French Immersion Education in Canada

Tu Tangata, Issue 26, 1 October 1985, Page 48

French Immersion Education in Canada

IMPLICATIONS FOR A BILINGUAL MAORI EDUCATION

k /luch of Tu Tangata’s appeal can be attributed to its promotion of \ / Maori cultural identity at a time when the bicultural nature of New V Zealand society is increasingly acknowledged and accepted. Nowhere is this commitment to revise the social status of Maori more evident than in the recent proliferation of Te Kohanga Reo language nests throughout the entire country. These Maori immersion preschools have not only captivated the enthusiasm of the Maori community, but have also established the nucleus for revising the agenda over Maori education. Attempts to carry the impetus of Kohanga Reo through to its logical conclusion at the primary school level has resulted in growing debate over the future and desirability of bilingual education. Whether or not the New Zealand government will make the necessary concessions to incorporate ‘te reo Maori’ on an equitable basis is dependent to some extent on political awareness of bilingual programmes in other parts of the Commonweath.

Canada too is a bicultural society but, unlike New Zealand, this biculturalism has been entrenched by law since 1971. French and English are accorded official and equal status as systems of communication in their own right at the federal level. In spite of this statutory recognition, most Canadians outside the province of Quebec are woefully inadequate in their command of French beyond what they have acquired as a compulsory subject at the secondary school level. Only one sixth of the population in Canada can claim to the bilingual, most of this percentage concentrated in the province of Quebec. Even those who claim French speaking competency are restricted in competency to bits of grammar and some tourist vocabulary, gleaned from 40 minutes of study per day for perhaps one year. Yet it is becoming increasingly evident to many English speaking parents that a working knowledge of French is a prerequisite for their childrens' employment prospects. The challenge, therefore, has been to devise new methods of language instruction, consistent with the needs of a bilingual population equally at ease in French and English. One of the most promising techniques to date has been the use of French immersion classes, a process in which primary pupils are exposed to an exclusive diet of French for the whole or part of the day over a period of years. That the effectiveness of this programme is widely recognized by authorities (Lambert 1983) should serve as a stimulus to the New Zealand government where Maori demands for bilingual education have taken on a new urgency with the entrenchment of Kohanga Reo as a spearhead for Maori progress.

French immersion: origins and growth In a society increasingly dominated by the importance of French as a language of commerce, politics, and social contacts, English speaking parents in Quebec had long expressed concern over the level of French conveyed to their children by conventional avenues of instruction. To circumvent intrinsic drawbacks within the prevailing system, a French immersion programme was launched by concerned parents in

the Montreal (Quebec) suburb of St Lambert in 1965. Later the programme was extended to Ottawa (1969) and to Toronto (1971) where at present there are nearly 10,000 pupils enrolled in the greater metropolitan area. Outside of the major centre, French immersion has not achieved the same degree of exposure, even though nearly one half of 142 school boards in Ontario offer some form of bilingual education.

There are several reasons to explain the popularity of French immersion education. Success is attributable to a growing awareness that bilingual competence provides both a source of cultural enrichment as well as a competitive edge for those in the public or private sphere. In a recent survey conducted by the Economic Council of Canada (Toronto Star, 16 June 1985), bilingual speakers were assessed to have earned about 12% more than their unilingual counterparts. Political careers are likewise enhanced by possession of bilingual speaking skills. The nomination of the fluently bilingual Brian Mulroney as leader of the Conservative Party, and his subsequent election as Prime Minister in 1984, is excellent proof of the importance of bilingualism in Canadian politics. Success is also accentuated by the efforts of dedicated parents many of whom have organised into a special interest

group known as, ‘Canadian Parents For French' to put pressure on school boards for French immersion. Finally, the spread of French immersion may be partly derived from, and legitimated by. the legal status accorded to French as one of the two official languages in Canada.

The Nature and Characteristics of French Immersion Education

What exactly is encompassed by a French immersion education is open to diverse opinion and reflects programmes of varying intensity or duration. In terms of definition, immersion and bilingual education are closely related. Bilingual education can be defined as the use of two languages the ‘home’ language and the ‘second' language as instruments of instruction at school (Fishman 1976). Immersion education implies; the temporary reliance on either of these languages as the source of instruction for a part or the entire day, with an eventual reversion to the other language whenever appropriate. On the strength of this distinction, all French immersion programmes represent a type of bilingual education which operate under a philosophy of providing students with instruction in French, not simply the teaching of French. French immersion is not a language class in the conventional sense of the term. Nor is it a subject set aside for a period of the day in which language instruction is conducted by format methods. Rather, the concept of immersion education is based on the assumption that people learn a second language in the same way they acquire their first language, and this learning is most effective when activated within a natural setting (Lambert 1983). All subjects are taught in French so that students are simultaneously immersed within a second language while at the same time they communicate about a wide variety of topics encompassed by the curriculum. Mastery in the final analysis is aimed not at structural features of the second language such as grammar or vocabulary, but at comprehension and communication instead.

Most teachers within the immersion system are fluently bilingual in French and English. They of course are required to speak exclusively in French in class, although considerable use of English is inevitable in the sense they understand everything the children are saying to them (Swain 1982). All children recruited to the immersion programme at the primary level begin on an equal footing with virtually no comprehension of French to speak of. They may spend several years studying everything in French, but this exclusiveness tapers off as the child proceeds through the primary level until perhaps only 30% of the curriculum is French

immersion by middle and later years. However, no matter where they start in the immersion programme, pupils are expected to have accumulated approximately 5000 hours of French language instruction far in excess of what is offered by orthodox approaches.

Effects and Effectiveness of French Immersion

Only in recent years has this experiment in bilingual education attracted sufficient students to assess the effectiveness of immersion as a method of language growth and cognitive development. Consensus is generally agreed that French immersion constitutes one of the most successful programmes in second language learning yet devised. But initial doubts existed regarding the potential for French immersion to be successful outside of highly bilingual areas, let alone in predominately English speaking communities. Anxieties

arose over the imagined threat to personal identity, cognitive development, and emotional stability as a result of immersion experience. Far from damaging cognitive skills, however, immersion education would appear to have opened up new challenges for those whose intellectual resiliency at this stage is unsurpassed. Admittedly, in contrast to their peers in the English stream, immersion pupils do experience a slight delay in acquiring English skills related to pronounciation and spelling. This deficiency is temporary, and vanishes within a year of introducing even a limited amount of English language instruction. No long term defects in English speaking skills have as yet been identified; if anything, studies have shown immersion students to outperform their monolingual peers when measured -tests of English such as reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge are taken into account. In addition to improvements in intellectual

agility, it has also been suggested on the basis of a ten year study (Toronto Star, 16 June 1985) that bilingual immersion students express more positive attitudes towards French Canadian, a consequence of immense importance for a society comprised of numerous ethnic minorities.

With respect to French language competency, children enrolled in early immersion programmes are known to read and comprehend French nearly as well as native Quebec born speakers. Such success can be traced to a reliance on those methods by which languages are naturally acquired, namely, by listening and speaking in the vernacular across a wide variety of topical areas. To be sure, French speaking skills are not nearly as impressive (probably because French immersion students lack the opportunity to use the language at upper grade levels and outside the classroom, or to communicate with native speakers of French). Yet immersion students usually create a favourable impression among native French speakers with their oral capabilities. In short, fifteen years of systematic research in this area permit several conclusions: first, immersion children are reasonably fluent in French; second, they suffer no loss of scholastic or verbal skills in response to immersion; and third, there is minimal confusion over personal and cultural identity, rather a more balanced outlook toward the French in Quebec (Lambert 1983).

Maori Immersion Education in New Zealand

The experiment in French immersion education has received universal acclaim for its innovative style of second language teaching (Swain 1982; Stern 1984). This is not to suggest there are no problems associated with the programme. Neither the secondary nor tertiary levels of education, for example, have expressed the same commitment to French immersion, in the process leaving many primary pupils without an outlet to practice or further their speaking skills. Nor is there any indication among immersion students to engage in French as a language of communication outside of the formal confines of a classroom. But aside from these and related deficiencies, French immersion has proceded quite smoothly as a promising option for those who want to achieve the highest level of French competency short of living in Quebec.

It is one thing to praise French immersion in Canada as an innovative means of second language instruction, as well as a useful component for achievement of national harmony. It is quite another to realise the success of Canadian immersion is not necessarily applicable to the New Zealand situa-

tion. To take a case in point, French immersion is directed at English speaking students who, secure in their cultural identity, are able to absorb a ‘foreign’ language without undergoing personal or cultural disorientation. Pupils for immersion are selected on the basis of their common inability to speak French, and are exposed to bilingual teachers who are capable of utilising either language as a medium of instruction. All of this activity is conducted against a background in which Canada is by statute a bilingual society, equally committed to French and English as the languages of political, economic, and social interaction.

The dilemma posed by this paper is, to what extent do conditions for immersive education in New • Zealand resemble those in Canada? Can success in Canada be automatically transferred to a South Pacific country whose historical and demographic characteristics are altogether different? On the surface, many would concur with any type of second langauge learning that emphasises comprehension rather than production, content over form, as being more appropriate for Maori children since it utilises the language these children are naturally involved with. In limited recognition of this, there exists (or will exist) eight bilingual primary schools where Maori comprise the ‘tangata whenua’, in addition to bilingual classes at the secondary level (New Zealand Herald, 15 June 1985). But questions about bilingual immersion need to be clarified; they include, Are a pool of Maori children available whose family and community life is of sufficient resourcefulness to assist them in furthering their education (Benton 1984)? Will immersion education achieve its goals of bilingual fluency even without official government endorsement of ‘te reo Maori’ as equal in status to English? Should an immersion programme which revolves about a ‘home’ rather than a 'second' language differ in style or content if benefits are to be maximized? Answers to these questions must be forthcoming for as the French immersion programme in Canada has clearly demonstrated, unless a commitment to bilingual education is supported by parents, school officials and government authorities, and until this commitment is given political and economic inducement to flourish outside the school environment, there is little likelihood of moving beyond the level of rhetoric (see Benton 1984). The recent resurgence of Maori extended family structures (‘whanau’) as indispensible to Maori social progress, coupled with recent government initiatives to spend an additional $1.7 million on Maori education in 1986 (New Zealand Herald. 15 June 1985), is a hopeful sign toward the realisation of a bilinguaily-inspired Maori education.

Augie Fleras University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario

Reference List Benton, R.A. 1984 Bilingual Education and the Survival of the Maori Language. Journal of the Polynesian Society. 93 (3):247-266. Fishman, J. 1976 Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective. Mass; Newbury Press. Lambert, W.E. 1983 Deciding on Languages of Instruction: Psychological and Social Considerations. In Multiculturalism and Multicultural Education in Immigrant Countries. T. Husen and S. Opper (ed.).

Toronto; Pergammon Press. Stern, H.H. 1982 French Immersion in Canada: Achievements and Directions. In Cultural Diversity and Canadian Education: Issues and Innovations. J.R. Mallea and J.C. Young (eds.). Ottawa; Carlton University Press. Swain, M. 1984 Immersion Education: Applicability of Non Vernacular Teaching to Vernacular Speakers. In Issues in International Bicultural Education. The Role of the Vernacular. B. Hartford et al (ed.). New York; Plenum Press.