ABSTRACT
In Canada we are experiencing an increasing demand from English-speaking communities for schooling that will produce bilingual individuals. The motivations for this demand are varied, but minimally they include both social and economic reasons. Recent political events in Canada have heightened awareness of the needs and demands of Canada’s French-speaking peoples. As a result, a genuine desire has developed on the part of some English-Canadians to learn French in order to be able to interact with French-Canadians in their own language. These same political events have also resulted in establishing bilingual proficiency in French and English as a highly desirable or, in some cases, a required qualification for employment. Clearly, then, what was needed in these circumstances were school programmes that could provide students not only with a formal knowledge of the second language, characteristic of traditional second language teaching programmes, but also with the ability to use the second language as a communicative tool.
