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Making the minutes count in L2 teaching
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DOI: 10.1080/09658416.2013.863903
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Language Awareness, 2014
Vol. 23, Nos. 1–2, 3–23, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2013.863903
THE ERIC HAWKINS LECTURE

Patsy M. Lightbown*
Department of Education/Applied Linguistics, Concordia University, P.O. Box 274, Harwich, MA

02645, USA
(Received 6 January 2013; accepted 3 July 2013)
Downloaded by [Concordia University Libraries] at 19:15 21 September 2015
Many educational institutions offer second- or foreign-language (L2) programmes that

give students many more hours of contact with the target language than is typical of
foreign-language instruction in schools around the world. This article compares some
of the instructional approaches developed for both second- and foreign-language
learners at the primary and secondary school levels. The approaches are compared in
terms of several characteristics, including goals and outcomes. The review suggests
that, even when more time is available, it is important to provide learning
opportunities that focus on both meaningful language use and the vocabulary and
structure of the language itself. In addition, the research shows that supporting
students’ knowledge of their first language (L1) can contribute to their long-term
academic and L2 success.
Keywords: bilingual education; CBLT; ESL; explicit instruction; foreign language
pedagogy; two-way immersion
Time and L2 teaching

Traditional school curricula have typically treated foreign languages like any other sub-
ject matter. The language is taught in brief lessons, several times a week, over many years
of schooling. Outside those brief lessons, students almost never hear or see the language.
The focus of this article is on second- and foreign-language (L2)1 instructional
approaches in primary and secondary schools where more time is available for learning
than in traditional instruction. Research has shown that increasing the overall amount of
time for instruction leads to better learning outcomes. However, the research also shows
the importance of choosing pedagogical approaches that make those extra minutes as
effective as possible.
In the 1970s, a number of researchers focused on issues associated with the limited
amount of time devoted to foreign language teaching. In a large international study,
Carroll (1975) found positive correlations between hours of instructional time and profi-
ciency outcomes. He had, for years, emphasised the importance of ‘time for learning’ as a
major variable in determining educational outcomes, and his international study added
evidence for his argument in favour of increasing time for foreign-language teaching.
Hawkins (1978) drew attention not only to the total amount of time devoted to foreign
languages, but also to the distribution of the time. He called the traditional approach to
scheduling foreign language instruction ‘gardening in a gale’. Teachers and students
might plant the seeds of a foreign language during 45-minute lessons, but as soon as the
plants emerge – in the form of students’ tentative efforts to understand and use the new
*Email: patsy.lightbown@verizon.net
Ó 2014 Taylor & Francis

4 P.M. Lightbown
language – they are laid low by the force of the students’ primary language outside the
classroom and lie flat in the garden until the next day or next week, when the teacher/gar-
dener tries to coax them back to life. ‘Just as [the teacher] has restored them to the state
they were in yesterday, the bell goes again and the gale of English sweeps in to destroy
all, or nearly all, his handiwork’ (Hawkins, 1978, p. 8). Between lessons, students have
little opportunity or incentive to practise what they have learned or to learn new things on
their own.
This dire description of typical foreign-language instruction in primary and secondary
schools is in the opening paragraphs of Hawkins’ introduction to a collection of articles
about experiments in more intensive approaches to teaching foreign languages in the UK
and in Europe in the 1970s. These experiments ranged from summer programmes to sec-
tions bilingues in which secondary school students were taught academic content through
their second language (L2). The writers of the articles report many positive experiences
and a number of challenges, and they call for more experiments and more research.
In the 1980s, researchers continued to emphasise the importance of making more time
available for foreign language learning. Like Hawkins, Stern (1985) recommended con-
centrating instructional time rather than spreading it thinly over many years. Referring to
other researchers (Benseler & Schulz, 1979) as well as to his own earlier work (Stern
et al., 1976), he recommended more ‘compact’ language instruction, arguing that
‘. . .larger daily amounts of teaching time over shorter periods are more effective than
very small amounts, e.g., 20 minutes a day, over a much longer period’ (Stern, 1985,
p. 20). He also cautioned, however, that time does not in itself ensure improved outcomes.
Increasing or intensifying instructional time ‘merely provides an opportunity for learning’
(p. 20). Nevertheless, Stern was a strong advocate of language instruction that was more
intensive, offering what he called full flow rather than drip feed exposure2 to the language.
Swain (1981) also challenged the notion of a simple causal relationship between the
amount of time and learning outcomes. The context for Swain’s article was French
immersion education in Canada and transitional bilingual education programmes in the
United States. In both these programmes, students receive far more hours of exposure to
the L2 than in traditional instruction. Swain made two important points in this landmark
article. First, she asserted that starting L2 instruction when students are as young as possi-
ble in order to maximise the time spent learning the L2 was not the only path to success.
Some research had already shown that students whose French immersion experience
started in late elementary school were able to acquire French as well, in most respects, as
others who had begun in kindergarten (Genesee, 1981). Her second point is related and is
even more important: the fact that early immersion had been successful for Anglophone,
mostly middle-class Canadian children from educated families, did not provide a recipe
for the education of children from minority groups. Indeed, the evidence was already
building that minority-language children whose bilingual education included substantial
support for their L1 ultimately achieved greater success in L2 learning than those who
were plunged into English-only instruction as early as possible. In both immersion pro-
grammes for majority-language students and bilingual education programmes for minor-
ity-language students,3 the importance of support for students’ first language (L1)
development has been amply supported by subsequent research (see, e.g. August &
Shanahan, 2008; Genesee, Lindholm-Leary, Saunders, & Christian, 2007; Goldenberg,
2008).
Much has changed in recent decades, and many more students have now experienced
second- and foreign-language learning in a variety of instructional programmes that might
be characterised by Stern’s full flow label. The remainder of this article will be devoted to
Language Awareness 5
descriptions and comparisons of some of these full flow approaches. Nevertheless, it is

important to acknowledge that the traditional two or three hour a week lessons are still
typical of most foreign-language instruction. In the United States, the vast majority of
foreign-language teaching is in programmes that offer students three or four hours a week
of exposure to the language. Nearly 50 years after the 1965 experiment that launched
French immersion, ‘core French’ (instruction that is delivered in several short lessons
each week) predominates in Canada. In Quebec, in spite of the documented success and
popularity of intensive English as a second language (ESL) and the support that it has
received from education officials over the years, most students are still taught English in
drip feed sessions that can be measured in minutes, not hours, per week. In Europe and
Asia, where content-based language teaching (CBLT) has shown much promise, most
students still learn foreign languages in daily one-hour lessons. In England, Mitchell
(2011) observes, much foreign language teaching still resembles ‘gardening in a gale’.
English language teaching in Quebec4

My own research on the impact of increasing instructional time began in Quebec in the
1970s. At that time, the success of French immersion for Canadian Anglophones came to
the attention of parents and educators in Quebec, and there were a few experiments with
English immersion in schools for Francophone students (Billy, 1980). In addition, some
Francophone families had, for many years, made the personal choice to send their chil-
dren to English language schools for a few years, especially at the elementary school
level, so that they could develop good English skills. However, in the 1970s, limits were
imposed on the ways Francophone (and other non-Anglophone) students could be taught
English at school following changes in laws affecting the language of education. For one
thing, schools no longer had the option of introducing English immersion for Franco-
phones because immersion, by definition, is CBLT, and the law prohibited the teaching
of subject matter other than a second or foreign language itself in a language other than
French (Lightbown, 2012). These changes led to the development of what came to be
called ‘intensive ESL’ (see discussion below).
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and indeed even now, the majority of Quebec’s stu-
dents have received less than two hours a week of English L2 instruction in elementary
school and less than three hours a week in secondary school. In Lightbown (1983a), I
responded to concerns about how to improve the teaching of English for Quebec Franco-
phones while respecting the spirit and the letter of the law and the limited time for learn-
ing by recommending that teachers should (1) make the best use of the time they had
(even if it was only 60 or 90 minutes a week) and (2) try to find ways to get more time
and make the best use of that too. When I wrote that article, Quebec was just emerging
from a period during which ESL classes at the primary and secondary school levels were
characterised by audio-lingual teaching (especially by teachers with recent degrees) or
grammar translation (by teachers who were older or who were more comfortable with a
focus on written language rather than the oral drill and dialogue learning that was typical
of the audio-lingual approach). The Ministry of Education was just introducing a notional
functional curriculum and communicative language teaching. In light of what my col-
leagues and I had seen in our research with students who had been taught using the audio-
lingual approach, we saw this as positive (Lightbown, 1992). However, in light of the fact
that the total time allotted to teaching English was still about 700 hours spread out over
six or seven years of schooling, I suggested that making the best use of instructional time
meant helping students develop a positive attitude toward learning English and some
6 P.M. Lightbown
‘strategies for using what they know to help them interpret what they don’t know, strate-
gies for communicating meaning even when they don’t know the exact word or phrase,
strategies for asking the right question. . .in order to get more. . .information’ (Lightbown,
1983b, p. 4).
In other words, my view in 1983 was that, with so little time, the most important job
of the teacher was to teach students how to continue to learn outside the classroom. And
to want to. Our research had shown that several years of drill and pattern practice did not
tend to result in learner autonomy or the motivation to keep trying (e.g. Lightbown,
1983b). Thus, in 1983, I endorsed the shift to a more communicative approach in
Quebec’s ESL classes at the primary and secondary levels. I was convinced that providing
opportunities for meaningful language use was the right place to start, and with 700 hours,
thinly spread over years and years of schooling, the goal was to ‘start’ learning and to
maintain motivation to continue learning.

Rejection of the narrow structure-based teaching of audio-lingual and grammar trans-
lation approaches and the growth of research showing that language acquisition could
occur naturally when learners were engaged with comprehensible language led some
proponents of communicative language teaching to argue that there was no need for
form-focused language teaching. Instead, all that was necessary was for learners to be in
situations where they could make natural communicative use of the language, with an
emphasis on ‘comprehensible input’ (Krashen, 1985). Hawkins (1999) suggested that
such an expectation was based on a ‘. . .simplistic equation: since all children acquire the
spoken form of their mother tongue without intervention of the teaching or learning of
grammar, why not simply expose them to the foreign language and let them acquire it
naturally?’ (p. 131). Hawkins went on to suggest that anyone who thought this might
have any application to foreign language teaching ‘. . .had never stood in front of a class
of 30, for four short sessions per week. . . with the “gale of English” howling at the class-
room door’ (p. 131). Furthermore, it is very difficult to create opportunities for ‘natural’
learning in a typical foreign language classroom where students share the same L1. This
is another reason for teachers to focus on building comprehension ability and helping stu-
dents learn how to learn outside the classroom, and to work to enhance positive motiva-
tion and some measure of self-confidence.
As I have said, I believe that giving students confidence in their ability to understand
what they hear or read by creating in-class opportunities for them to have positive com-
municative experiences is a very good start. However, after more than three decades of
research on L2 teaching, I am convinced that there is a need for students to also focus on
the language itself (Lightbown & Spada, 2013). In 1983, I argued that it was important to
offer ‘brief grammatical exercises, vocabulary lessons, descriptions of particular syntactic
patterns in the language, etc.’ and suggested that this type of instruction was mainly bene-
ficial in ‘providing the learner with more “hooks”— more points of access to the mean-
ing’ (Lightbown, 1983a, p. 5). Writing now, I would couch this in terms of the noticing
hypothesis (Schmidt, 1990) or of skill learning (DeKeyser, 1998), and I would have more
to say about the benefits of balancing meaning-focused and language-focused activities in
L2 instruction (Lightbown, 2014; Nation, 2007). That is, I would say more about the ben-
efits of an awareness of language features or of metalinguistic knowledge that students
can draw on when they have opportunities to engage in meaningful interaction practice. I
will return to this later.
In 1986, I published another article, focusing on the second recommendation I had
made in 1983 – trying to get more time for teaching English in the Quebec schools. I
looked at the benefits of getting more time for teaching by lowering the age at which
instruction in English began compared with those of providing more intensive instruction
at a later time. Some groups and individuals were lobbying for an earlier start for ESL in
Quebec schools; others argued that an early start could be harmful to students’ retention
and development of French, their L1. Wallace Lambert’s research on subtractive bilin-
gualism was sometimes cited in support of this concern (see, e.g. Lambert, 1987). Thus,
in 1986, my emphasis was on reassuring those with concerns about subtractive bilingual-
ism that a drip feed programme offering one or two hours of English a week, starting in
primary school, would not be detrimental to students’ development of their L1. On the
other hand, I argued that it probably would not make a whole lot of difference for their
English either. I urged consideration of adding compact or intensive instruction in later
elementary years rather than an earlier start (Lightbown, 1986).
By the mid-1980s, several primary schools were already offering intensive ESL in the
Montreal area. Our observations in those schools persuaded us that this was a very prom-
ising approach to teach English in Quebec (Lightbown & Spada, 1994; Spada & Light-
bown, 1989). As we expanded our studies of intensive ESL, we became aware of the
challenges teachers faced in teaching English in the longer time periods, using the kind of
communicative language teaching approach that we had seen as an improvement over
audio-lingual teaching for students in drip feed instruction. When teachers accustomed to
teaching for 30- or 45-minute periods a few times a week were suddenly faced with 200
minutes to fill every day – and no curriculum or materials specifically adapted for these
programmes – the informal, interactive, communicative language use that seemed a good
way to motivate students and encourage them to keep learning began to seem inadequate.
We observed that students whose teachers combined communicative activities with others
that focused attention on language itself had better results. The observational studies led
to experimental studies that confirmed this, and showed how students in intensive ESL
benefited from language-focused instruction, including corrective feedback during com-
municative interaction (see e.g. Lightbown & Spada, 1990, 1994).
Another thing that we observed in intensive ESL classes in the 1980s and early 1990s
was that, because subject matter content could not be taught – or at least students could
not be held responsible for academic content taught in English – teachers had a tendency
to choose topics that were personal and social rather than academic. For example, rather
than learning social studies or mathematics in English, students talked about their family
tree or their favourite foods. Some teachers were astonishingly good at taking the limited
content of a standard ESL textbook, approved for the regular programmes, and expanding
it in useful and creative ways – from a simple lesson in which students were to describe
‘my room’ to field trip activities to explore local real estate. This gave students far richer
sources for vocabulary learning and made connections to language outside the classroom.
Nevertheless, the emphasis was almost entirely on oral interaction. Students had only lim-
ited reading and writing activities and in most of the intensive classes, there was a virtual
absence of any systematic attention to language itself, as most teachers adhered to a very
strong version of communicative language teaching. Many teachers and their students
interpreted this to mean, as one student told us, ‘You understand me, so it doesn’t matter
if I make mistakes.’
Such opportunities to use the language to talk about familiar topics can be beneficial
in getting students engaged at a personal level, but the absence of cognitively challenging
material in the ESL lessons was a source of some concern. For one thing, it limited the
kinds of language students were exposed to – language that typically did not include
advanced vocabulary or formal writing genres, to be sure, but also, as our continuing
classroom-based research showed, a limited number of verb types and tenses, sentences
8 P.M. Lightbown
containing adverbs, and third person possessive determiners (Lightbown, 1992; White,
1998; White, Spada, Lightbown, & Ranta, 1991). Researchers in Quebec have continued
to study intensive ESL, using large electronic corpora to analyse the language students
are exposed to. Their findings confirm that some basic language features are rare or absent
in classroom interaction (Collins, Trofimovich, White, Horst, & Cardoso, 2009).
It is important to stress that Quebec’s intensive ESL classes have made a dramatic dif-
ference for the students who have been fortunate enough to have this experience (Collins,
Halter, Lightbown, & Spada, 1999). From the evidence, the addition of 300 or 400 con-
centrated hours to the spread-out 700 hours that make up their ESL instruction over the
course of their schooling makes a considerable change. Students typically leave these pro-
grammes with the very things that I suggested teachers could aim for in the drip feed
courses: positive attitudes and strategies for interacting with the language outside the
classroom. They rarely have any substantial metalinguistic knowledge of the language.
However, unlike many students we observed in the drip feed programmes, they do have
communicative confidence, that is, a willingness to use the knowledge they have in
attempting to understand and make themselves understood in the L2, even when their lan-
guage skills are limited (Lightbown & Spada, 1990, 1994).
Content-based language teaching

Intensive or compact courses may add hundreds of hours of instructional time or concen-
trate the existing time for learning. Students whose L2 learning takes place in content-
based language teaching such as immersion courses may accumulate several thousands
of hours of exposure to the language. Immigrant and minority-language learners who are
educated through the majority language may have even more hours of L2 exposure if
they are in mainstream rather than bilingual instruction, that is, in classes where many or
most of the other students in the class are L1 speakers of English and where all instruction
is provided in the majority language. The ‘gale of English’ that blows around them may
be seen as a positive thing in the sense that they have opportunities to use their new lan-
guage outside the classroom. However, that gale may be too strong for them if they do
not have instructional support that enables them to make use of the great amounts of lan-
guage that are present in the environment.
Both immersion programmes for majority-language students and instruction for
minority-language students typically incorporate the cognitively challenging age-
appropriate content of subject matter in areas such as science, social studies, and mathe-
matics. What these learning environments for both majority- and minority-language stu-
dents have in common are more time for learning language and an expectation that
students can learn both content and language at the same time (Lightbown, 2014). Thus,
they overcome both the time limitations of drip feed and the restricted content of inten-
sive ESL described above. However, the importance of making the best use of the time
available is a constant. What is the best use of time in these long-term, cognitively chal-
lenging, content-based programmes for second and foreign language learning?
Many second- and foreign-language programmes that have the luxury of time are
designed on the basis of the hypothesis that children can acquire language if they just
have plenty of opportunities to understand and interact using the language. Research in
these instructional settings shows that this hypothesis needs considerable refinement (see,
e.g. Ranta & Lyster, 2007; Short, Echevarria, & Richards-Tutor, 2011). The research also
shows that even in settings where students are exposed to thousands of hours of language
that is mostly comprehensible to them, even when they have opportunities to read and
write and use the language for academic content studies, many details of their language
proficiency depend on instruction that draws their attention explicitly to the language
itself. In some cases, this focus on the language can only be provided by the teacher, but
students can also be taught strategies to help them focus on the language and to know
how to learn (Kinsella, 1997).
Focus on the language itself

Teachers in immersion and other content-based instruction often argue, with good reason,
that their primary responsibility is to ensure that students learn the academic content.
Many are not trained as language teachers and question whether they should concern
themselves with teaching the language itself. Based on a substantial body of research in
immersion classrooms, Lyster has a very clear response to this:
If second language learning were not a primary goal of immersion and content-based instruc-
tion, then it would be much easier for children to engage with the school curriculum entirely
through their first language. To justify the extra effort required of all stakeholders associated
with programs promoting curricular instruction in more than one language, including teach-
ers and students alike, learning the additional language needs to be a primary objective.
(Lyster, 2007, p. 6)
In classrooms where students share the same L1, it is important to keep in mind that
the gale of learners’ L1 howls not only outside the classroom door, but also in the minds
of the learners and in their classroom interaction with other students who share the same
L1-influenced interlanguage. When they use their interlanguage forms among them-
selves, they reinforce each other’s hypotheses about how the new language works.
Direct instruction, including consistent and persistent feedback on specific language
features, as well as contrastive information about the two languages, can help students
sort this out (White, 1991; White, 2008; Wong Fillmore, 1992). We will have more to
say about this later.
Like many researchers, DeKeyser (1998) acknowledges that learners often acquire a
substantial amount of vocabulary (including language units that are made up of several
words) through comprehensible input or participation in interactive language use. However,
he observes that learning the morphosyntax – the structure and patterns of the language –
seemed to require something more. DeKeyser’s work focuses on university foreign lan-
guage students, rather than the children and adolescents whose language development is
the focus of this paper. He makes the case for language teaching that emphasised preparing
learners to continue learning – not only by creating communicative-interactive experiences
in class, but also by equipping them with declarative knowledge that they can draw on
when they expand their learning opportunities through study abroad programmes, for exam-
ple. DeKeyser (2007) argues for an approach in which teachers present information about
the language – descriptive and pedagogical grammar rules and patterns – and guide stu-
dents in the practice of these language elements.
On the surface, DeKeyser’s view of language, based on Anderson’s (e.g. 2000) theo-
ries of skill learning, may appear to reflect the kind of instructional practices that typified
grammar translation teaching. However, the most important aspect of learning according
to this view is the role of practice that learners engage in after they have acquired declara-
tive knowledge of the rule or pattern. Practice, in skill learning theory, is the key to trans-
forming declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge and then eventually into
knowledge that can be accessed fluently or automatically (DeKeyser, 2007). Thus,
10 P.M. Lightbown
knowing some metalinguistic facts about a language allows learners to use these facts as
temporary support while they practice using language meaningfully (Nation, 2007).
If we add the perspective of Schmidt’s (1990) noticing hypothesis, we may see that
such declarative knowledge can help learners identify elements in the target language
that they might otherwise not have perceived or that they might have misinterpreted.
Ranta and Lyster (2007) brought these ideas together in their awareness–practice–
feedback sequence, arguing for the importance of increasing students’ awareness of lan-
guage features that were not being acquired from the comprehensible input and classroom
interaction activities that they experienced in their immersion classrooms. Once aware-
ness is enhanced, learners need to practice using these newly ‘noticed’ language features
in meaningful contexts. However, it is also crucial for learners to get feedback that
provides them with ongoing reminders of what it is they’re practising!
Comparing full flow approaches

In the following pages, we will look at different full flow approaches to teaching second
and foreign languages and compare them in terms of a number of characteristics. Most
evaluation studies of educational outcomes are done within a specific context. It is diffi-
cult to compare instructional programmes across countries, languages, cultures, and
socioeconomic contexts, parents’ education, and social attitudes toward students’ L1 and
L2. This sometimes leads to inferences that are inappropriate, as we noted above in refer-
ring to the non-applicability of results from Canadian French immersion studies to the
education of minority-language students in US schools. Thus, it is important to try to
understand different programmes in different places because if we do not pay attention
to the details, there is a risk that the findings from one setting will continue to inappropri-
ately shape expectations in an entirely different one.
Table 1 summarises some of the characteristics of seven full flow approaches, and the
next section of this paper expands on the information in the table. This is not an exhaus-
tive list of approaches or of characteristics. Furthermore, within each approach, there are
variations in the details of teaching and learning. However, these full flow approaches to
L2 instruction have been widely implemented, and they are also either well researched or
strongly touted as the best way to provide L2 instruction.
Intensive ESL in Quebec primary schools

Intensive ESL in Quebec exists to improve students’ English skills. It has no other goal
(Lightbown, 2012). Intensive classes are ‘compact language courses’. Students normally
have just one intensive period of instruction, in grade 5 or 6 (when students are
10–12 years old). They participate in 300–400 hours of English classes during that year. In
addition, their regular programme gives them 700 hours, spread over the rest of their pri-
mary/secondary schooling. The emphasis is on the communicative use of oral language.
Because of restrictions mentioned above on the role of languages other than French in
Quebec’s French-language schools, there is little or no content-based instruction (Spada &
Lightbown, 1989). In addition, most observers have found that there is little direct teaching
or feedback on grammar, pronunciation, or vocabulary (Collins et al., 2009; Lightbown &
Spada, 1991, 1994). There is considerable variation among teachers, however.
Virtually all students in the classes are native speakers of French. There is no school-
based mechanism to allow students to interact with English speakers. During the period of
intensive ESL, there is minimal L1 instruction. However, outside this period, students’
Table 1. Full flow approaches for L2 teaching.
Academic Presence
content for Focus on learning the of L2 Support
Goals Time and timing L2 learners language itself peers for L1 Outcomes
Intensive ESL Basic L2 communicative 300–400 hours in one No Yes, through No Yes L1 proficiency; academic
(Quebec) ability; L1 for year þ 700 hours communicative success; basic L2
academic content spread over 8–11 years activities skills; ‘communicative
confidence’
‘Canadian’ Academic content; strong 3000–5000 hours over Yes Yes, but often separate No Yes L1 proficiency; academic
immersion L2 comprehension; 6–10 years from and secondary to success; intermediate-
intermediate academic content advanced L2 skills
production
Structured English English (L2) proficiency 4 hours/day over one Minimal Yes No No Loss of L1; delayed
immersion for mainstream school year academic engagement;
academic learning intermediate L2 skills
Sheltered content Academic content while Wide range – from one Yes Yes, with both language No Varies Ongoing academic
instruction L2 being learned hour/day to full school and content goals in engagement in L2;
days over several each lesson intermediate-advanced
years L2 skills. L1 outcomes
vary
Dual immersion Proficiency in two Wide range – with a goal Yes Varies. Some programmes Yes Yes Academic engagement in
languages; academic of 50/50 split between based on a sheltered L1 and L2; advanced
content in both L1 and L1 and L2 over several content model, while L1 and L2 skills
L2 years others more like
‘Canadian’ immersion
Content and Advanced L2 Typically one hour/day Yes Yes. L2 as a medium for No Yes L1 proficiency; academic
language proficiency; academic for L2 as a subject þ CBLT and L2 as a success; intermediate
integrated learning content one hour/day of CBLT subject to advanced L2
proficiency
European Schools Academic content; L1 Gradual introduction of Yes Yes. L2 as a medium for Yes Yes L1 proficiency; academic
education; advanced L2 and L3, first as a CBLT and L2 as a success; intermediate
Language Awareness
L2 proficiency subject and then for subject to advanced L2 and L3

academic and social proficiency
activities throughout
11
school years
12 P.M. Lightbown
education is entirely in French except for brief ESL classes. Students are expected to prog-
ress to a level of high beginner or low intermediate proficiency. The emphasis is on the
development of communication strategies and communicative confidence that can prepare
students to continue learning as they return to the regular drip feed class or in opportunities
they may have to use the language outside of school (Lightbown & Spada, 1991, 1994).
‘Canadian’ immersion
Canadian immersion programmes – and the programmes around the world that are mod-
elled on them – have the dual goals of developing students’ language abilities and ensur-
ing that they learn age-appropriate academic content at the same time. By the mid-1980s
the approach had spread across Canada and had been the object of an almost unimagin-
able amount of research by ministries of education, local school boards, and university
researchers (Genesee, 1987). The approach has been imitated and adapted for foreign lan-
guage instruction in the United States and in many other countries (Fortune & Tedick,
2008; Johnson & Swain, 1997).
The total instructional time in immersion programmes typically adds up to thousands
of hours. There is variety in the age at which students enter the programmes – from
‘early’ (kindergarten) to ‘late’ (age 13 years). Many early immersion students decrease or
discontinue content courses in French as they reach secondary school (Turnbull, Lapkin,
Hart, & Swain, 1998). Grade-level academic content is the context in which students
work on their L2 skills. A systematic focus on language is sometimes offered, but it is
often in ‘language arts’ classes that are not linked to the language used in the content area
instructional activities (Lyster, 2007). Students in immersion programmes rarely have
opportunities to interact with L2 peers except when they participate in exchange pro-
grammes that are usually very brief (Tarone & Swain, 1995).
The L1 of students in immersion programmes is usually a high prestige language and
it is present in the environment at every stage of schooling, varying from 10% in early
years to more than 50% in secondary school. Students have been found to achieve very
good oral and written comprehension in the L2, but they continue to make grammatical
errors and non-target-like lexical choices. Teachers typically ignore these errors if a
student’s meaning is clear (Lyster, 2007). The primary goal is the ability to use the lan-
guage for academic content learning. There have long been concerns about the relatively
limited amount of language students produce and the absence of focused corrective feed-
back, especially on their oral production (Lyster, 2007; Swain, 1985). The perceived suc-
cess of French immersion in Canada has been so great that researchers (e.g. Cummins,
1984; Genesee, 1987; Swain, 1981) have felt compelled to point out to educators, eager
to use its findings as a basis for educating minority-language students, that the expecta-
tions and learning conditions for the original immersion programmes are very different
from those that are present in educational contexts serving minority-language students.
Sometimes, in spite of cautions from researchers, immersion is still seen as the model for
teaching immigrant and minority-language students in mainstream programmes. Unfortu-
nately, the model is also sometimes misunderstood, as we will see in the following discus-
sion on structured English immersion (SEI).
Structured English immersion

This approach to teaching English to minority-language students in the United States is
used in a number of states where bilingual education is no longer permitted. These
programmes have one goal: teaching English to minority-language students so that they
can be quickly moved into mainstream classes. Students are usually enrolled in SEI clas-
ses for several hours a day for approximately one year. The stated intention of the pro-
gramme is to prepare students for content learning, but during the SEI year, English is
taught directly ‘as a foreign language’ and content learning is often delayed. In listing the
activities that make up a typical day in SEI, Clark (2009, p. 46) describes a time distribu-
tion that is overwhelmingly devoted to direct instruction in English grammar and vocabu-
lary, with only a much smaller amount of time devoted to academic content. Outside
the classrooms where structured English immersion is taught, students in English-
language schools may have contact with English-speaking peers, but some educators
have expressed the concern that SEI places English language learners in isolation, sepa-
rate from the mainstream (Rios-Aguilar, Gonzalez Canche, & Moll, 2012). Most schools
that have implemented SEI offer no instruction in or support for students’ L1.
It is somewhat startling to read that SEI is based on ‘Canadian immersion’, with
special reference to Swain’s ‘output hypothesis’ (see Clark, 2009, p. 44). Clark’s
description makes it clear that the emphasis is on explicit teaching of language structure
– very different from the content-focused instruction of Canadian immersion. What
underlies the approach is the belief that students need this kind of direct instruction to
bring their English skills up to a level that will allow them to participate in academic
content courses that are being taught to proficient English speakers. Critics argue that,
by focusing on language alone, SEI delays students’ development of age-appropriate
academic content, and sets unrealistic expectations for the level of English that can be
attained in a single year of this kind of direct instruction (Krashen, Rolstad, & MacS-
wan, 2007).
Sheltered content instruction

Sheltered content instruction is also designed to prepare English language learners in US
schools to make the transition to mainstream English education. In contrast to SEI, how-
ever, the emphasis in sheltered content instruction is on making age-appropriate academic
content comprehensible and accessible to L2 learners who do not yet have the English
language skills to succeed in the mainstream. The assumption is that language will be
acquired if input is understood, but the emphasis is on ensuring that content is learned
while L2 skills are still being acquired. Sheltered content instruction is sometimes offered
as part of a bilingual education programme; sometimes it is used in pull-out classes for
students who continue to have the rest of their instruction in the mainstream. Some stu-
dents may be involved in sheltered instruction for a year or two; others continue longer if
they are deemed to need ‘support’. Grade-level academic content is taught in a way that
is adapted to the needs and skills of English language learners. Sheltered instruction, as it
is described by its proponents, differs from much foreign-language immersion instruction
in that teachers are expected to ensure that each lesson explicitly includes both language
and content goals (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2012).
Students in sheltered content courses may have contact with L2 peers, depending on
the context for the programme. Whether or not their instructional day includes participa-
tion in mainstream classrooms, the L2 is present both inside and outside school. Some
observers have expressed concern about isolation that might arise if students remain in
sheltered programmes for too long (Kinsella, 1997).
Sheltered content instruction is not designed to provide for the development of
students’ L1. However, if the instruction takes place in a bilingual education programme,
14 P.M. Lightbown
they may continue to learn through the L1 in other classes. Bilingual education pro-
grammes are now rare in the United States except where they are part of a dual immersion
programme (see below). Sheltered content instruction is designed to help students make
progress in learning the academic content of their age group while they learn English.
The goal is to provide this support until a time when their language skills allow them to
be fully integrated in mainstream classes. Short et al. (2011) report that the dual goals of
language development and academic content learning can be achieved if teachers have
adequate professional development opportunities.
Dual immersion
The dual immersion approach is also called ‘two-way immersion’ and it has grown
in popularity in the United States (Collier & Thomas, 2004; Howard, Sugarman, &
Christian, 2003). It is permitted even in states where bilingual education for minority-
language students has been excluded by legislative decree. It brings together majority-
and minority-language students and provides instruction for all of them in both languages.
In the United States, there are many Spanish–English dual language programmes and a
smaller number of programmes that involve other languages. The distribution of time
varies, but most programmes begin with students at the kindergarten level and offer half
the instruction in each language over several years. In some cases, English instruction
gradually becomes dominant by the end of elementary school; in others, students continue
their education in both languages throughout the elementary school years.
The instructional approach might more aptly be called ‘dual sheltered content
instruction’ since techniques for ‘making input comprehensible’ are used in both lan-
guages, and many programmes adopt the sheltered content instruction approach, having
both language and content goals for each lesson (Calderon & Minaya-Rowe, 2003). Typi-
cally, there is a stronger emphasis on language than in other immersion programmes
(Lindholm-Leary, 2001)
Interaction with L2 peers is a major opportunity for both groups of students, and
teachers often use cooperative and group work activity to encourage it. Some research
suggests that even the minority-language students eventually prefer to use English among
themselves (Ballinger & Lyster, 2011). In the academic programme itself, however, there
is strong support for both languages and the objective is for students to develop biliteracy
as well as bilingual oral proficiency (Lightbown, 2007).
Content and Language Integrated Learning

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is implemented mainly in secondary
schools in Europe. Students may take a single subject or up to 50% of their courses in
their L2 in a given time period (Coyle, Hood, & Marsh, 2010; Dalton-Puffer, 2011). Like
the Canadian immersion approach, the goal of CLIL is to permit students to get ‘two for
one’ (content and language) by offering academic courses in the L2. The CLIL instruction
is based on academic content that is adapted for L2 learners, but students also continue to
study the foreign language as a subject where the language itself is the focus. Although
interaction with L2 peers is not an option within the classroom where the CLIL courses
are offered, students in European secondary schools often have opportunities to partici-
pate in exchange programmes that allow them to study in the country where their foreign
language is spoken.
CLIL is intended to enhance foreign language outcomes in schools where students

receive most of their instruction in their L1. CLIL was designed to improve learning with-
out, as Lasagabaster (2008) puts it, ‘devoting too much time’ to ‘language’ in the curricu-
lum. The evidence suggests that students develop good comprehension of the L2. Their
metalinguistic ability is also fostered in ‘language as subject’ classes, and their academic
content classes provide opportunities for the development of L2 reading and writing as
well as oral skills. Researchers have reported numerous successful implementations of
CLIL (Dalton-Puffer, 2008). There have also been some questions about whether the pos-
itive outcomes are based on the increase in time for learning, the inclusion of academic
content, or even the ‘selectivity’ of its student populations, and there have been numerous
calls for more research on learning outcomes (Bruton, 2011; Fernandez, 2010;
Lasagabaster, 2008; Mu~ noz, 2007).
European Schools
The European Schools are a group of international schools designed to serve the children
of European business people, civil servants, and diplomats who spend long periods work-
ing outside their home country. The emphasis is on making education available in each
child’s L1, while also creating opportunities to learn other languages (Housen, 2012). In
the first years of primary schooling, children are taught in their L1, but they have some
lessons in an L2, with an emphasis on developing oral skills. At the late elementary and
at the secondary level, students take some of their academic content courses in their L2.
In addition, they continue to study the L2 as an academic subject on its own.
Depending on the location of the school and background of other students in the
school, a student may have a great deal of interaction with L2 speakers (e.g. a German-
speaking child learning English in a European School in England) or very little (e.g. a
German-speaking child learning English in a European School in France). Even when stu-
dents have few peers who are native speakers of their L2, they may still have opportuni-
ties to interact in the L2 with students who have a different L1, increasing the chances
that they will need to work harder to understand and make themselves understood than
they would if they spoke the L2 only with their L1 peers, as is the case in so many foreign
language programmes.
As noted, the European Schools were originally created for the purpose of ensuring
that children whose families were away from home could nevertheless have their early
education in their L1. Support for both the initial literacy and the ongoing academic study
in the L1 is fundamental to the curriculum. By the time they finish their schooling, stu-
dents are expected to have proficiency in at least two European languages in addition to
their L1. Their academic content courses promote reading and writing as well as oral lan-
guage skills, and students also have ‘language as subject’ classes where metalinguistic
ability is fostered. A substantial amount of research has confirmed the success of the
European Schools. Although some observers express concern that the schools are
‘selective’ and cater to a privileged student population, it is noteworthy that there is a
wide range of outcomes, suggesting a population with greater heterogeneity than is some-
times supposed (Housen et al., 2011).
Summary: what does the comparison of approaches reveal?

All of the full flow approaches that have been reviewed here provide students with more
time for learning than is typical of foreign language programmes, and all are more likely
16 P.M. Lightbown
to lead to higher levels of L2 proficiency than those drip feed programmes. It is important
to repeat, however, that there are differences in the pedagogical practices as well as in the
goals and outcomes of the different full flow approaches. Some of the approaches are char-
acterised by the expectation that language will be acquired if content is understood. Stu-
dents are expected to learn ‘through’ the language rather than learning the language itself.
Research supports this, but only up to a point. Language requires its own effort, and the
approaches to content-based language teaching that specify language as well as content
goals have proven more effective than those that leave language development to ‘take care
of itself’ (Lightbown, 2014; Lyster, 2007; Short et al., 2011). In contrast, some approaches
isolate language learning from content learning, depriving students of opportunities for
practising what they have learned in direct language instruction in a greater variety of age-
appropriate and cognitively engaging subject matter. Hawkins (1978) referred to this as
instruction in which language is ‘rehearsed’ rather than ‘performed’ and urged educators
to find ways to increase the amount of authentic language use. When language is separated
from academic content and when students have little contact with L2-speaking peers, their
opportunities for learning are limited (Goldenberg, 2008; Krashen et al., 2007; Lindholm-
Leary & Borsato, 2006; Rios-Aguilar et al., 2012)
A review of research on these different approaches suggests that the most effective pro-
grammes for L2 learners in both foreign-language and second-language settings include a
number of characteristics. Some of the most important ones are summarised below:
(1) Enough time. Language acquisition requires thousands of hours of exposure

and engagement. A new language is not fully learned in a single intensive
period. Furthermore, foreign- and second-language learners who continue learn-
ing the language as they engage in the cognitively demanding academic work
of secondary school acquire higher levels of proficiency than those whose
instruction ends or diminishes significantly after childhood (e.g. Turnbull et al.,
1998).
(2) Compact or ‘intensive’ distribution of time. Larger blocks of time allow for peda-
gogical activities such as cooperative learning and task-based instruction that are
difficult to organise in short, discontinuous lessons (Collins et al., 1999; Mu~noz,
2012). In addition, greater intensity of language use may allow for the procedural-
isation of knowledge and the development of fluent language use that cannot be
accomplished in the more traditional drip feed approaches (Serrano, 2011).
(3) Challenging/interesting [academic] content. Academic content instruction that is
adapted to the needs of L2 learners is associated with the most successful pro-
grammes. Such instruction needs to take into account the language limitations of
learners at different levels, but it should also be cognitively engaging, challeng-
ing, and age-appropriate (e.g. Short et al., 2011).
(4) L2 instruction þ L2 as medium of instruction. The most successful programmes
are not based on the assumption that L2 learning can ‘take care of itself’. Rather,
they provide systematic instruction on the L2 itself, supplementing and support-
ing L2 as the medium of content instruction (e.g. Housen et al., 2011; Lightbown,
2014).
(5) L2 literacy as well as oral skill. As students acquire oral proficiency, it is essential
for them to begin developing literacy skills in the L2. Being able to work with the
written word is valuable for many aspects of language acquisition. Working with
the written language allows the learner to review and reanalyse, and to see word
boundaries and the morphological patterns that are so difficult to notice in oral
language. Devoting class time entirely to ‘natural’ oral language is depriving stu-
dents of valuable information that they could get from activities involving, for
example, manipulation of language units in a written form (e.g. see chapters in
August & Shanahan, 2008). However, it has been observed in a number of studies
that we cannot depend on the fact that something is written – or even that it is writ-
ten in large bold letters – to attract students’ attention. Exposure to the written lan-
guage does not remove the need for some focused instruction. Even in reading, we
focus on getting meaning and can overlook or misinterpret what is on the page (e.g.
White, 1998).
(6) Interaction with L2 peers. Opportunities to interact with L2 peers allow learners
to acquire not only the more formal language of the classroom, but also the infor-
mal register that is appropriate for social interaction outside the classroom
(Lyster, 2007; Tarone & Swain, 1995). This, in turn, can lead to more learning
opportunities. In some cases, such as dual immersion and the European Schools,
this peer interaction occurs within the school programme. In other places, stu-
dents travel – either during school term or in summers. Where local communities
are not present and travel is not an option, some schools have developed elec-
tronic communication options that allow students to get to know L2 counterparts,
for example, via Skype or FaceTime.
(7) Support for L1 literacy – concurrent or sequential. Support for students’ home
language, including L1 literacy, builds a strong base for learning an L2, espe-
cially if the two languages are related. There are also cognitive advantages –
opportunities to build a more extensive underlying bilingual language proficiency
and to gain experience in the kind of attention control that Bialystok (2007), for
example, has found beneficial in many cognitive tasks throughout the lifespan.
The issue of whether literacy instruction should be provided first in the L1 or first
in the L2 has been much debated. The evidence seems to suggest that for major-
ity-language students, teaching reading first in L2 leads to a transfer of skills to
later L1 literacy development (Genesee, 1987). For minority-language students,
however, research points to a preference for establishing L1 literacy first or con-
currently with L2 (Slavin & Cheung, 2005).
Above all, there are deeply personal reasons to help students develop their L1 knowl-
edge. It is important to show respect for the language identities of children and their fami-
lies. Members of majority groups do not have to ask for this. It comes ‘for free’, but for
members of minority groups, the loss of a family language can have significant negative
consequences, as research has persuasively shown (e.g. Cummins & Early, 2011; Wong
Fillmore, 2000).
Finding the balance in full flow teaching approaches

What is the right balance of attention to language itself and experiences of using language
as a tool for learning about other things? One valuable suggestion for how to allocate
learning time comes from Nation (2007). On the basis of his research on vocabulary
learning and his assessment of L2 acquisition research in general, he has proposed four
strands for L2 learning. These four strands can be seen as a framework for thinking about
how L2 programmes are organised and where their strengths and weaknesses may lie.
The four strands are as follows:
18 P.M. Lightbown
Meaning-focused input. Students focus on understanding information that is pre-

sented orally or in writing, using language that is mostly known but which also
includes some new language that can be learned with the support of the teacher or
other classroom resources.
Meaning-focused output. Students communicate in speech or writing, using mostly
language they already know, but drawing on external resources to fill in gaps.
Language-focused learning. Students pay attention to features of the language
itself. The language features in focus should be those within learners’ developmen-
tal reach. Most importantly, the language in focus should be related to the language
that is needed during meaning-focused activities.
Fluency development. Learners hear, speak, read, and write, using only language
that is already known to them. The language is contextualised within meaningful
language use and includes some pressure to process the language more rapidly.
Nation sees the four strands as equally important and recommends that foreign lan-
guage programmes devote an equal amount of time to each. Such a distribution of time is
rare, even in the full flow programmes that have been described here. In intensive ESL
and most CBLT programmes, the meaning-focused input and meaning-focused output
strands tend to take the lion’s share of classroom time. Language-focused learning is
often minimal and not coordinated with the meaning-focused activities. In contrast, in
SEI, language-focused learning is given priority, and students spend far less time in
meaning-focused activities. Some sheltered content instruction and dual immersion pro-
grammes put the primary emphasis on content, but they are designed to include language-
focused objectives that are relevant to the content topics and skills. Fluency development
of the kind that helps learners develop automaticity and accuracy in all four skills is sur-
prisingly rare in any of the programmes.
Instructional programmes that give students hundreds or thousands of hours of expo-
sure to the language can afford to devote time to all four strands. Depending entirely on
the meaning-focused input and output strands results in interlanguage development that
stalls before the desired levels of accuracy and fluency have been attained. On the other
hand, depending entirely on language-focused learning to ‘prepare students’ for real lan-
guage use may leave them bored and isolated from the L2 community.
Conclusion
Learning a new language requires thousands of hours of exposure to and use of the lan-
guage, and reaching the highest levels of proficiency requires experiences in language
use that cannot be offered or even fully replicated in the classroom. Nevertheless, by pro-
viding more instructional time and ensuring that it includes a balance of meaning-focused
and language-focused activities, the teacher/gardener can hope to nurture seedlings that
will continue to grow and flourish after they leave the protected garden of the classroom
and face the gale outside.
Acknowledgements
First, I wish to thank Joanna White and Sarah Kennedy, who honoured me by inviting me to present
the Eric Hawkins lecture at the 2012 meeting of the Association for Language Awareness. They
also helped me shape the content of that presentation for this article. Three anonymous reviewers
used their expertise to offer numerous suggestions for improving the written version of the presenta-
tion, and I am grateful for their help.
Notes
1. The terms ‘foreign language’ and ‘second language’ are often used to distinguish between the
classroom-learning environments of students who live in communities where the language
being taught is rarely heard outside the classroom (foreign language) and those who live in
communities where the language being learned at school is also widely spoken outside the
classroom (second language). In this article, I will use these terms to focus on the different con-
texts for learning. However, the short form of second language (L2) will be used to cover both
types of learning environments.
2. Stern (1985) used the term drip feed to describe language courses that expose students to
instruction that could be measured in minutes per day, usually spread over many years of
schooling. Full flow instruction is more compact or intensive, providing foreign language expo-
sure more intensively – for hours rather than minutes per day. Most such approaches offer more
total time for instruction; others simply ‘compact’ the amount of time rather than spreading it
thinly over longer periods. More detailed descriptions of several full flow approaches appear
later in this article.
3. In the context of this article, the term ‘majority language’ refers to the language that is spoken
by the majority of the members of a community and which is also a language that has prestige
and status as the language of education and government. The term ‘minority language’ will be
used to refer to a language that is spoken by fewer people in a community and is often seen as
having lower prestige than the majority language.
4. A reviewer pointed out that many readers would not be familiar with the distribution of lan-
guage populations in Canada. While Canada is an officially bilingual country, French and
English are not spoken equally across the country. In 8 of the 10 provinces, English is spoken
by nearly everyone, whether as a first or second language. In the province of New Brunswick,
about half the population speak French as their first language, and schools provide education
in either French or English according to parents’ choice. In Quebec, approximately 80% of
the population have French as the first language and, with the exception of children whose
parents were educated in English in Canada, all students must attend French-language pri-
mary and secondary schools. Throughout Canada, nearly all students are taught the ‘other’
official language as their L2, even though they may have little occasion to use it outside of
school.
Notes on contributor
Patsy Martin Lightbown is Distinguished Professor Emeritus (applied linguistics) at Concordia Uni-
versity in Montreal, Canada. Her research has focused on the learning and teaching of second and
foreign languages in the classroom, especially the complementary contributions of communicative
and form-focused activities. With Nina Spada, she co-authored How Languages are Learned
(Oxford University Press), an introduction to second-language-acquisition research for teachers that
is now in its fourth edition.
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Making the minutes count in L2 teaching

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THE ERIC HAWKINS LECTURE

Department of Education/Applied Linguistics, Concordia University, P.O. Box 274, Harwich, MA

Many educational institutions offer second- or foreign-language (L2) programmes that

Time and L2 teaching

Ó 2014 Taylor & Francis

descriptions and comparisons of some of these full flow approaches. Nevertheless, it is

English language teaching in Quebec4

maintain motivation to continue learning.

Content-based language teaching

Focus on the language itself

immersion classrooms, Lyster has a very clear response to this:

Comparing full flow approaches

Intensive ESL in Quebec primary schools

Table 1. Full flow approaches for L2 teaching.

L2 proficiency subject and then for subject to advanced L2 and L3

Structured English immersion

Sheltered content instruction

Content and Language Integrated Learning

CLIL is intended to enhance foreign language outcomes in schools where students

Summary: what does the comparison of approaches reveal?

(1) Enough time. Language acquisition requires thousands of hours of exposure

Finding the balance in full flow teaching approaches

Meaning-focused input. Students focus on understanding information that is pre-

Billy, L. (1980). Experimentation d’une nouvelle approche en immersion. Canadian Modern

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