Strategies of Communication Used by Native and Non-Native Speakers of French. Working Papers on Bilingualism, No. 17.

This study describes certain communication strategies used by Anglophone children learning French as a second language as well as by children whose mother tongue is French. Three groups of children in the third and fifth grades participated in the study: French native speakers, Anglophone children learning French in an immersion setting, and Anglophone children in a French school (submersion). Each child listened to a story read to him or her by the examiner. On the second reading, at the end of each paragraph, the child was given three (3) pictures corresponding to that paragraph and was asked to retell the story. The extent to which five syntactic structures were avoided was analyzed. Results indicated that the extent to which avoidance occurred differed according to structure, grade level and group. In addition, common strategies of avoidance, such as paraphrasing, could be identified for all children. (Author/AMH)