| This interpretive case study seeks to describe and understand the oral language use practices and perceptions of four 5th grade Spanish immersion learners in a classroom setting. Using the interactional episode as a bounded unit of interaction, 55.4 hours (3354 episodes) of naturally-occurring classroom interactions were recorded and analyzed to identify salient patterns and interrelationships between contextual and interpersonal factors and students' choice of language, as well as the amount, focus and function of student language produced. In addition, nearly fifteen hours of audio and video data-prompted interviews with focal students and their teacher were analyzed and categorized for themes regarding participant perceptions of student language use using content analysis and the software program, NVivo.;The study found that participants perceive immersion students' use of language in the classroom as influenced by numerous contextual, interpersonal and intrapersonal factors. Those factors that participants cite as influencing student use of the immersion language include: clear communication of the expected language through established classroom routines, peer and/or teacher language in use, explicit teacher requests, reminders, and rewards, teacher proximity, effective activity planning and activity design, participation of peer interlocutors during structured, language-focused writing tasks, students' sustained and active engagement in cognitively complex activities such as processing task directions or generating text for a creative writing task, and the use of verbal scaffolds to support the writing process.;This study also found interesting patterns in immersion student language use. During Spanish time, all four students used more English than Spanish. Students interact with peers three times more frequently than with teachers and language produced with other students was more frequently sustained and language-focused than during interaction with the teacher. While there is evidence that interaction with a native Spanish speaker did increase English-dominant students' use of Spanish, there is also evidence that the native Spanish-speaking student in this study tended to reserve use of Spanish for other native Spanish speakers in the classroom. Student-led oral presentations, creative writing tasks, math projects, and structured group work elicited greater amounts of Spanish that was extended, language-focused, and academically-oriented. |
