The bilingual advantage for immigrant students in French immersion in Canada: linking advantages to contextual variables.

This study compares the English and French proficiencies of three groups of early French immersion participants at the Grade 6 level: Canadian-born English-speaking, Canadian-born multilingual, and immigrant multilingual students. In addition to English and French multi-skills tests, the participants completed a questionnaire designed to gather data on metalinguistic awareness, strategy use and self-assessments of their languages. The results showed that the immigrant group outperformed the other two groups on the French proficiency tests whereas there were no significant differences on the English tests or in self-assessed language of origin proficiencies for the multilingual groups. Superior performance of the immigrant group was not determined to be a result of enhanced metalinguistic knowledge or strategy use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]