 29

1 0 0 1 0 8 0 1 2 0 1

6 0 0 6 0 44 0 6 11 0 6

6 2 5 9 2 27 0 3 10 3 13

7 2 6 10 2 30 0 3 11 3 15

6

0

0

2

7

3

17

6

7

101

26

101 28

101

18

102

89

99

Socioaffective learning strategies Cooperation 2 33 Questions for clarification 4 67 Total

%

Helena

100

8

53

4

67

6

48

20

48

7

47

2

33

9

52

22

52

15

100

6

100

15

100

42

100

Note: Less information is available for Peter because he was absent for the four videotaped lessons.

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asking the teacher for clarification were used with almost equal frequency. However, there were differences between the students. Helena tended not to ask the teacher for clarification and Peter tended to work things out on his own rather than asking another student for help. John was the heaviest user of cooperation and Melissa asked the most questions of the teacher. Of the metacognitive strategies, self-monitoring was the most frequently observed or commented on. Helena and Melissa recorded most instances of this technique, with Peter and John rarely using it. All the students used self-evaluation, however, making judgements throughout the year as to their progress in French. It is interesting to note that the strategy of imagery was not used at all by the learners of French. I will now turn to the presentation of the individual cases. Peter: Using a second language to learn a third For Peter, much of what he had to do in and out of the classroom in order to learn French was ‘basic’ or ‘logique’. He had already gained a high level of competence in his second language, English, and learning a third language usually involved ‘no particular strategy’ (May interview). Peter’s first language was Hungarian, and he had started to learn English when he commenced primary school. Peter said in his May interview that his increasing vocabulary in French had ‘actually enhanced [his] ability in the English language . . . because a lot of English comes from French’. Relating his third language, French, to his second language, English, was in fact his principal strategy use. If he could not think of a word in French he would think of it in English ‘and just think, and think, and it just comes to me from thinking about it in English, basically’. In order to learn in the immersion class, he felt that he needed to ‘listen in class and read a bit and that’s all that’s required’ (May interview). He usually came to school prepared because for him the most difficult part in immersion is ‘when you haven’t done your homework and you come to school the next day and you try to disguise the fact that you haven’t done it and then she finds out!’ (Recall interview). The other students and the teachers admired Peter for his ability in French, with John describing him in two interviews as ‘a walking French dictionary’. It is regrettable that more data was not available on Peter’s classroom language use, because of his absence during the lessons which were videorecorded. From comments made during the stimulated recall 136

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session, it would seem that Peter was usually very active verbally during class: P: R: P: R: P: R: J: R: P: R: P: H:

I’m being unusually quiet in this video! well, you’re not there [laughter] well that might have something to do with it! I don’t think you were in that one [Peter [that’s probably the quietest day I’ve ever had! yeah [um [the most peaceful day WE’VE ever had! is this a normal- thing that happens in the lesson, that I’ve been [seeing [no, because I’m usually here! yeah. well what would normally happen if you were there, Peter? um I’d be answering all the questions now/ oh get out! [laughter]

In the few lessons during which Peter was observed, he was active in answering questions and asking questions to clarify his understanding of the topic in general and vocabulary items in particular. John: Getting by with help John did not find the program easy; he said in the recall interview that for him, ‘reading, answering questions . . . all that’s hard I reckon’. John was very self-deprecating about his ability in French and his ability in the classroom. For him, watching the video of himself in class was a revelation. He watched himself answering several of the teacher’s questions correctly and was amazed. He said, ‘I didn’t think I answered ANY questions!’ However, he did acknowledge in his interview that he was good at Maths, as he ‘usually [gets] that finished before everyone else’. John was a very social learner; cooperation with his peers and questioning the teacher for clarification were the main strategies he used. He and Tim (when they weren’t engaged in one of their running gags) worked together to find the answer to the tasks set in class. They were often observed to have their heads together over a piece of work. However, John felt that his main problem was laziness. He said, ‘I sort of let things slip, and then wait until the last moment to sort of do it’. He found the hardest time for him was coming back after a holiday break, when he would have to become accustomed to the sounds of the French language again. For the first half of the first week back he would 137

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‘usually ignore what the teacher’s saying, unfortunately’. He said that this was had ‘a real bad habit that I’ve been trying to break’ because it meant that by the end of the week he had to ‘go home and study this!’ John said in his interview that he felt that he needed to read more French in order to help him with vocabulary and comprehension in general. His biggest problem, he felt, was not understanding the question. When he was working in class or at home he often could not work out what he was required to do. He gave the following incident as an example: A few days ago in Social Science. I paired up with Peter and he just sort of, you know, looked at the [question] . . . And then he sort ofhe understood the question and I go ‘I know what that means!’ like, because I looked at the question and I didn’t- couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I could have read it backwards and I wouldn’t have known the difference and um he’d look at it and he’d piece it all together and he goes ‘oh this means this’ and I go ‘oh!’ so I go ‘I knew that’ and I could’ve done that easily if I’d just known what the question was. And that’s probably the worst part about it, not knowing. From John’s self-report data, he found it easier to understand what was going on and what to do when this related to auditory input. He was quite skilled at using inference in such situations. However, he seems to have found inferencing far more difficult when faced with written French. Helena: Wonderful words Helena was one of the few students in this study who was often observed sitting alone in class. She was supposed to sit next to Tim, according to the teacher’s plan, but preferred to sit alone rather than sit near him. There was apparently a need to duck constantly while sitting near Tim (because of the ink ball wars mentioned in Chapter 3 on the classroom context). However, although she preferred to sit with her friends in class, she was able to follow the lesson and participate well, even when sitting by herself. Like John, Helena was surprised when she saw herself answering the teacher’s questions on the video. She said, ‘I answered two questions then!’ Like John, she deprecated her ability in French, saying, for example, ‘and they just can’t pronounce it, like me’, in the paired interview. However, observation of her working in the classroom showed her frequently answering questions, using either recombination or elaboration 138

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in her answers. Sometimes, Helena’s hand would be raised in order to answer a question and the teacher would try to get other students to volunteer an answer. Poor Helena would sit there with her hand hanging in the air and eventually be allowed to answer the question. Probably because Helena was so often sitting by herself in class, there were not many observations of her using the cooperative strategy. In her interview, however, she stressed the amount of help she and her friends gave each other. This help seems to have been exchanged more out of class time than in. Indeed, during her two years in immersion, Helena found that her study habits had changed a lot. She said in her interview that ‘in grade 8 I- I didn’t use to study as much. So, I sort of worked out better ways to study and everything’. For Helena, learning French continued to excite her. In her interview she said that learning in French was ‘more interesting in a way like to study, because there’s all these wonderful words!’ In her think-aloud protocol, Helena also revealed herself as a more analytical learner than the other students. She preferred to use syntax to work out the missing words in the cloze passage. Unlike John, her strategies seemed to be more visual and analytical than auditory and social. Melissa: Aiming high Melissa seemed to be the most highly motivated of the four students of French in the study. Early in the year she said in her interview that it was ‘really exciting’ to understand what the students on exchange from New Caledonia were saying. She was very concerned about ‘saying it right’ and liked the fact that this interaction with native speaking peers ‘gives you a goal’. During classes she carefully monitored her output, and was often observed to share glances, comments or giggles with her friend after answering or asking a question or reading aloud. She was very concerned about getting good marks and doing well and was highly organised. She made the following observation about being in immersion during her May interview: I think it’s changed the way I THINK about things a bit because – it’s just something very different and you end up learning a lot about France too, and I think you have to be a lot more mature, to um be able to, like, sit down and do what you have to do because it’s much harder than in English. 139

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Most of Melissa’s language learning strategies and experiences involved the use of her first language, English, though her reliance on these decreased as the year went on. Of the four students, Melissa reported the most ‘leakage’ of French into English in her written work. In the paired interview she said: I do it more writing . . . in English and for ‘and’ I always put «et» . . . and you put different endings like for ic you always put q-u-e at the end of it and then you get mixed with the spelling too with words that are like [yeah] similar like classic I always like- can’t remember if it’s q-u-e or . . . She was able to relate new French words to similar sounding words in English, and sometimes used direct translation into English and reliance on the dictionary for understanding of written passages. There was one occasion, however, when this did not work for her. The class had been studying the Middle Ages period in history and the word donjon, ‘keep’ came up frequently. The concept of ‘keep’ as in a fortified tower was foreign, even in English, and she just could not remember the French word. She described her frustration in her interview: Lots of words you come across them ALL the time and you – don’t find out what they mean for ages. I know one word that in English, that ‘keep’ – I’ve been trying to work out for ages, and I found out today and I’ve forgotten [laughs] And that’s another thing too, because you have to see a word lots and lots before you, like, remember – what it is, and oh that’s hard, especially if you’re asking about the same word over and over again, you keep forgetting it. But- and words that in French are like they are in English, they’re easy except when you’re trying to work them out from English to French when you see them In interviews, Melissa expressed her need for lots of repetition, both of written and auditory input. Also, she said in the paired interview that ‘if it’s hard, if it’s- if I don’t understand it at all then I panic, if I- if it’s just too hard to understand then I switch off’. Melissa appeared to be a very good student, but would not answer in class unless she was sure of giving the correct answer. For example, the following exchange between Melissa and the teacher was recorded during one of the taped lessons: T: M:

fonction de la bile? [function of bile?] j’ai oublié [I’ve forgotten] 140

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T:

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non, tu n’as pas oublié [no, you haven’t forgotten]

Melissa was the only one of the four French learners to seem to prefer to delay production. She seemed to become stressed when required to read aloud, as she felt a need to monitor her pronunciation. This led to her not having the time to comprehend the message of the passage she had read aloud. One of Melissa’s biggest concerns was the question of transfer of lexicon from one language to another. She worried that when she left immersion and went on to study Biology or Zoology in Year 11 she would not understand what was going on because ‘I have NO idea of what things are in English? and it takes me ten minutes to work out what “le foie” is and my mother thinks that’s hilarious – I can’t explain anything in English!’ Her main worry was over words like “le foie” (the liver) which sounded nothing like the equivalent word in English. To sum up, Melissa was a hard-working, highly-motivated student who had a low tolerance for ambiguity. She spent quite a bit of time in class feeling ‘confused’ or ‘frustrated’, but would persist with learning French in immersion in order to one day ‘get it right’.

Summary and Conclusions Most of the communication strategies the students used were in the socioaffective domain, involving questioning the teacher and each other. They were also fairly heavy users of metacognitive strategies. They had learned what conditions favoured their learning and they organised themselves and their setting so those conditions were met. Other strategies were the cognitive ones of translation, hypothesis testing, repetition and inferencing. Students used a variety of retrieval strategies for producing spoken and written language. Early in their immersion experience, students tended to use their first language as the basis for retrieval and production of the second language. As time went on the strategy of recombination or hypothesis testing became more popular. As for individual ways of making sense of the classroom, for the eight different learners, a number of different approaches was found, ranging from very holistic learners to very analytical, translation dependent learners. An interesting insight to be gleaned from this research is the difference between adult and adolescent learners in the immersion situation. 141

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It was noted that the learners appeared to be at similar stages in their linguistic development. However, one wondered whether there would be any observable differences in their language learning experiences that relate directly to the age of the learners. Brown (1985), in a study comparing language learning behaviours in adults noted that there were differences between the younger and older adults. The ‘younger’ learners in her study were aged 18–25. The ‘older’ learners were aged 55 and over. She found that there were differences between the two groups. Results were based on examination of the learners’ language learning journals and of the requests they made in the classroom. The older learners were ‘outward focussed, depending on external factors to make the learning possible or easier’ (Brown, 1985: 275). A younger learner, on the other hand, was ‘more responsible for his or her own learning, a learner who is internally figuring out how to handle the information coming up’ (Brown, 1985: 276). While the younger learners asked questions about particular vocabulary items, the older learners were less specific and tended to ask for global repetition. On the other hand, the older learners tended to ask specific questions about grammar items. Generally speaking, the younger learners were concerned about the amount of input they received, while the older learners were concerned with changing the kind of input they received. Was there any evidence of these differences in the adolescent and adult learners studied? The adolescent learners were aged 14–15, and the adult learners were aged 30–38. One difference noted was that if the adult learners did not understand what was going on in the classroom they tended to blame external factors such as the teacher or the program, whereas the adolescents tended to blame themselves. Also, specific requests for explanation of grammar items came from some of the adult students, but not from Jane, who was a more holistic learner, nor from the adolescent learners. The adults did often try to change the type of input they were receiving, but with little success. However, both groups of students used similar numbers of cognitive and metacognitive strategies for learning the languages. They showed that both adults and adolescents were using internal processing and were responsible for their own learning. Also, the adult students in this study asked many specific questions about particular vocabulary items, rather than asking for global repetition. It is concluded that there were some differences in the learning experiences of the adult and adolescent learners, but not to the extent of the

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differences found in Brown’s study. Perhaps this lack of difference could be attributed to the type of program the students were following (immersion vs. traditional) or to the difference between the ages of the two groups (16–24 years difference in my study vs. 30+ years difference in Brown). The immersion experience may lead to more similarities than differences in the ways in which adults and adolescents approach learning in that context. These last two chapters relating to strategies (Chapters 5 and 6) have provided a small window on the processes of learning both French and a character based language like Chinese in immersion. More in-depth studies are needed, in order to learn as much as we can about how learners approach the task. We should not hypothesise that there are particular strategies which are ‘good’ language learning strategies for immersion, and try to train all language learners to use them. Strategies may not be universal, and the learning of ideographic characters seems to demand different ones. For example, for Chinese, it could be that the conscious teaching of the etymology of the characters, and encouraging students to make up stories about the characters will aid in their retention. Students seem to need to be taught how to be independent learners of Chinese – how to access a dictionary, for example, which is a very different process in Chinese to the one used for a language which uses a phonetic script. Research implications indicate there is still much to be learned about what happens in immersion classrooms, especially regarding older learners and languages with ideographic scripts. As Tardif states, there is a ‘need for more longitudinal classroom-based research . . . that would help us better understand the communicative processes at work in an immersion classroom’ (Tardif, 1994: 477).

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Chapter 7

Discussion and Conclusions

Discussion In this book, I have described how I went about exploring the ways in which students learn in immersion programs in two languages – French and Chinese. In Chapter 3, I discussed how the learners responded to their particular learning context. I explored what aspects of the context created in the classroom students felt were helpful to their language learning, and what aspects were not helpful. Chapter 4 described how the learners experienced the process of learning a second language, and focussed on those experiences which they considered important for learning a language in an immersion context. Chapter 5 dealt with the strategies students used to make sense of reading and writing in the new language, with Chapter 6 describing their learning strategies as applied to the situation in general, and their own particular approaches to learning. Not only in this introductory paragraph, but throughout the whole book, the word ‘context’ has appeared very frequently. I would like to spend some space explaining why this is so. I believe that a consideration of context is of major importance in language research. As Hymes notes: one cannot simply take separate results from linguistics, psychology, sociology, ethnology, as given, and seek to correlate them . . . one needs to investigate directly the use of language in contexts of situation. (1974: 3) I also believe that context is an active, creative phenomenon. As explained by Berger and Luckmann, rather than experiencing context as ‘out there’, an individual ‘simultaneously externalises his own being into the social world and internalises it as objective reality’ (1966: 119). 144

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Green and Wallat (1981: 176) took the definition further and describe contexts as ‘socially active entities constructed by the students and teachers as they engage in social interactions in the classroom to achieve specific instructional goals’. They go on to say that ‘context, defined in this manner does not equate with lesson’ and that ‘research has shown that contexts shift for the participants within as well as across the boundaries of lessons’ (Green & Wallat, 1981: 176). I reiterate that my results are based on the contexts in which the study was carried out. They are based on these settings, for these students, at this time. Data collected with different students, in a different situation, in different languages, could perhaps yield different results. As I stated earlier in this book, this type of ethnographic, phenomenological research does not seek to establish universals; rather it seeks to describe as fully as possible the situation in which the research was carried out. Having described the context of situation in enough depth, it may be that my results are transferable to other, similar, contexts. In Chapter 3, I stated that for this study, I had decided to take up the challenge laid down by Mike Breen in 1985, to adopt a new view of the classroom and attempt to explore language learning in a different way. I will explain here the nature of that challenge and the different stance one needs to take up in order to reveal new insights about language learning, and, in particular, to do what has so seldom been done and explore learning from the learners’ point of view. I will also discuss what I believe I found by adhering to the principles of the research orientation I adopted. Most of the currently available literature on the learning of second languages takes one of two views of the language classroom: most imply a view of the classroom as ‘laboratory’. Breen feels that this metaphor of the classroom ‘implies the teacher as surrogate experimental psychologist and learners as subject to particular input treatments or behavioral reinforcement’ (1985: 137). In this model will be found experiments conducted in an artificial laboratory setting as well as in ‘the classroom as laboratory’. Breen believes that: the metaphor of the classroom as provider of optimal input or reinforcer of good strategies [that is, the classroom as laboratory] is inadequate. It reduces the act or experience of learning a language to linguistic or behavioural conditioning somehow independent of the learner’s social reality. (1985: 138) A smaller number of studies, also often using statistical methods, see the classroom as ‘discourse’. If using this metaphor of the classroom, 145

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‘the researcher explores the classroom as a text’ (Breen, 1985: 139). Features of the interactions between learners and teachers, such as error correction, question types and student participation are examined. Much of the research based on this metaphor uses an observation scheme to note down teacher and student ‘moves’ such as the classic Initiation– Response–Feedback move. The tendency is for the number of different types of moves to be quantified in some way, and for judgments about the classroom to be based on this analysis. Kumaravadivelu (1999: 455) notes that the ‘theoretical foundation governing classroom interaction analysis can be traced to behavioristic psychology, which emphasises the objective analysis of observable behavior’. The metaphor of the classroom as discourse is also seen as having limitations because ‘most current classroom-oriented research paradoxically reduces the external dimensions of classroom communication, the actual social event, to observable features of the talk between teachers and learners’ (Breen, 1985: 140). I contend that these directly observable features of talk in the classroom provide only a partial view of the learning process. Breen states that both of the metaphors of the classroom situation which I have just described ‘seem to neglect the social reality of language as it is experienced and created by teachers and learners’ (1985: 141). He claims that we need a definition of the classroom that will ‘encompass both cognitive and social variables’ (1985: 141). He proposes that researchers should base their explorations into language learning in classrooms on a view of ‘the classroom as coral gardens’. Interest in Breen’s ‘coral gardens’ metaphor, which I used as the conceptual framework for this book, has recently been revived by Kumaravadivelu in his 1999 article on ‘critical classroom discourse analysis’. This view of the classroom asserts a number of propositions which influence the way researchers will approach a classroom, and the results that will be found through taking this approach. I will outline those propositions, and comment on how the results I obtained relate to them. First, the researcher cannot assume that the patterns of interactions which seem significant for an outsider have the same significance for the participants. An example of this was found in Chapter 3, where my perception was that the Chinese teacher was teaching content, but the students’ perception was that the focus was on vocabulary and grammar. Second, each learner responds differently to the situation: ‘although the language class may be one social situation, it is a different social context for all those who participate in it’ (Breen, 1985: 144). This can be seen in the individual case studies presented in Chapter 6. Although 146

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each of the four learners from each setting was in the same class, with the same teachers, following the same program, their responses to the situation, and the strategies they adopted, were quite varied. We also need to recognise that the psyche or personality of the group is more than the sum of all the members of the group. A group can almost take on a ‘personality’ of its own, which may differ from the personalities of individual group members. This was again particularly evident in the Chinese immersion group – which developed a reputation as a ‘difficult’, ‘demanding’ group, even though individual members did not fit this stereotype. As well, participation in the language classroom involves the individual participants being evaluated against certain criteria, overt and covert, group and individual. We see this revealed in the French immersion group, where members of the class are continually evaluating one another in terms of pronunciation, structure and so on. One’s membership of that group was also important, with only John ‘daring’ to move outside the group to establish friendships with some ‘other cooler blokes’. It is also seen in the Chinese group, with the informants evaluating other students’ use of particular learning strategies against what they had been told ‘good language learners’ did. Within the class, there are various subgroups which express different roles and identities (Breen, 1985). These may be defined by such things as gender, out-of-class interests or language proficiency. In the Chinese group, we find the ‘Wuhan group’ and the ‘Shanghai group’, which felt their identities quite strongly, even though, as stated earlier, to an outside observer, their grades did not separate them into the same groups. Perception, and identification with the experiences that were shared in the two different cities, were important to the students. There are rules and routines which must be followed by participants in the class, and each new class ‘reinvents’ these rules and constructs new routines. One ‘rule’ which was consistent across the two groups was that the teacher must speak in the new language and not code switch. Students were ‘allowed’ to use English to answer a question, but the teacher’s job was to move them back into the new language, ‘bridging’ between the first and second languages. Breen also notes that the culture of the classroom is jointly constructed: ‘What someone learns in a classroom will be a dynamic synthesis of individual and collective experience’ (1985: 148). Tardif and Weber state that ‘making sense of what is going on in the classroom is often very much a collective process’ (1987: 4). This was seen in Chapter 3, where the learners’ responses to the learning context were discussed. The importance of 147

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one’s fellow students to one’s learning was emphasised, both in terms of cooperation to aid understanding in the classroom itself, and in the help students gave to one another outside the classroom in order to complete assignments. As was found many times in this study, what can be overtly observed is a reduction of classroom reality: ‘How things are done and why things are done have particular psychological significance for the individual and the group’ (Breen, 1985: 149). Had I relied on observation data alone, and not asked the learners about what was going on, I would have obtained only a partial picture of how they learned in immersion classrooms. What did I find through taking this orientation to the immersion classroom? First, I found that there is more to the acquisition of a second language in an immersion situation than mere exposure to hours and hours of comprehensible input. The role of comprehensible input is an important one, but it is not the whole story. The students do not merely passively receive input, and thereby acquire the language. Listening, which dominates the immersion experience, as well as reading, involve the mental scanning of the input for known words and concepts, in order to make sense of the new, unknown words. A constant internal conversation, in the students’ first and second languages, goes on while they are listening and reading. If, for whatever reason, the students are not actively involved in this processing of input, there is less likelihood of acquisition of the language. Merely being exposed to input is not being actively engaged with the spoken or written text. This study and the one that preceded it (de Courcy, 1992b, 1993) have revealed that the use of private speech in the acquisition of a second language is not the preserve of child language learners. Even for adolescents and adults, internalised speech plays a crucial role in language acquisition. It is in this turning inwards that students start to make sense of the new language; the internalising is a signal that they are starting to make sense of the world through the new language; it becomes part of their way of being in the world. As discussed earlier, this internal speech as reported by the students is much more than rehearsal, or practicing form. The students talk to themselves about whatever activity they are engaged in; they create new sentences and tell jokes to themselves. Is this ‘language play’, as Lantolf (2000) suggests, a necessary condition for successful second language learning? So we have active engagement with input, we have language play, and the other significant experience involves output. It seems to be in 148

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the production of output, after making sense of input by using the internal mode, that these students feel that their acquisition of the second language happens. The students in these immersion programs do not feel that they have acquired any part of the language until they have had the opportunity to use it in a real, communicative situation. When they can make somebody else understand them, then they know that they know. The final factor that seems to enhance language acquisition in these immersion programs is the effect on the students’ learning of the tight social groups that they form. They do not seem to learn the new language individually, but cooperate with one another in order for the whole class to become proficient in the target language. This collaborative learning pattern may be the key to the students’ success in becoming bilingual in the relatively short time they spend in late immersion programs.

Future Directions Particularly related to the findings on private speech and collaborative learning is the new field of sociocultural theory and second language acquisition. This field draws upon the theories of Vygotsky (1962), and Lantolf, one of its pioneers, noted recently that ‘not only does our mental activity determine the nature of our social world, but this world of human relationships and artifacts also determines to a large extent how we regulate our mental processes’ (Lantolf, 2000: 79) Lantolf notes that ‘only sociocultural theory incorporates mediation as a core construct in its theorising about language learning’ (2000: 79). Our learning of language is mediated by tools and words. We take it for granted that we use language to learn about science, but what do we use to learn about language? Using sociocultural theory as her framework, Swain (1998; Kowal & Swain, 1997; Swain & Lapkin, 2001) has been recently investigating the role of cooperative learning in French immersion programs in Australia and Canada. Swain (1998) has recently concluded that, rather than the cooperation merely aiding learning, the dialogue between peers is where the learning takes place. Other questions which are being explored in this framework are: How do students in content-based second language programs use one another in their attempts to make sense of unfamiliar text? What is the role of the more expert students in helping their peers in the Zone of Proximal Development? (Cummins, 1994; Donato & Lantolf, 1990; Lantolf, 2000; Laplante, 1998) There is a need for more research in this area. 149

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Immersion teachers and researchers could explore learning in classrooms with different aged learners, different languages and different classroom organisations and activities. The effect on students’ language development of the inclusion of the type of cooperative language awareness activities suggested by Lyster (1994a, 1994b) could also be investigated. It would also be fruitful to follow up the questions asked by Tardif (1994): What do teachers talk about in late immersion classrooms? How do they modify the discourse of the classroom in order for learning to take place? The area of research into the uses of private speech, in particular the uses of the first language, is also emerging as ‘an area in which a good deal of worthwhile research can be undertaken’ (Lantolf , 2000: 88). In relation to this last point, I will close by quoting one of the teachers who so generously allowed me into her classroom in the French immersion school. After I had been introduced to her, and had explained my project, she said: J’espère que tu trouves des réponses à tes questions parce-que moi, je ne sais pas comment ils apprennent. Je pense qu’ils apprennent la langue autre part – pas ici! I hope you find answers to your questions because I don’t know how they learn. I think they learn the language somewhere else – not here! Perhaps this ‘somewhere else’ is within each individual learner?

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Appendix A: Transcription Conventions T: S: Ss: [no [she / our, – // ? . MUST [] () (call) (4.0)

Teacher Student Students said at same time, overlapping no pause speaker stops suddenly brief pause longer pause speaker interrupts upward intonation downward intonation emphasis researcher’s observation untranscribable uncertain transcription pause – approximate length in seconds

Source: from Atkinson and Drew (1979).

Appendix B: Translation of Classroom Activity Sheet Activity 15 Revision table – circulatory system Complete the table below: What is carried?

From where?

Oxygen

The alveolus in the lungs

Carbon dioxide Nutrients Waste, urine Hormones Warmth/heat

The liver

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To where?

Carried how?

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References

Allen, P., Swain, M., Harley, B. and Cummins, J. (1990) Aspects of classroom treatment: Toward a more comprehensive view of second language education. In B. Harley, P. Allen, J. Cummins and M. Swain (eds) The Development of Second Language Proficiency (pp. 57–81). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aoki, T. (1979) Toward Curriculum Inquiry in a New Key. Curriculum, Media and Instruction Occasional Paper No. 2. (Report No. CMI-OP-2) Edmonton, Alberta: University of Alberta, Division of Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 182 808). Arcidiacono, F. (1996) How do ‘you just live in French’? AALIT Journal 4, 11–13. Atkinson, J.M. and Drew, P. (1979) Order in Court: The Organisation of Verbal Interaction in Judicial Settings. Oxford: Oxford Socio-Legal Studies. Baetens Beardsmore, H. and Swain, M. (1985) Designing bilingual education: Aspects of immersion and ‘European school’ models. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 6(1), 1–15. Barthomeuf, J. (1991) L’observation du travail de groupe en immersion. Le Journal de l’IMMERSION Journal 15(2), 19–25. Bell, J.S. (1991) Becoming aware of literacy. PhD thesis, University of Toronto. Bell, J.S. (1995) Relationship between L1 and L2 literacy: Some complicating factors. TESOL Quarterly 29(4), 687–704. Bell, J.S. (1997) Literacy, Culture and Identity. New York: Peter Lang. Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Doubleday. Bernhardt, E. (ed.) (1992) Life in Language Immersion Classrooms. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Berthold, M.J. (1989) A French immersion programme in Queensland. Babel: Journal of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations 24(3), 13–14. Berthold, M. (1991) Student opinions of a language immersion programme. VOX: Journal of the Australian Advisory Council on Languages and Multicultural Education 5, 37–42. Berthold, M. (1992) An Australian experiment in French immersion. Canadian Modern Language Review 49(1), 112–126. Bild, E-R. and Swain, M. (1989) Minority language students in a French immersion program: Their French proficiency. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 10(3), 225–274. 152152

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Index Subjects Age 142-143 Analysis see Data analysis Attitudes 10 Avoidance see Coping strategies

Generalizability 35-36 Grammar see Form Group dynamics 58-65 Group work 69-70

Bridging see Comprehensible output Chinese characters described 102, 117 Chinese word processor see Computer Classroom as coral gardens metaphor 34, 145-148 Classroom discourse see Discourse analysis Code mixing 67-68, 93ff, 140 Code switching see Code mixing Collaborative learning see Cooperative learning Comprehensible input 98, 148 Comprehensible output 87, 88, 89-91, 98, 99, 148-149 Computer (Chinese word processor) 32, 112-113, 117-118, 132, 134 Context 144-145 Cooperative learning 63-65, 66, 69, 123, 126, 138, 139, 149-150 Coping strategies see Learner strategies Culture 53ff, 70-71, 72-73 Curriculum 23-25, 28-30, 55-58, 68 Data analysis 38-39, 108, 122-123 Dictionaries 81, 110-111, 131, 133 Discourse analysis 11-14, 146 Ethnographic studies of immersion 14-15 Emotions 54, 57, 61, 62, 80, 98 Form (focus on form) 85-87, 88, 98, 99

Imagery 126-127 Immersion — defined 5-7 — in Canada 2, 5-7, 8-15 — in Australia 2, 3, 15-18 Inner speech see Private speech Interviews 36-37 Journals 37, 125-133 Key informant profiles 32, 25 Language play see Private speech Learner strategies 126ff — comprehension strategies 75, 76, 78 — coping strategies 81, 82 — reading strategies Chinese 108ff French 113ff — retrieval strategies 91-92, 16-7 — socioaffective strategies Chinese 123 — writing strategies Chinese 111ff French 115ff Metacognitive strategies 125 Motivation 68 Output see Comprehensible output Pinyin 133-134 Private speech 75-76, 95-96, 100-101, 148

161

Index Index

Index

162 Program outcomes — early French immersion in Canada 8-9 — late French immersion in Canada 9-10 — Chinese immersion 11 Pronunciation 82-83, 84 Reading aloud 83-85 Reading strategies see Learner strategies, reading Romanization see Pinyin Sampling 35 Socioaffective strategies see Learner strategies, socioaffective Sociocultural theory 149 Stimulated recall 37, 45ff, 52ff, 62-66, Authors Allen 12 Aoki 37 Arcidiacono 97 Atkinson 38, 45 Baetens-Beardsmore 22 Barthomeuf 13, 14, 70 Bell 105, 121 Bereiter 106 Berger 144 Bernhardt 14 Berthold 15, 16 Bild 11 Birch 18, 73, 107, 117 Block 106, 120 Braddy 2 Brändle 105 Breen 20, 34, 121, 145, 146, 147, 148 Brown, C 142, 143 Brown, H.D. 3, 4, 22 Burston 18, 106 Carlson 13 Chang 104 Chappell vii, 32, 112, 113 Cleghorn 14 Clyne 17, 18 Cohen 97, 106 Corsaro 36

80, 82ff Strategies see either Learner strategies or Teaching strategies Structure see Form, focus on Teacher feedback 51-53 Teacher supportiveness 53-55 Teaching strategies 46, 47, 48, 48, 50, 51, 70, 72 Tests 26, 33, 59, 107, 111 Think aloud protocols 105-107 Thinking in L2 see Private speech Transcription 38, 151 Translation 41, 43, 45, 46, 75, 76, 92-93, 97, 136, 140 Writing strategies see Learner strategies, writing Crook 105 Cummins 149 Davis 36 Day 9 de Courcy vii, 13, 15, 16, 18, 21, 23, 25, 44, 69, 73, 97, 101, 105, 106, 107, 117, 122, 148 Donato 149 Drew 38, 45 Duff 14 Earl 9 Eckstein 8, 17 Ellis 4, 98 Ericsson 107 Evereson 103 Faerch 105 Fernandez 17 Flowerdew 39, 72 Frawley 100 Froc 13 Fröhlich 6, 119 Genesee 5, 6, 8, 9, 14, 93 Glaser 38 Green 145 Guba 35, 36, 38, 121

Index Hamayan 12 Harley 8 Hatch 39 Hayes 103 Heitzman 14 Hinkel 72 Hornberger 97 Huberman 38. 39 Hung 103 Hymes 144 Ingram 2 Jackson 102 John 2 Johnson 5 John-Steiner 100 Ju 102 Kasper 106 Kern 97 Kletzien 106, 107 Klinck 11, 12 Kowal 149 Krashen 8, 22, 98 Kumaravadivelu 146 Lambert 8 Lantolf 100, 101, 148, 149, 150 Lapkin 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 71, 149 Laplante 149 Lazaraton 36 Lightbown 98 Lincoln 35, 36, 38, 121 Lindquist 126 Liu 15 lo Bianco 2 Long 69 Lowe 121, 122 Luckmann 144 Lyster 13, 71, 99, 100, 150 Mangubhai 106 Martel 3 McGinnis 71, 104 Measor 16 Miles 38, 39 Miller 39, 72 Morrison 9

163 Naiman 119 O’Malley 119, 120, 122, 123, 125 Olson 10 Oxford 120 Pawley 9 Pennycook 127, 130 Porter 69 Ranney 39 Read 18, 72 Rozin 103 Saville-Troike 100 Scardamalia 106 Scollon 39 Shapson 9 Simon 107 Singh 72 Skutnabb-Kangas 6 Spada 98 Spradley 16, 35, 36, 38 Stennett 9 Strauss 38 Swain 5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 22, 69, 70, 71, 88, 89, 98, 99, 149 Tang 11 Tardif 8, 14, 15, 20, 45, 65, 143, 147, 150 Tarone 13 Tucker 8, 12 Tzeng 103 van Manen 35, 37 Vygotsky 13, 100, 149 Wallat 145 Wang 103 Watson 104 Weber 8, 14, 20, 147 Wenden 120 Wesche 10 Wolcott 35 Wong-Fillmore 6, 68, 98 Yates 32, 112 Yu 104