An explicit-inductive approach to grammar in Irish-medium immersion schools

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on qualitative self-report data from a mixed-methods study which investigated Grade 5 and 6 (n = 274), 11–12-year-old, Irish-medium (IM) immersion students’ improvement in linguistic accuracy in response to an explicit-inductive approach to form-focused instruction (FFI). A series of typographically enhanced PowerPoint slides were designed to explicitly draw students’ attention to the genitive case in Irish over a four-week period. Students engaged in collaborative meta-talk with teacher and peers to construct rule-based knowledge and they recorded their findings in a reflective language journal. Qualitative data were gathered with a sub-sample of 56 students selected from 4 of the 12 schools that participated in the larger study. Student feedback indicates the potential effectiveness of an explicit-inductive approach to improve student language awareness and grammatical accuracy in immersion education.

KEYWORDS:

• Form focused
• Irish-medium education
• immersion
• explicit-inductive approach
• reflective language journal
• mixed-methods design

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the teachers and students who gave so generously of their time to make this study possible and to acknowledge the financial support of the St Patrick's College Research Committee, Dublin City University, and An Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta towards the costs of the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. S = student; Sch = school; Grp = group.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Chomhairle um Oideachas Gaeltachta agus Gaelscolaíochta; St Patrick's College, DCU, Research Committe.

Notes on contributors

Aisling Ní Dhiorbháin

Aisling Ní Dhiorbháin is a lecturer in second language teacher methodologies for Irish on teacher education programmes at the DCU Institute of Education. Prior to that, she was a teacher in a primary immersion school. She is interested in language teacher education for teaching through the medium of Irish and for teaching Irish as an L2.

Pádraig Ó Duibhir

Pádraig Ó Duibhir is a deputy dean of the DCU Institute of Education. He has worked in teacher education for many years and is a former primary immersion teacher and principal. He has conducted research into many aspects of pedagogy, curriculum and policy relation to IM teaching.