Multilingual immigrants’ French and English acquisition in Grade 6 French immersion: evidence as means to improve access

ABSTRACT

This study seeks to examine the success of voluntary immigrants in Grade 6 French immersion with a double comparison to Canadian-born (a) Anglophones and (b) multilingual students (children of voluntary immigrants). The findings, that show the immigrant students to outperform the other two groups in French and English, are explored through a cultural–ecological lens suggesting that voluntary immigrants to Canada are positive about education in general and, despite experiencing discrimination, are positive about official language bilingualism in particular, thereby having a positive impact on their results where more traditionally examined influential variables did not (e.g. metalinguistic awareness).

Cette étude cherche à examiner le succès des immigrants volontaires en immersion française en 6e année avec une comparaison avec: (a) les anglophones et (b) les élèves multilingues nés au Canada (enfants d’immigrants volontaires). J’explore les résultats, qui montrent que les élèves immigrants surpassent les deux autres groupes en français et en anglais, d’une perspective culturelle-écologique, ce qui suggère que les immigrants volontaires au Canada sont positifs: à l’égard de l’éducation en général et malgré les expériences discriminations, en ce qui concerne le bilinguisme des langues officielles en particulier, ce qui a eu un impact positif sur leurs résultats où les variables influentes traditionnellement examinées ne l’ont pas eu (par exemple, la connaissance métalinguistique).

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign language education
• immigration
• language learning
• language policy
• plurilingualism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Callie Mady is a professor at Nipissing University in the Schulich School of Education, North Bay, Ontario, Canada. She holds a PhD from OISE of the University of Toronto with a focus on second language education. Her research interests include French as a second language education and multilingual language acquisition. In particular, her research focuses on minority populations in those areas – immigrants and students with learning difficulties.

Notes

1 I use the terms culturally and linguistic diverse students to describe students who are adding French and English to their linguistic repertoire.

2 This is the study of French as a second language that is offered in short daily periods.

3 Not named to keep confidential as required by the research ethics protocol.

4 Refers to the number of items aggregated to form a variable.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.