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This paper sets out to show how a trilingual teaching sequence delivered primarily in minority L2 Basque can foster not just development of oral presentation skills in Basque, but also in L1 Spanish and L3 English. We set out to show that such a trilingual teaching intervention, based on the principles of integrated teaching of languages and translanguaging, can effectively promote multilingual skills in the Basque educational context. The teaching sequence involved alternation between the three languages, but Basque – the minority language in this case – was the language given preference. Oral presentations produced by the 16-year-old trilingual students before and after the teaching intervention were evaluated for key elements. Our results generally showed development in students' oral presentation skills on our key criteria, not only in Basque, but also in Spanish and English. We conclude that carefully planned language alternation and an integration of languages within a genre-focused teaching sequence can offer an effective teaching approach for Basque immersion education, promoting multilingual development including the minority language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to study the development of Basque L2 by Spanish L1 children who attend school in a total immersion programme where Basque is the vehicular language. Narratives based on an adult model produced at ages 5 and 8 are analysed in order to better understand the acquisition process of Basque L2 in an immersion school context. Basque L1 children who are also educated in Basque from preschool age constitute a reference group. The same subjects participate in the research at both ages, which gives a longitudinal as well as a cross-sectional approach to the study. The degree of narrative autonomy, the organisation of the narrative structure and features of nominal and verbal cohesion and some metalinguistic strategies are analysed. The results show similar skills in both groups, and the differences are not always in favour of the L1 subjects. On the whole, L2 subjects seem to reproduce the adult model more closely. This study contributes to a better understanding of L2 development in a school context, focussing on the positive effects of Basque immersion programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]