This study investigates performance on oral tasks across two groups of francophone learners with different ESL instruction. It reports on second language (L2) ability gains in intensive instruction and regular instruction. To date, gains in oral proficiency have not been reported in such programs, nor has there been a comparison across two concurrent programs. Six classes were involved: one intensive ESL and one regular Grade 6 ESL class from each of three schools. Data were collected at the beginning and end of their programs. Three tasks were used: Audio-Pal, Story Retell, and Info-Gap. Results indicate that the intensive ESL students gained significantly more than the regular ESL students in their oral ability on the three tasks. Of particular interest in this article are the characteristics of the instruments and the language performance they generated. The three tasks discriminated across the two programs and enabled us to characterize the differences that were observed.