USING IMMERSION TO TRAIN PRIMARY-SCHOOL TEACHERS OF FRENCH IN AUSTRALIA

Students in their first year of teacher training completed one of their compulsory subjects through immersion in French. The subject ''Fostering Emergent Literacy'' is usually offered in English. The aims were for students (a) to learn how to teach a developmental literacy program to children in the early years of elementary school and French as a foreign language to elementary school children, and (b) to improve their own level of proficiency in the French language. From this study, indications are that the immersion model can achieve success in both language and content areas in the Australian setting. It is suggested that immersion at the tertiary level could be an effective way of training teachers of languages other than English for primary schools.