th doing library research. This way most of the student’s second language learning was brought on by actual physical activity. The students were encouraged to interact in French by working on projects together or consulting each other as their work progressed. They were expected to make oral and written reports in the second language on the progress of their work. This type of classroom was usually full of activity and students were vocal – chattering away in French. The teachers in these classrooms acted more as consultants and advisors then just standing in front of the classroom talking mostly in French. This varies greatly from other versions of immersion schools that are more teacher centered. The students in the teacher centered classrooms all worked on the same projects at the same time and in the same way; students were offered less activity based learning and much less individual choice in learning activities. Another difference between classroom oriented teaching and teacher centered classrooms is that the teacher centered program provided a full day of teaching in French, where as the classroom oriented sessions used French for only about forty percent of the entire school day.Schaffer 5Immersion schools are successful in teaching children a second fluent language, whether it be Spanish, French or any other language. The reviews of this kind of language learning has shown that the students perform as well or better then children enrolled in regular public schools in that same neighborhood. Mostly though, immersion schools have shown that language minority students enrolled in this two way immersion programs attain higher levels of academic achievement over the long term than students enrolled in other educations programs within the same district.There is one common problem with immersion students. The errors in grammar tend to be more abundant then students that learn through the later years in basic in...
