Getting Started: Second Language Development in K-1 French Immersion.

This study examined the strategies that 12 kindergarten and first-grade French immersion students in Ontario developed for oral communication and the contexts of such communication. Over the course of the school year each student was videotaped once a month in various classroom settings. The transcriptions of student conversations and utterances were compared to the accumulated hours of French instruction at each taping, and categorized by type of communication strategy. These strategies included mediation of meaning, modelling, sizing up context, cross-lingual interactions, code-mixing, formulaic speech, and novel speech. Student utterances were also classified by context, such as: (1) teacher- or assistant-initiated interactions with students; (2) student-initiated interactions with the teacher or assistant; (3) student-initiated interactions with students; and (4) students talking to themselves. The strengths of current classroom practice in immersion programs are also discussed, as well as future directions for research and practice. (Contains 24 references.) (MDM)