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

The present study examines the nonlinguistic outcomes of an immersion versus a nonimmersion program. The dependent variables included attitudes toward learning French, orientations for learning, willingness to communicate, communication 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 anxiety, higher perceived communicative competence, and more frequent communication only in the French language. Among the nonimmersion students, perceived competence was strongly correlated with willingness to communicate, but among the immersion students, communication anxiety correlated most strongly with willingness to communicate. Male nonimmersion students showed the least positive attitudes toward learning.