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In this study’s search for student behaviours indicative of intercultural competence, some case study students appear to demonstrate that they see themselves as

purposeful language users, through analysis of two areas. Firstly, in their depiction of their relationship and spoken interaction with their teacher and secondly, through their comments about the type of engagement they experience with meaningful tasks. A fuller explanation follows.

4.2.2.1.1 Students’ perception of competence achieved through purposeful interaction with teacher

This first section will include an examination of data relating to students’ perceptions of their relationship to their teacher model, and a discussion of classroom spoken

interaction.

Marie expresses her meaningful response to the teacher and class cultural context when she says I feel like a different person, like, when the teacher talks to you in

French, you go, right, I’m in French class, I’ll answer in French. Central to the student’s

sense of being a purposeful language user is his/her response to, and relationship with, the teacher. It is the teacher who creates and embodies the meaningful context for interaction. Forty of 49 students commented in focus groups that they are modelling their language on what appears to them to be authentic models, both ‘live’ (the teacher) and textual. This is further discussed in section 4.3.3.1, from the perspective of the teacher’s behaviour.

In focus group data, students spoke about the various aspects of their interaction with the target language, their sense of task purpose, and their focus for noticing and

reflecting. Forty of 49 students made comments about noticing and admiring the fluency model offered by their teachers, even when there was self-doubt about being able to achieve this themselves. Violet comments: I see the Japanese teachers talking to each

other… You really want to learn how to do that (Violet). Veronica agrees that You really admire your teachers and how well they speak (Veronica).

Students (30 of 49) also mentioned noticing particular features of the teachers’ language: speed, informal nature, fluency, and use of dialect. Bob’s impression of teacher fluency is: The German teachers, its full serious, they talk so fast… Like –

whack! It all comes out! These same (30 of 49) students expressed the desire to

increase their fluency, acquire these features, and learn from the teacher model, as Lucinda described: She helps you and you copy it. One hundred percent of the students of Japanese (N=15) said it made no difference to them that Bettye Fennell was non- native, since, in their perception, she spoke so well. As will be discussed in Section 4.3.1.3, students appear to understand below that Bettye successfully models for them an intercultural language learning principle (Liddicoat, 2004), namely that the

intercultural learner’s goal is not to become a native speaker, but to develop ownership of bilingual competence as non-native communicator. Harry, Ray and Ulysses

commented: I think (Bettye) is a lot Japanese even though she’s not. I reckon she’s

really good because she has learnt a lot of stuff and she tries hard to be Japanese, even though she’s not, she tries more…and she’s always learning, like, she didn’t know what ’jellyfish’ was (in Japanese)…she’s interested in learning, the same as in our learning.

A major focus of purposeful student communication is the many small natural student- teacher target language interactions, the feature of an immersion classroom (discussed in 4.3.3.1 as teacher behaviour). Modelled on mother–child interaction, this is referred to as ‘motherese’ by Baker (2006). At early levels, teachers may use simplified vocabulary, repetition, paraphrasing, and simple requests. By Year 6 level in the case study school, teachers are initiating constant interactions about praise, discipline, jokes, requests, and instructions. In almost every case, in classroom observation, they are contextually understood and responded to in either target language or English by the students.

When, in classroom observation, Odette Salib questions Timmy’s attention to the task:

Timmy, tu parles à tout le monde! [Timmy, you are talking to everyone!], Timmy

answers, Non, je suis multitasking! [No, I’m multi-tasking!] (31 March, 2006). This exchange demonstrates that, in his comprehension, in negotiating his response, including his confident use of the humorous code-mixing, Timmy is learning ways ‘to operate within the culture’ (Lo Bianco, 2003, p.25).

To assist students in modelling contextually correct language, teachers (in classroom observation) draw deliberate attention to cultural contextual strategies, such as Japanese ‘aizuchi’ (markers of conversation flow), which students can be seen to be adopting. Studies of change in student language due to teacher modelling have been reported by Cohen and Gomez (2004), De Courcy (1995), Garcia (1993) and Olmedo (2005b) and point to the negotiation of immersion class interactions as an important component of intercultural competence.

If confident speaking skills are the recognised strength of an immersion program (Swain, 1996), they are also the strength of an immersion program’s capacity to facilitate

students’ intercultural competence. In focus groups, there was a view expressed by 67% of total students (33 of 49) that it is their speaking which embodies their learning,

mastery and competence. Sharon comments that If you actually speak it, you learn new

things. When asked by the researcher about how he learns, Malcolm immediately

responds, By talking German! Rachael equates speaking with learning, and

communicates her personal identification with the target language: You think to yourself,

oh my lord, I am actually learning this language, it means I can speak this language!

In focus group student data, students prioritise speaking as the interactive ability which represents their language mastery. Liddicoat et al. (2003) say that a successful

intercultural language learner recognises ‘that social interaction is central to communication’ (2003, p. 49).

4.2.2.1.2 Students’ perception of competence achieved through purposeful tasks

This section includes a discussion of students’ preference for experiential learning tasks, involving spoken interaction, and how this affects their perception of their competence. Teacher task design is more fully discussed in section 4.3.4.

In immersion classrooms the focus is on real, authentic communication and cognitively demanding tasks (Baker, 2006). MacIntyre, Baker, Clement, and Conrod (2001) have demonstrated that student willingness to communicate is aided when there are authentic uses for the language. Eighty-four percent of the case study students (41 of 49) in focus groups expressed their enjoyment of learning their target language through experiential hands-on tasks. The design of tasks by teachers will be discussed from the teacher perspective in section 4.3.5. From the student perspective, popular activities were watching target language films, competitive games, computer research and hands-on building models. Tamsin says, I like it when we are playing games because then its

something good you are learning it for. The authenticity and purposefulness of the

context are expressed by Philippe when he says, We know it in French, we’re thinking in

French, we’re understanding in French.

The nature of the task encourages students to demand of themselves that they are language users, as well as language learners. Armour (2004) discusses the cognitive significance of using, rather than learning language: that is, target language used purposefully as a ‘resource to make meaning’. In contrast to the case study students, Armour (2004, p. 111) describes how a case study Japanese learner’s language

development is negatively affected due to non-experiential syntax-drill learning, because ‘there was no imitation of expert’s language from which she could appropriate necessary L2 capabilities. The substitution drills that Sarah did … reinforced her identity of ‘learner’ rather than the more desirable ‘communicative being’ or ‘language user’ (Armour, 2004, p.111). Section 4.3.5 further considers how teachers’ design of tasks built around social interaction facilitates the development of this intercultural competence.

To summarise this first area of student behaviours, and in answering Research question 1, a number of points are noted from the discussion above. All these behaviours are considered, with regard to the research literature reviewed in Chapter 2, to embody aspects of intercultural competence:

• Students self-evaluate their target language competence in terms of their speaking ability in interaction.

• Students negotiate frequent teacher/ student spoken interactions, assisted by contextual modelling.

• Students report that they observe and model teacher behaviour. • Students prioritise interactive speaking activities.

• Students prioritise experiential tasks with purpose. • Students see themselves as language users.

Moving from a focus on the case study students’ use of language and the place of their speaking skills in their intercultural competence, this discussion moves to the second area of evidence in the student data, that is, students’ observed ability to reflect across languages.

4.2.2.2 Second area of student evidence: Students display metalinguistic