Oral proficiency development in Spanish immersion contexts: Measuring how well English-as-first-language students speak Spanish?
Tara Fortune
Ph.D. Immersion Program Director, Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), University of Minnesota, United States of America
9 octobre 2014
This presentation will examine findings from a cross-sectional study of the oral proficiency development of 218 English-proficient students from four Spanish immersion programs. Nonparametric analyses showed significant gains between kindergarten and Grade 5; however, no significant differences were found between students in Grades 5 and 8. A follow-up complexity-accuracy-fluency analysis of three students’ speech samples shed additional light on the strengths and challenges of promoting oral language development in the immersion setting. Implications for program design and implementation will be discussed.