Ritualised routines and L2 acquisition: Acquisition strategies in an immersion program

• Autores: Siv Vesterbacka
• Localización: Journal of multilingual and multicultural development, ISSN 0143-4632, Vol. 12, Nº. 1-2, 1991, págs. 35-43
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In 1987 an early total immersion program based on the Canadian model was established in Vaasa/Vasa, Finland. It is evident that the functional approach of the immersion program has consequences for the teacher, the test methods and the language usage of the children. This paper is mainly centred on an analysis of six‐year‐old Finnish‐speaking children's second language acquisition during their first year of Swedish immersion in kindergarten. A conclusion to be drawn from the analysis is that a very important didactic task for the teacher is to provide the children with meaningful routines, in which the role of the second language, both quantitatively and qualitatively is gradually increased. The importance of context‐bound situations is illustrated by the code‐switching strategies in the children's language usage. In the second part of the paper further evidence of the importance of building up ritualised context‐bound situations with standardised language usage is demonstrated on the basis of the children's first second language utterances.