French immersion (FI) programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of growing migration to Canada. In the present mixed-methods study, I explore the perspectives and ideologies of teachers, principals, and central office staff in eight school divisions in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta with respect to…

This article presents the results of an analysis of ethnographic data collected in three second language mathematics classrooms in Canada. The elementary school classes consisted of a group of indigenous students, a group of new immigrant students and a class in a French immersion programme. The focus of the analysis was on the sources of meaning…

The classroom demographics in French immersion (FI) programs across Canada are changing: There are a growing number of multilingual students who are learning English as a second language (L2) and French as a third language (L3). However, little is known about the development of French language proficiency and reading skills of multilingual…

This article explores the beliefs about second language (L2) sociolinguistic competence of four university-level advanced L2 learners. It places particular emphasis on 1) how these university learners conceptualized L2 sociolinguistic competence; 2) how they thought about two different language learning contexts (viz., the L2 classroom versus…

This paper looks at reading in French immersion and how learning French is seen more as a skill rather than a social practice that could be examined through a more critical lens. Most of the teachers often teach students how to read but rarely will they discuss the role of French in Canadian society and how this is manifested in the texts they…

This paper examines two sociolinguistic lexical variables, "work" and "to dwell," in the spoken French of former immersion students in their first or fourth year at a bilingual university in Ontario, Canada. Their patterns of use are compared to those of non-immersion graduates in the same institution, to Ontario high school…

The aim of this document is to give teachers and administrators the contextual and pedagogical tools for the late immersion program. It acts as a guide for beginning and experienced teachers who need to update their knowledge regarding this program and its details. For many working in this area, it also confirms their daily practices as well as…

French immersion in Canada was instituted by parents in Quebec who wished their children to learn French in order to have social, political, and economic advantages. Several learning theories and research methods, especially those related to second-language acquisition (SLA), have been used in the field of French immersion. More recently,…

This report constitutes a synthesis of 10 years of research which was conducted to assist Ontario boards of education in implementing and evaluating French immersion programs in their jurisdictions. The immersion programs evaluated include three major alternatives: (1) the early total French immersion programs of the Carleton, Ottawa, and Toronto…

Investigates the learning of sociostylistic variation by students in French immersion programs in Ontario. Focused on their learning of the four expressions of restriction ("ne . . .que,""seulement,""rien que," and "juste"). (Author/VWL)

This paper focuses on teaching varieties of French spoken outside of France, examining how best to introduce American students to French spoken in many francophone communities. Highlighting the notions of functional competence and pedagogical norm as central criteria for developing effective, but realistic, curricula for introducing Quebec French…

Attitudes of four groups of elementary school students toward 10 socially relevant concepts, e.g., "self,""monolingual French Canadians,""bilingual English Canadians," and other areas are studied. Two of the groups were grade five and six English-speaking Canadian Students who had participated in either an…

Describes weaknesses in the sociolinguistic competence of second-language (L2) learners as documented by research in immersion contexts. The article discusses findings with reference to adolescent native speakers' use of question forms, conditionals, and second-person pronouns across two levels of formality in written and oral productions. (48…

This article examines the sociolinguistic competence of French immersion students. We first present an overview of the range of variation found in L1 speech and make a distinction between vernacular, informal, formal, and hyper-formal variants. We then compare the use of these forms in the speech of Canadian francophones and Grade 9 and 12…

Reports on the speech difficulties of four French immersion anglophone students participating in a three-month interlinguistic exchange. Each student was interviewed three times, and the transcripts were analyzed for linguistic, sociolinguistic, and sociocultural errors in oral French and for performance evaluation by the students. (51 references)…