After three decades, immersion programs are still considered enormously successful with respect to the second language (L2) proficiency levels attained by students enrolled in such programs and their concurrent development of academic skills in both the native and target languages. Indeed, immersion has evolved in some cases beyond the program types that originated in the Canadian context and is now being applied in a wide range of situations and at multiple levels with differing goals, socioeconomic and cultural contexts, and methods of implementation (Swain & Johnson, 1997). Yet research conducted since the late 1970s has firmly established that immersion students’ L2 productive skills are not
on a par with those of their native-speaking counterparts. In other words, immersion students do not attain native-like proficiency in speaking and writing.
The reasons for this phenomenon are many and varied, but some are related to instructional issues. Most immersion teachers tend to focus their attention on the instruction of subject matter content; academic achievement usually receives increased emphasis because of school district expectations and parental concerns. Yet “…subject-matter teaching does not on its own provide adequate language teaching” (Lyster and Ranta, 1997, p. 41). It has also been observed that lack of systematic approaches for teaching specific language structures in meaningful contexts and for attending to student errors contribute to less than optimal levels of proficiency in immersion students (e.g., Chaudron, 1986; Harley, 1989; Kowal and Swain, 1997; Lyster, 1987, 1994; Lyster and Ranta, 1997; Salomone, 1992; Swain and Lapkin, 1986).
The focus of this issue’s Bridge insert is on one of these instructional issues: immersion teachers’ responses to students’ language errors. Roy Lyster’s research in this area is highlighted in particular because we had the opportunity to learn about his recent work during the 1997 Summer Institute for Immersion Teachers held at the University of Minnesota.