French-Medium Instruction in Anglophone Canadian Higher Education: The Plurilingual Complexity of Students and Their Instructors

Steve Marshall,Mariko Himeta,Danièle Moore

doi:10.37213/cjal.2021.29345

Steve Marshall, Mariko Himeta + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.37213/cjal.2021.29345

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Abstract

In this article, we analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada. We employ the lenses of plurilingualism and plurilingual competence in the analysis of data from a one-year qualitative study of plurilingualism across the disciplines at the university. We analyze interview data and students’ writing samples, focusing on how French and other languages are used by instructors and students in classes, and on the professional dilemma that instructors face in such courses: are they disciplinary experts and/or French immersion teachers? In our discussion, we suggest that instructors’ and students’ classroom practices are the result of several factors, including institutional discourses around plurilingualism and the French language, personal beliefs and ideologies, experiences of mobility from France and Quebec to British Columbia (instructors), and normative practices previously experienced in French immersion schools (students).

Highlights

In this article, we analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada
A large body of literature exists on the topic of English Medium Instruction (EMI) in global contexts, addressing the complex issues that come with teaching courses through English in higher education contexts where English is not the dominant language institutionally and/or locally (e.g., Doiz et al, 2012; Lin & Lo, 2018)
Many questions have emerged in the literature: What are the aims of such programs? Why do students take them? Who should teach them? How do students and their instructors communicate in such classes? And what is the ultimate goal of such courses – to teach students disciplinary knowledge or to provide a language immersion environment through which they can improve their linguistic competence or a combination of the two? There is a notable lack of related studies, that focus on languages other than English (Doiz et al, 2012), and in particular, studies on French-medium instruction (FMI) in minority contexts in Anglophone universities, to which the same questions apply

Summary

Introduction

We analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada. The reasons for this may be, first, students’ continuation of normative practices that they followed during their French immersion secondary education, during which such languages would generally be discouraged in classrooms (along with English) and, second, a lack of a critical number of speakers of any given “other” language to make it a linguistically viable code for students to use.

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Conclusion