Form-focused instruction in immersion classrooms: A case study of an English immersion school in Japan

Shogo Sakurai, Purdue University

Abstract

Immersion education has been researched for over 40 years, and its pros and cons in terms of second language acquisition have been disclosed; receptive skills and fluency can reach close to the native speaker level, but productive skills their accuracy cannot with years of instruction in the second language. In order to improve immersion students’ productive skills and their accuracy level, incorporation of form-focused instruction with content instruction was introduced. However, little has been found about how immersion teachers actually implement form-focused instruction in their classrooms, especially in the Asian context. This study reveals how first and fifth grade English immersion teachers in Japan incorporate form-focused instruction in mathematics and science lessons. The central question is whether (1) teachers’ beliefs toward the importance of target language teaching, (2) teachers’ beliefs toward child second language acquisition, and (3) students’ cognitive development have an impact on the amount and types of form-focused instruction that the teachers implement in their classroom. The results show that very little focus was placed on the target language teaching in the content classes, and only the teachers’ beliefs toward child second language acquisition had a slight influence on how much form-focused instruction they implement in their lessons.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Wei, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Bilingual education|English as a Second Language

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