ERIC Number: EJ1265523
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2020
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0026-7902
EISSN: N/A
Canadian Immersion Students' Investment in French
Modern Language Journal, v104 n3 p601-617 Fall 2020
French second language education, including the option of one-way French immersion, is mandated for majority-language Anglophone children in New Brunswick, Canada's only officially bilingual province. Language ideological debates in the province surrounding official English--French bilingualism led us to investigate adolescent majority-language immersion students' investment in French, the co-official minority language, using Darvin and Norton's tripartite (capital, ideology, identity) model. We discuss 3 student profiles, drawing on data collected from multimodal focus groups conducted among 8th-grade French immersion students. Our analysis reveals a dominance of neoliberal ideologies in these students' investment in French, rendering it imbalanced and largely driven by imagined access to future economic capital. Language as cultural or social capital figures inconsistently in their investment. Drawing on our data, we conclude by proposing that Darvin and Norton's model, with a balanced focus on each kind of capital within the model, may be used conceptually by educators in program development. The model used in such a way would enable educators to give equal priority to students' identity and intercultural development as to their preparation for participation in economic marketplaces, thus potentially expanding majority-language students' investment in their co-official minority second language.
Descriptors: Immersion Programs, French, Second Language Learning, Second Language Instruction, Social Capital, Language Minorities, Language Attitudes, Foreign Countries, Grade 8, Neoliberalism, Self Concept, Cultural Capital, Profiles, Bilingualism, Student Attitudes, Intercultural Communication, English, Native Language, Official Languages
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2191/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 8; Junior High Schools; Middle Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A