What may be a surprise to some parents is that in the Newfoundland Labrador French Immersion Program, grammar is learned in context, and is no longer simply a course consisting of exercise sheets for conjugating verbs.
Instruction is learner-centered, and both risk taking and cooperation are key in the program, so that students will feel free to express themselves in French without having to always worry about whether they have made a g
rammatical error. That said, students are expected to become proficient in French both in meaning and in form, so grammar will be taken into account during evaluations (Gouvernement de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador, Ministère de l’Éducation, 2010).
Particularly as we are at the beginning of their Immersion experience, however, the meaning of their expressions will take precedence over the form as they are eased into the language, but rest assured that students will in time and in context learn various elements of French grammar, as the goal is authentic communication (Cummins, 2000).
References
Cummins, J. (2000). Immersion education for the millennium: What we have learned from 30 years of research on second language immersion. Retrieved from http://www.iteachilearn.com/cummins/immersion2000.html
Gouvernement de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador, Ministère de l’Éducation. (2010). Arts langagiers 7e, 8e, 9e: Programme d’études. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov.nl.ca/edu/k12/french/immersion/francais/index.html