Abstract
A great deal of time and resources are invested throughout Canada to encourage students to learn French as a second official language through a variety of programs (core French, intensive French, and French immersion programs). Little is known, however, about the impact of these efforts once French language learners complete their high school studies. This paper reports on longitudinal qualitative case studies of two students registered within a Canadian university-level immersion stream. Drawing on an academic discourse socialization approach, the paper examines students’ perspectives of their literacy development as they transition from high school French language programs to a universitylevel immersion program designed to promote advanced levels of bilingualism. Findings stress how the experience of transitioning from French high school programs to university immersion challenges students’ perception of themselves as French learners and their notion of the legitimacy of their high school French experiences.
Highlights
A great deal of time and resources are invested throughout Canada to encourage students to learn French as a second official language through a variety of programs
Close to 50 years after the original Canadian immersion experiments, variations of approaches that integrate to varying degrees content and language, frequently with their own unique labels, abound. These include content and language integrated learning (CLIL), dual language instruction, and bilingual education pedagogic initiatives that can be found throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States (Courcy, 2002; Mejía, 2008; Tedick et al 2011; Wilkinson & Walsh, 2015
There is direct interaction with Francophones, a feature that is not found in traditional high school French as a second language programs situated in English school boards
Summary
A great deal of time and resources are invested throughout Canada to encourage students to learn French as a second official language through a variety of programs (core French, intensive French, and French immersion programs). In Canada, a long tradition of research on immersion programs in public schools has highlighted the benefits of content-based language learning approaches (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013; Lyster & Tedick, 2014; Swain & Johnson, 1997) This innovative approach to French second language learning, first developed in 1965 (Lambert & Tucker, 1972), was among the first formal public school program of its kind to adopt an integrated approach to language and content development for second language acquisition (Brinton et al, 2003; Cammarata, 2016). These include content and language integrated learning (CLIL), dual language instruction, and bilingual education pedagogic initiatives that can be found throughout Europe, Asia, Australia and the United States (Courcy, 2002; Mejía, 2008; Tedick et al 2011; Wilkinson & Walsh, 2015)
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