| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
The research focused on immersion education in Canada, which has been attracting more and more attention from those involved in second language education around the world because of its outstanding success in fostering high-level communicative competence in a second language at no cost of content learning. The main purpose was to define the successfulness of French immersion education from quantitative and qualitative perspectives and then specify factors which have contributed to the success. Those contributing factors were identified on pedagogical, institutional, and societal levels respectively. On a pedagogical level, the research has identified methodological factors, teacher factors and learner factors. On an institutional level, the research has identified environmental factors, curriculum factors, and administrative factors. On a societal level, the research has identified the linkage with the official languages policy, the collaboration network for this linkage, and social incentives for French language learning as major societal factors. The research has also analysed stakeholders' perceptions about French immersion education and its success through questionnaires and interviews with four groups of people (parents, former students, headmasters, and researchers) who were or had been involved in immersion education directly or indirectly. The analysis has revealed that those involved in immersion education are very much satisfied with immersion education programmes and French proficiency learners have acquired, that this satisfaction is higher among researchers and lower among parents, that this satisfaction is higher in the domain of cognitive achievement and is lower in the domain of affective achievement, and that stakeholders' positive perceptions play a significant role in the circulatory process between micro-level success and macro-level success.
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