French immersion (FI) programs in Canada have historically served predominantly Canadian-born, English-speaking students and families in their endeavour to learn both of the country's official languages, French and English. However, FI programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of increased global…

Despite an increasing interest in pronunciation instruction in English as a majority language or international "lingua franca," less is known about pronunciation learning in non-English minority languages, especially among child learners. Bilingual education programs provide a unique context to address this research gap, as they involve…

Elitism has been an issue in Canadian French immersion since its inception. This study examines how two racially diverse Ontarian school boards and Ontario French immersion policy, curricula, and other related documents construct and support an elite student within the immersion program. The elite student who emerged from immersion documents is a…

In the Canadian context, although most considerations for home-target language use are centred on the presence of English in French Second Language (FSL) programs, the increasing number of immigrants to Canada in general and to southern Ontario in particular has provided an impetus to extend the discussion to include the use of languages beyond…

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…

In response to Canada's growing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, educators in French immersion classrooms are increasingly responding with enhanced cross-linguistic initiatives, and dual language books are promising resources in the promotion of multilingualism (Zaidi, 2020; Zaidi & Dooley, 2021). This paper details a research…

The purpose of the present study was to examine the predictive value of a dynamic test of English and French lexical specificity on at-risk reading classification in 13 at-risk and 44 not at-risk emerging English (L1)-French (L2) bilingual Grade 1 children (M = 75.87 months, SD = 3.18) enrolled in an early French immersion program in Canada.…

This study explores the cross-linguistic reading strategies that 16 Grade 3-4 French immersion pupils schooled in Saskatchewan used while reading two types of dual-language children's books: translated and integrated. In the first type, the same text appears in both French and English, whereas in the second one, English and French are integrated…

Reflecting upon their intercultural experiences, with a tool like the "Autobiography of intercultural encounters," may help adolescents become better interculturalists. This research investigates how the use of the Autobiography may allow adolescents develop intercultural competence (IC). Using Byram's framework on which this tool is…

This study examined the oral language skills of grade-two anglophone children enrolled in French Immersion and English-stream programs. The study had two objectives: (1) to compare performance between the groups on measures of receptive vocabulary, narrative comprehension, and narrative production (i.e., structure and language) in English; and (2)…

Research focused on learning mathematics in a 2nd language is generally located in individual 2nd-language contexts. In this ethnographic study, I investigated mathematics learning in 4 different second-language contexts: a mainstream classroom, a sheltered classroom for Indigenous students, a welcome class for new immigrants, and a…

Translanguaging practices come into play in social interactions between bilinguals when they are making use of all their shared linguistic resources and blending their languages in natural ways. Stemming from these practices is translanguaging pedagogy, which is designed so that students in school-based additive bilingual programs can benefit from…

In the present study, the authors deliberate that there are no separate boxes in human brain to restrict two different languages to interact with each other. The practice on ground is strongly in favour of allowing L1 to support target language (TL). The paper contests the status quo of maximal input hypothesis and documents enough research in the…

Previous studies have shown that immersion students tend to speak the majority language during peer interactions, regardless of the language of instruction or their dominant language. Researchers have argued that the societal status of the majority language presents an obstacle to providing equitable support for both languages of instruction. To…

The present study investigated the contribution of morphological and cognate awareness to the development of English and French vocabulary knowledge among young minority and majority language children who were enrolled in a French immersion program. Participating children (n = 75) were assessed in English and French on measures of morphological…