An Evaluation of the Oral Communication Skills of Students at an Elementary School Using AIM

This article explores the efficiency of AIM (the accelerative integrated method), used in core French classes, by comparing the oral communication skills of Grade 3 French as a second language (FSL) students in a class using AIM to those of Grade 3 FSL students in a regular core French program. AIM has been gaining momentum across Canada since 2000; its objective is to bring FSL learners to a higher level of proficiency relative to other programs using communicative methods (Maxwell, 2001). AIM allows students to use French in context & differs from other teaching practices in its use of gestures corresponding to each word taught. In this study, data were collected during individual interviews. Our results show few significant differences between the AIM group & the non-AIM group. Adapted from the source document