At Camberwell Primary School children have the opportunity to learn in the most extensive bilingual program in Victoria. Children spend 50% of their homeroom time time listening and working in a French language environment.

The process used to teach French language is immersion. This means that we mirror the way you learnt your 'native language', that is, you were immersed or surrounded by the language. The stages through which you acquired language were:-
- listening
- comprehending
- speaking
- reading
- writing
These are the stages children will be taken through to acquire the French language while at Camberwell Primary School. This immersion process is a process of constant and continuing assimilation of a language through a variety of educational activities, for example Mathematics, Language Arts and Science. Some aspects of the Integrated Unit will also be taught in French.

BILINGUALISM

What do we mean when we talk about Bilingualism? There are a number of definitions accepted by educationalists.

For example:- Some Definitions:

A bilingual is an individual who can function in two language environments.
Bilingualism is understood to be a high level of competence in
speaking and reading/writing in two languages, but not necessarily with equal or near-equal ability.
Bilingual teaching or learning involves the use of two languages for instruction.
Bilingual Education includes bi-cultural education.

RESEARCH FINDINGS - ADVANTAGES OF BILINGUALISM

Recent research findings have demonstrated advantages to be gained by bilingualism in the areas of:-
1. LANGUAGE AWARENESS
2. LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT
3. COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
4. EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
5. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY
6. COMMUNICATIVE SENSITIVITY
7. CATEGORISATION SKILLS
8. CONCEPT FORMATION
9. MENTAL FLEXIBILITY
- divergent thinking,
- creative thinking
- convergent thinking

The National Languages Institute of Australia's recent publication (1991) "Bilingualism and Bilingual Education" draws together the strands of research into bilingualism, overseas and in Australia. Below are listed some quotations from this text.

"Controlled groups of monolinguals and balanced bilinguals were compared and the bilinguals were found to be significantly ahead of their monolingual counterparts in verbal and non verbal reasoning, divergent thinking and subject matter attainment."

"..a number of studies (...) have shown bilinguals to be more creative, cognitively more flexible and to perform better on tests of verbal and non-verbal intelligence."

"Sixth grade bilingual children were found to perform significantly better on all tests than monolinguals (..)."

"They found that bilinguals demonstrated greater verbal ability, performed better on measures of concept formation and scored higher on tests of verbal originality than did monolinguals."

"(...) bilingual children, by virtue of their two languages, are exposed to a more complex environment and to a greater amount of social interaction compared to children acquiring only one language."

"(..) code switching means the switching from one language (or a variety of a language) to another part of a sentence or conversation. Many outsiders see code switching as a sign of linguistic decay, the unsystematic results of not knowing at least one of the languages involved very well. A wide range of research into bilingualism indicate that the opposite is really the case (Appel & Muysken 1987:117)."

"(..) bilingual children appear to pass through similar sequences in the development of both their languages as do monolingual children".

"Lambert and Tucker (1972) indicate that children who learn a second language at school experience positive social development. These children tend to adopt a dual reference group maintaining anchors to the primary reference group of their original language and culture and at the same time developing anchors in the secondary reference group of the new language and culture. Children who learn a second language can, therefore, add to their existing social repertoire without compromising their existing social integration".

"Genesse (1987) has shown that children who acquire a second language tend to be more open-minded and more tolerant than their monolingual counterparts".