II - IMMERSION FOR MAJORITY-LANGUAGE STUDENTS IN A MINORITY LANGUAGE

Summary

The two chapters in Part II describe programs involving majoritylanguage students learning the language of a minority group for political, social, and economic reasons. In both cases, the countries are officially bilingual: Canada in English and French; Finland in Finnish and Swedish.

The "late, late immersion" program described by Sandra Burger, Marjorie Wesche, and Mariette Migneron is taught at the bilingual University of Ottawa. There are actually two parallel programs mounted by the university's Second Language Institute: one designed for Englishspeaking students who wish to strengthen and extend their second language proficiency and skills by undertaking a part of their university studies through French; and an equivalent program for French-speaking students who similarly want to take courses in a nonlanguage discipline through the medium of English. The programs began as immersion, or "sheltered," courses whereby students who wanted to enhance their L2 proficiency by taking courses taught in the L2 could do so alongside other L2 speakers rather than alongside LI speakers. For various reasons, particularly financial and administrative, a different model was introduced: an adjunct model in which L2 speakers took the discipline course alongside native speakers, but were given additional help in separate classes that focused on linguistic issues related to the content-based course. Both the immersion model and the adjunct model are described in the chapter.