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Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education
Vol. 3:2 (2015) ► pp.268–284

Examining immigrants’ English and French proficiency in French immersion

 | Nipissing University
Demographic changes in the Canadian population have also brought a more diverse community of learners to French immersion programs. This study responds to the changes in the immersion student population by comparing the French and English proficiency of three groups: Canadian-born English-speaking students, Canadian-born multilingual students and immigrant multilingual students in Grade 6 early French immersion. The quantitative data from English and French tests showed that the immigrant group outperformed the Canadian-born English speaking and the Canadian-born multilingual groups on French proficiency measures of reading, writing, and speaking, whereas there were no significant differences among the groups on the English test components.
Keywords: second language learning, immigrants’ language learning, immersion education, second language education, second language acquisition, multilingual language acquisition, additional language learning
Published online: 2 October 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jicb.3.2.05mad
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