The role of gender and immersion in communication and second language orientations

The present study examines the nonlinguistic outcomes of an immersion versu s a nonimmersion program. The dependent variables included attitudes toward learning French, orientations for learning, willingness to communicate, co mmunication anxiety, perceived communicative competence, and self-reported frequency of communication in both English (L1) and French (L2). Immersion students indicated higher willingness to communicate, lower communication a nxiety, higher perceived communicative competence, and more frequent commun ication only in the French language. Among the nonimmersion students, perce ived competence was strongly correlated with willingness to communicate, bu t among the immersion students, communication anxiety correlated most stron gly with willingness to communicate. Male nonimmersion students showed the least positive attitudes toward learning.