Conceptual guidelines for the design of new secondary school French second language programs are outlined, in response to the need for an instructional model to accommodate Alberta's increasing anglophone enrollment in French immersion programs. The first section chronicles the evolution of the concept of language and second language instructional approaches. Structural, formalist, functional, and communicative approaches are discussed. The second section describes and charts four basic pedagogical approaches: encyclopedic, student-centered, performance-based, and student-directed. In the third section, the student-centered communicative approach, selected as the basis for newly-developed French language programs, is discussed in greater detail, without focus on the approach's characteristics and the linguistic and sociocultural objectives in its application. A glossary and brief bibliography are appended. (MSE)