ESL in Bilingual Education With a Twist: Immigrant Children in Canadian French Immersion
Shelley K. Taylor, The University of Western Ontario, taylor@uwo.ca
How can a paper on a Canadian French immersion program inform Bilingual Basics? The very term French immersion conjures up images of children whose first language (L1) is English, and for good reason. The program was initially developed to benefit English speakers in
Background Information, Research Questions, and Findings
What Is Known: Background Information
· English-French bilingualism is common in
· 50-70% of school-age children in
· Some 300,000 (or 7%) of all school-age children in
· Most extant information on minority language children in Canadian French immersion programs comes from studies conducted in large urban centers, primarily
What Is Unknown: Research Questions
1. How extensive is minority language student enrollment in a French immersion program outside Canadian centers known for high immigration and ethnolinguistic diversity?
2. What (if any) implications does minority language student enrollment in the program hold for its theoretical underpinnings and design?
These unknowns (or gaps in the research literature) became my research questions. I conducted a study involving minority language children in a middle-sized Canadian city located in a rural area. Tentative findings follow.
Findings
There are two main findings:
· Minority language parents are choosing French immersion as a programmatic option for their children in at least one middle-sized city.
· These children’s presence adds an unexpected twist to the theoretical underpinnings of the program, a twist with major implications for program design. At present, the minority language presence is unaccounted for in the program design. This situation challenges the premise of French immersion as a successful vehicle for the development of “additive” bilingualism.
These findings are explained below.
Context of the Study
The city in which this study was conducted is considered a wealthy bastion of English-speaking
Pauline Johnson French Immersion Public School
Six hundred students are enrolled in this K-8 French immersion public school. It is located in a lower socioeconomic-status part of the city. Many immigrants and First Nations peoples live nearby. Children from beyond the local encatchment area also attend the school. They come from a long north-south corridor as the district provides free bussing to French immersion schools.
Pauline Johnson is an immersion center, meaning that all students at the school are enrolled in French immersion. The majority of the students are in Early French Immersion (EFI), which begins in senior kindergarten or grade 1. There are also two Late Immersion cohorts. Late Immersion begins in grade 7 and continues into grade 8, the last year of elementary school. Only EFI students were included in the present study. All EFI students receive French instruction for 70%, and English instruction for 30%, of the school day.
Methodology
In this section, information is provided on participants in the study and the research instruments used.
Participants
The study focused on 190 target-group students (i.e., in grades 4 through 8 at Pauline Johnson). Of this group, 57 students and their parents consented to participate in the study. Four students from the same cohort were selected for interviews: Two spoke Arabic as their L1, and two spoke English as their L1. All the research assistants[2] (RAs) for this study were at least bilingual, if not multilingual, and had a background in minority language issues.
Research Instruments
Qualitative and quantitative measures were used in this case study. Qualitative measures included classroom-based participant-observation and interviews. The quantitative measures included a questionnaire and an oral survey, and they are the only measures discussed here.
Online Questionnaire
The 29-item online questionnaire was supported by a software program called “Survey in a Box.” It features the immediate return of preliminary statistical analyses of completed questionnaires. Consenting participants were assigned a user ID and password, allowing them to access the survey. It was administered during the students’ regularly scheduled computer period with RA help.
The questionnaire elicited data on the students’ overall (sociopsychological and academic) well-being. Items included “rate your school performance” and “rate your social life.” The primary intent of the questionnaire was, however, to elicit data on
· the breadth of students’ language usage and proficiency,
· their emotional attachment to various languages,
· the sense of pride/stigma they associated with certain languages, and
· the overall ethnolinguistic vitality of their minority languages.
To tap into these practices, feelings, and attitudes, questionnaire items included
· selecting among a list of people to indicate to whom the students spoke French (or English or their L1),
· questions about the importance of maintaining their L1 (or L2, etc.) in the future, and
· questions about the language students felt most comfortable reading (or writing, or using to listen to music or express sadness, etc.).
Oral Survey
My RAs conducted an oral survey, which was completely separate from the questionnaire. They went from classroom to classroom, asking a single question about whether the students were “bilingual” or “trilingual.” “Multilingual” was not an option in the oral survey. I thought distinguishing between tri- and multilingual might confuse children who would not be completing the online questionnaire, and would take too much instructional time.
All children in the target grades answered the question with a show of hands. The survey served as a point of comparison between results garnered from the smaller (questionnaire) sample versus the larger (survey) sample.
Results and Discussion
A review of the results provides answers to both research questions.
Question #1: Minority Language Student Representation In The Program
As Figure 1 shows, the online questionnaire results suggest that 44.2% of respondents were tri- or multilingual.
Figure 1. Online questionnaire respondents who described themselves as bi-, tri-, or multilingual
These results are stronger, but comparable, to the oral survey results presented next. They are a far cry from the “4% ESL” statistic reported by the local ESL coordinator. The results also strongly suggest that minority language children are opting for this form of bilingual education.
The oral survey results show that 33% of the entire target group population reported being trilingual, and 67% of that group reported being bilingual.
The percentage of trilinguals in Figure 2 (the oral survey data) is 11.2% lower than the percentage of tri-/multilinguals in Figure 1 (the questionnaire data)—from 33% to 44.2%. Why?
Perhaps tri-/multilingual students were drawn to the study in higher numbers because they were trilingual and knew the questionnaire was targeting trilinguals. That might account for their higher participation in the study than overall numbers led us to expect. One can only surmise; however, it is worth mentioning again that even the lower figure reported in Figure 2 (33%) is a far cry from the district’s 4%. This finding again suggests that minority language parents are opting for French immersion in noteworthy numbers.
Answer to Question #1
Both the questionnaire and oral survey figures suggest that minority language children are overrepresented in this French immersion program. In this case at least, minority language student enrollment in French immersion is not just a phenomenon of highly diverse, major urban centers. Caution is advised, however, in interpreting these figures, as nothing conclusive can be said before further studies are conducted in other small to mid-sized cities across the country.
Question #2: From “Additive” To “Subtractive” Bilingualism And Back Again?
Baker (2001) saw the aim of maintenance bilingual education programs as fostering “the minority language in [a] child, strengthening the child’s sense of cultural identity and affirming the rights of an ethnic minority group in a nation” (p. 192). Baker (2001) further qualified maintenance bilingual education, calling immersion programs for majority language children enrichment maintenance bilingual education because L1 fluency is maintained and L1 literacy is developed. Traditionally, and according to Baker’s (2001) criteria, French immersion was an enrichment maintenance bilingual education program; however, the presence of minority language children alters the program’s ability to maintain all children’s L1 or develop all children’s L1 literacy. Therefore, it can no longer be called an enrichment maintenance bilingual education program for all.
This complication tests the validity of some of Swain and Johnson’s (1997) “core” features of immersion programming, particularly the following two:
· Overt support exists for the L1.
· The program aims for additive bilingualism.
There is neither overt nor covert support for minority language children’s’ L1 in French immersion as it is presently designed. Though the program may aim for additive bilingualism, it can only result in subtractive bilingualism for some (i.e., L1 loss).
Recognizing the poor fit between the old program design and new demolinguistic realities, Swain and Lapkin (2005) reworked some of the core features, updating terminology and notions as needed. For example, French is no longer assumed to be all children’s L2; it is more likely to be minority language children’s L3. Swain and Lapkin (2005) still stress that immersion programs aim for additive bilingualism, but they also note that overt support needs to be given to all home languages, which is not presently the case. They recommend that recognition for students’ multiple L1s be built into the program.
Answer to Question #2
Achieving the goal of additive bilingualism requires that a twist be made to the design of Canadian French immersion programs. Maintaining the status quo can result only in an unanticipated (and unwelcome) twist: subtractive versus additive bilingualism.
Conclusion
Swain and Lapkin’s (2005) recommendation that recognition for students’ multiple L1s be built into the program fits the BEIS mandate, which also recommends that overall support be provided for minority language children’s L1. However, both recommendations raise the age-old question of “how to” that occupies much of the discussion in Bilingual Basics. Clearly, more needs to be done to support minority language children’s tri- and multilingual development. Perhaps if minority language enrollment in Canadian French immersion programs continues to grow, parents will gain enough power to find answers to the how-to question themselves. That would truly be ESL in bilingual education with a twist.
References
Baker, C. (2001). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism. (3rd ed.). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Cumming, A. (2000). Second language education in schools in Canada. Modern Language Centre, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Toronto. Retrieved September 16th, 2005 from www.oise.utoronto.ca/MLC/pufahlrep.pdf
Dagenais, D., & Day, E. (1998). Multilingual children and classroom processes in French immersion. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 54, 376-393.
Edwards, V. (2004). Multilingualism in the English-speaking world. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Lamarre, P., & Dagenais, D. (2004). Language practices of trilingual youth in two Canadian cities. In C. Hoffman & J. Ytsma (Eds.), Trilingualism in family, school and community (pp. 53-74). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Swain, M., & Johnson, R. K. (1997). Immersion education: A category within bilingual education. In R. K. Johnson & M. Swain (Eds.), Immersion education: International perspectives (pp. 1-16). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (1991). Heritage language children in an English-French bilingual program. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 47(4), 635-641.
Swain, M., & Lapkin, S. (2005). The evolving socio-political context of immersion education in Canada: Some implications for program development. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15, 169-186.
Taylor, S. K. (1992). Victor: A case study of a Cantonese child in early French immersion. Canadian Modern Language Review, 48(4), 736‑759.
[1] This is a pseudonym.
[2] I would like to thank the Faculty of Education and the Department of French Studies at the
Bilingual Basics June 2006 Volume 8 Number 1: Table of Contents
