An Analysis of French Verb Errors Made by Second Language Learners in a Bilingual Program

The data presented in this paper were gathered using a French cloze test in the context of a longitudinal evaluation of a number of French immersion programs in Ontario conducted by the Bilingual Education Project of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (see, for example, Barik and Swain 1978(a), 1978(b); Swain and Barik 1976; Swain and Lapkin 1977). One of the major research questions to which these studies have been addressed concerns the degree of second language proficiency attained by the immersion students: how much French is acquired by English-speaking students in these bilingual programs compared to that acquired by students in a regular program taking 20 to 40 minutes daily of core French or conventional French as a second language training? Through the use of standardized French achievement tests and other French measures developed by the Bilingual Education Project (e.g. Barik 1975, 1976; Barik, Swain, and Schloss 1978), it was determined early in the longitudinal study of early French immersion that immersion pupils were attaining a level of second language proficiency far superior to that of the comparison pupils taking core French. It became clear that a more appropriate reference group for measuring French language proficiency would consist of native French-speaking pupils of the same age and grade level. In other words, a shift of emphasis in the original research question has occurred over the past several years so that now the focus is on the degree to which immersion students can attain native-like ability in the second language (Lapkin 1978).