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Learning a second language (L2) in Cape Breton offers a unique challenge to students given that the southeastern portion of the island (where this study was conducted) is essentially unilingual (English). Despite Canada's reputation as a bilingual nation, nonimmersion students in this study would receive at the most only about an hour of second language speaking opportunities per day inside a classroom. However, in reality, the nonimmersion classroom tends to be structured so that emphasis is placed on grammar, and very little L2 conversation takes place. Contrast this with students in immersion programs, who are expected to use the second language inside and outside the classroom, both for instruction and for social interaction at school. Immersion programs have been praised for the greater advantages they offer students, and immersion students are often thought to be more proficient at using the L2 than nonimmersion students. At the time of this study, there had been no research that directly compared high school immersion and nonimmersion students from the same linguistic landscape on nonlinguistic language-related outcomes, such as attitudes, orientations for learning, and communication affect. Such a comparison might have pedagogical implications, especially for teachers who provide little opportunity for actual L2 use. The present study examines the nonlinguistic outcomes of an immersion versus a nonimmersion program. The dependent variables included attitudes toward learning French, orientations for learning, willingness to communicate, communication anxiety, perceived communicative competence, and self-reported frequency of communication in both English (L1) and French (L2). A qualitative section was included that asked students to describe some negative and positive experiences in speaking French and their reactions to these experiences. Compared with the nonimmersion students, immersion students indicated higher willingness to communicate, lower communication anxiety, higher perceived communicative competence, and more frequent communication only in the French language. Among the nonimmersion students, perceived competence was strongly correlated with willingness to communicate, but among the immersion students, communication anxiety correlated most strongly with willingness to communicate. The obtained gender differences indicated that male nonimmersion students showed the least positive attitudes toward learning French; female nonimmersion students showed higher endorsement of 3 of the 4 language learning orientations. The qualitative analysis revealed that negative experiences speaking French, while unpleasant for both immersion and nonimmersion students, may have actually enhanced their motivation. [The present article appeared in Language Learning, 50(2), 2000, 311–341]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The students who participate in immersion education are an impressive group. In the present study we looked at students in a junior high school in Nova Scotia. In the local area, English is far and away the dominant language, though there are French-speaking communities within a 2-hr drive and Canada is an officially bilingual country. Therefore, the students are not in a “foreign” language-learning environment, but in all probability, they are not likely to encounter spoken French in their daily lives. The students have all the challenges of adolescence to contend with: moving from an elementary to a junior high school in grade 7, the wonders of puberty, growing academic expectations from teachers, demands from school administration to speak only French while at school, and the burgeoning social life of a newly minted teenager. On top of all this, participants in this research are required to give up their well-developed native language, English, and undertake to be educated in a second language, French. Impressive. The present study reports a cross-sectional investigation of second language communication among students in a junior high French late immersion program. The effects of language, sex, and grade on willingness to communicate (WTC), anxiety, perceived communication competence, and frequency of communication in French and on attitude/motivation variables are examined globally and at each grade level. Most of these variables have been widely studied among adult learners, most often at the university level. The present study attempted to look at a much younger group to examine the patterns earlier in the language learning process. We found that students’ second language WTC, perceived competence, and frequency of communication in French increased from grades 7 to 8 and that these increases were maintained between grades 8 and 9, despite a drop in motivation between grades 7 and 8 and a steady level of anxiety across the three grades. Gender differences in language anxiety were observed across the three grades. Contrary to our expectations, compared to girls, boys reported more anxiety in grade 9. However, the differences between WTC across the first and second language narrowed as students progressed through the program. [The present article first appeared in Language Learning, 52(3), 2002, 537–564]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]