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LAURA COLLINSUniversity of VictoriaRANDALL H. HALTERConcordia UniversityPATSY M. LIGHTBOWNConcordia UniversityNINA SPADAMcGill UniversityIn the French primary schools of Quebec, increased popularity inexperimental programs that provide young Francophone learners withintensive ESL instruction has been accompanied by increased variationin the way the instructional time is distributed. In a massed program,students complete the regular curriculum in French in 5 months andspend the remaining months learning English. In a distributed pro-gram, the intensive ESL instruction is spread across the full 10 monthsof the school year.Within the cognitive psychology and general education literature,there is substantial evidence in favour of distributed over massedpractice. There has been less research in the language programevaluation literature contrasting the learning outcomes of studentsreceiving similar amounts of L2 exposure in different distributions, butthe findings suggest an advantage for massed learning. The presentstudy compared the learning outcomes in two versions of the massedprogram and one version of the distributed program of students of thesame age and L1, with similar amounts of prior exposure to English.Pretest and posttest measures from 700 students revealed superioroutcomes for the massed learning conditions. The interpretation of thefindings takes into account selection criteria, overall instructional time,and instructional practices in the different ESL programs.

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Seven noted researchers each describe a different orientation to research exemplified in their own studies and currently predominant in TESOL, highlighting the value of each research orientation as well as its limitations. The seven statements consider (a) aspects of language behavior such as learners' language, verbal reports of learning strategies, or text structures; (b) frameworks for interpreting curricula or culture such as classroom interaction or ethnography; or (c) ideological orientations such as critical pedagogy or participatory action research.

An innovative intensive ESL program in Quebec is the focus of this article. As a background to the presentation of research carried out within this program, the context and conditions of ESL teaching in Quebec's French-language schools are briefly described. In these schools, where all subject matter instruction is normally provided in French, the program gives some students in Grade 5 or Grade 6 access to intensive instruction in ESL. For 5 months of 1 school year, the students spend virtually full school days engaged in English language activities. They do not receive subject matter instruction through English but participate in communicative activities and projects whose goal is to develop their ability to understand and speak English. This article reports on the findings of some research in these intensive ESL classes: descriptive studies of patterns of classroom interaction and instruction, the development of fluency and accuracy in learner language, and the long-term effects of the program. In addition, experimental studies have explored the effects of introducing some greater focus on form within or in addition to the communicative activities typical of most of the classes.

This paper reports the results of a study which investigated (a) the separate effects that differences in learners' contact can have on various aspects of proficiency, and (b) the combined effects that differences in informal contact and instructional variation can have on improvement in proficiency. Forty-eight adult learners from three intermediate-level ESL classes participated in the study.To measure differences in learners' informal contact, a language contact questionnaire was administered. The results revealed both quantitative and qualitative differences in learners' out-of-class contact with the second language. When these differences were examined in relation to learners' performance on seven proficiency measures, correlational analysis revealed that while learners' performance on some measures was related to differences in amount of contact, it was related on other measures to differences in type of contact.To determine whether differences in contact interacted with instructional variation to produce differences in improvement in proficiency, learners' pre-and post-test scores were examined in relation to contact and class in an analysis of co-variance. The results indicated that learners' informal contact interacted with differences in instruction to produce variation in improvement on two proficiency measures.The findings are discussed in relation to the need for more class-room-centered research to investigate both the separate and combined effects of learner and instructional variables on second language proficiency.

In recent years, the development of communicative competence has become the explicit focus of numerous second language teaching programs. Although models of communicative competence and principles of communicative language teaching have been discussed extensively in the literature and a variety of communicative materials have been developed, very little research has been carried out to examine the relationship between actual classroom practices and the development of communicative competence. This article reports on the results of a study which was intended to validate an observation instrument designed to capture differences in the communicative orientation of L2 classroom interaction in a variety of settings. Thirteen classes in four different L2 programs were observed. The observation scheme used in the study contained categories derived from theories of communicative competence, from the literature on communicative language teaching, and from research in first and second language acquisition, which suggests a number of factors thought to influence the language learning process. These observation categories include features of communication typical of classroom interaction as well as of “natural” language outside the classroom. An analysis of the observation data revealed differences in the communicative orientation of the four types of classrooms.

This paper is a report on a study designed to investigate the second language development of francophone children in experimental intensive ESL programmes in Quebec primary schools. Classroom interaction patterns and learners' contact with and attitudes toward English were also investigated. Learners in the intensive programmes were compared with learners in regular ESL programmes at the same grade level, as well as with learners who had received a comparable number of hours of instruction spread over a longer period of time. The results indicated that the intensive programme learners outperformed both comparison groups on tests of listening and reading comprehension and in oral fluency. In addition, although both regular and intensive programme learners were found to have very little contact with English prior to instruction, the intensive programme learners indicated somewhat greater contact after instruction. They also held more positive attitudes toward English than did the regular programme learners.