Listening and speaking performance differences in participants and non-participants of an immersion classroom in a public school in Bogotá

Abstract

The overriding purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the differences in listening and speaking performance of first grades who are divided into two groups: participants and non-participants of an immersion classroom in a public school this program is classified as early partial immersion by a set of features established by (Courcy, 2002) and (Lambert, 1975 ) This study intends to measure the influence of the immersion classes implemented by first time by the ‘Secretaria de Educación distrital’ in its participants and in the listening and speaking skills, therefore over a three-week period, the whole group of participants were exposed to series of listening and speaking activities in a pedagogical intervention based on learners EFL learning processes and some tasks to develop those competences; the second form used to identify the differences among the participants was by directly observing the immersion classes. Participants and non-participants performance were analyzed and compared, we gathered information by using voice and recordings and observations of the immersion classes, in order to find the main differences between both groups of participants. The results indicate that participants of the immersion developed a better listening skill while non-participants are more accurate referring to speaking in the target language. These findings are interpreted as evidenced that early language immersion contributes to the acquisition of listening and awareness of sound, and also the activities designed in the pedagogical intervention reached a significant progress in speaking performances in all the participants, but especially in non-participants of the immersion program.