French immersion students have been criticized as having difficulties in going from language learned to language lived. In other words, because exposure to the French language is mainly confined to the classroom setting, French immersion students struggle to communicate in authentic contexts outside of the classroom or school. Hamers and Blanc (2000) identify one of the primary barriers for French immersion students as the peer-group, face-to-face interaction with high proficiency models such as the francophone community. In bilingual programs the language of the majority is not the language of instruction. This makes providing an authentic communicative environment with native speakers of the language more challenging. In addition, in French immersion programs that operate in places such as Alberta, students are generally only exposed to the language in the school environment, as there are limited opportunities for students outside of this environment. While efforts can be made at the school level to locate and provide information about opportunities, promoting authentic communicative experiences outside of the school environment needs to become the joint responsibility of the teachers, the parents and the students. The use of technology can be used to facilitate meaningful learning and facilitate authentic learning tasks. It can be used to promote contact with second language learners such as pairing with other francophone or French immersion students.
Some other ways to incorporate authentic communicative experiences for students include:
Field trips to French speaking milieus
Exchange programs
French camp
Matching francophone students with immersion students (Dual track school, camp, planned activities, etc…)
Inviting bilingual experts into the classroom (in person or via technology), “...engag[ing] in productive collaboration with discipline and other experts around real problems, issues, questions or ideas that are of real concern and central to the discipline, to the students and to the broader community outside of school.” (Friesen, 2008, p. 8).
"In order to motivate language use there should ideally be an authentic audience that encourages two-way communication in both oral and written modes." Cummins, 2000, p.278