Minority Populations in Canadian Second Language Education

Katy Arnett, Callie Mady, Katy Arnett, Callie Mady

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781783090327
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Enseignement des arts du langage

Until now, the picture painted of French second language learning in Canada has tended to focus on successful French immersion. This volume offers a broader representation, in response to the demographic changes that have made the French language classroom a more complex place. Focusing on inclusion and language maintenance, the chapters discuss how a multilingual population can add the two official languages to their repertoire whilst maintaining their languages of origin/heritage; how the revitalization of Indigenous languages can best be supported in the language classroom, and how students with disabilities can be helped to successfully learn languages.

Part 1

French as an Additional Language: Immigrants’ Learning of French in English-dominant Canada

1	Adding Languages, Adding Benefits: Immigrant Students’ Attitudes Toward and Performance in FSOL Programs in Canada

Callie Mady

Officially, Canada is an English/French bilingual country. This official language status affords the population federal services (e.g. federal judicial services) in the official language of their choice and supports the development of official minority communities (i.e. English minority in Quebec and French minorities in the remainder of Canada). These rights are recognized as law in the Official Languages Act (Canada, Department of Justice, 1985). Although the Act also seeks to advance the use of English and French (p. 3), Canada remains English-dominant with 68% of the population speaking English only (Statistics Canada, 2011a). Similarly, as it pertains to official language bilingualism, less than 10% of Canadian Anglophones are English/French bilingual in comparison to to 42% of Canadian Francophones (Statistics Canada, 2006a). The aforementioned statistics show Anglophone and Francophone Canadians’ tendency to remain unilingual. The seemingly greater resistance on the part of Anglophones to become official language bilingual, in combination with their larger population numbers, highlights the English language dominance of Canada.

Language Education in Canada

Although education is not federally governed, second language education in Canada, for the most part, mirrors federal statistics. In provinces and territories, with the exception of French-dominant Quebec, bilingual New Brunswick and Francophone minority regions, education is English-dominant. In regard to second language learning in the same contexts, three provinces (Ontario, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) mandate the study of French, five provinces/territories (Alberta, Manitoba, Northwest territories, Nunavut and Saskatchewan) have no second language requirement and British Columbia mandates the study of a second language, French being among those offered. A minority of students, therefore, are studying French as a second official language (FSOL). Canadian Parents for French (2011), a national network of volunteers that promotes FSOL learning, reports that, in the aforementioned English-dominant contexts, only approximately 43% of eligible students are studying FSOL.

Adding to the dominance of English in Canada is a lack of focus on immigrants’ languages. Absent from federal laws and marginalized, if not also absent, from Canadian education is protection for or formal promotion of immigrants’ languages.¹ Federally, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (2003: 4) states that the federal government’s policy is to preserve and enhance the use of languages other than English and French. This issue is of particular importance due to the high percentage of the population (21%) who is immigrant (Statistics Canada, 2011a), approximately 6% of whom speak only their language of origin at home (Statistics Canada, 2011b). It is also of urgency due to the potential for language of origin literacy to positively impact immigrants’ education (Cummins, 1979). Unlike the Official Languages Act, however, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act does not go as far as declaring language maintenance a right for immigrant communities. Again, reflecting federal government policy, the majority of provinces and territories offer education in Canada’s official languages, relegating language of origin maintenance to hours outside of the school day.

The educational prioritization of English for immigrants is also evident in research that shows that immigrants have at times been denied access to learning FSOL. Research in Ontario (Mady, 2007; Taaffe et al., 1996), where the study of FSOL is obligatory, has shown that immigrants are only sporadically included in FSOL, with administrators occasionally exempting them from the mandatory requirement.

Immigrants’ FSOL experiences

The exclusion of immigrants from FSOL study is contrary to research that shows their desire to add FSOL to their linguistic repertoire. National research shows immigrant populations to be more favorable of English/French bilingualism for Canada than Anglophone respondents (Parkin & Turcotte, 2003). Research with immigrant parents in British Columbia (Dagenais & Berron, 2001) and Ontario (Mady, 2012) also revealed a parental desire for their children to become official language bilingual.

In addition to opposing their desire to become official language bilingual, excluding immigrant students from FSOL learning opportunities is also in contrast to immigrants’ ability to meet with success when included. Calman (1988), through FSOL listening tests, determined that immigrant students with less FSOL experience performed on par with their Canadian-born peers. By comparing the FSOL test results of immigrants with those of Canadian-born students, Mady (2007) found that immigrants outperformed their peers although they had studied FSOL for a shorter period of time. Despite immigrants’ desire and ability to succeed in learning FSOL in English-dominant Canada, approximately 64% are adopting English as their sole official language (Statistics Canada, 2011b) with only approximately 4% becoming official language bilingual (Statistics Canada, 2006b).

The adoption of English as their sole official language is perhaps due to the lack of opportunities to study FSOL, as determined by administrators who are unaware of immigrants’ ability to learn English and FSOL simultaneously. With a view to providing more information on which to make decisions, this chapter presents the results of a more recent study that compared the FSOL achievement of immigrants to that of their Canadian-born Anglophone and bilingual (English and heritage language) peers at the elementary level.

Study Context

This study was conducted in southern Ontario, Canada, in an area that receives the highest amount of immigrants in the world (Ontario, 2001). More precisely, approximately 27% of this area’s population is immigrant. In contrast to the situation of prior decades, when immigrants to Canada were almost exclusively European, the majority of this decade’s immigrants to southern Ontario come from Asia.

In particular, this study sought to answer the following research questions:

(1) How does immigrant students’ achievement in FSOL compare to that of Canadian-born English-speaking students? How does immigrant students’ FSOL achievement compare to that of Canadian-born multilingual (CBM) students?

(2) What factors influence the test outcomes (e.g. value placed on learning FSOL, view of progress and nature of/proficiency in dominant languages)?

Methods

This research used a multi-skills test to measure Grade 6 core French students’ FSOL achievement and a questionnaire to collect data pertaining to their language-learning attitudes and experiences.²

Instruments

Test

A four-skills test – listening, speaking, reading and writing – was used to determine students’ FSOL achievement. The test comprised sections of the Diplôme d’études en langue française (DELF, A1, primaire) (Centre international d’études pédagogiques, 2012), which were deemed to be appropriate through pilot testing with the same grade prior to use in the study. All students completed the listening, reading and writing sections. All students in the immigrant (IMM) group also completed the speaking component with a randomly selected sub-group from the Canadian-born unilingual English-speaking (CBU) and CBM groups also completing the speaking tests.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire, created for the purpose of this study, was divided into three sections. The first section contained Likert-scale items pertaining to (a) language anxiety, (b) willingness to communicate in FSOL in class, (c) attitudes toward the FSOL learning situation, (d) integrative (i.e. desire to relate to French Canadians) and (e) Canadian integrative (i.e. importance of French to Canada) motivations, (f) plans to continue to study FSOL and (g) languages in general as well as items on (h) language awareness (as it pertains to prior language knowledge) and (i) strategy use. A principal component analysis was conducted on the corresponding items to create composite variables represented by the (a) to (i) categories. The second section required students to self-assess their English and, where applicable, other language knowledge and use. The last section requested their demographic information.

Interviews

The semi-structured interview protocol consisted of 11 questions. In addition to confirming demographic information and obtaining corresponding details, the questions pertained to questionnaire categories: attitudes toward learning FSOL and the learning situation; motivation to learn FSOL; and integrative and Canadian integrative motivations. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.

Participants

One hundred and eighty-five students partici...