Ibon Manterola

Basque L2 development in immersion school settings

The aim of this article is to study the development of Basque L2 by Spanish L1 children who attend school in a total immersion programme where Basque is the vehicular language. Narratives based on an adult model produced at ages 5 and 8 are analysed in order to better understand the acquisition process of Basque L2 in an immersion school context. Basque L1 children who are also educated in Basque from preschool age constitute a reference group. The same subjects participate in the research at both ages, which gives a longitudinal as well as a cross-sectional approach to the study. The degree of narrative autonomy, the organisation of the narrative structure and features of nominal and verbal cohesion and some metalinguistic strategies are analysed. The results show similar skills in both groups, and the differences are not always in favour of the L1 subjects. On the whole, L2 subjects seem to reproduce the adult model more closely. This study contributes to a better understanding of L2 development in a school context, focussing on the positive effects of Basque immersion programmes.

The development of narrative skills in learners of Basque as a second language

The aim of this paper is to analyse some aspects of development of Basque as a second language (L2) in children for whom Spanish is their first language (L1) who attended immersion school in Basque in a Spanish-speaking sociolinguistic context. Data consist of oral story retellings produced in a classroom setting where the same children participated at ages 5, 8 and 11. Another group of children for whom Basque was the L1 and who lived in a strong Basque-speaking environment also took part in the study. Two aspects are analysed in the stories: lexical difficulties and the production of text organisers. According to the results, the Basque L2 children seemed to have acquired a linguistic competence quite comparable to L1 capacity: the lexical aspects studied show a clear development in L2, since lexical gaps were frequent at age 5, diminished at age 8 and were practically non-existent at age 11. The production of text organisers also shows a clear developmental pattern and, with increasing age, the children produced a higher variety of text organisers, providing precise temporal links to different segments of the story. It is concluded that Basque immersion seems to foster the development of Basque L2 in contexts where the use of Basque is quite reduced.