The role of proficiency and social context on the Grade-6 students' acquisition of French as a second official language in Canada

Abstract

In this paper, I report on the findings of a study that compared the French as a second official language (FSOL) proficiency of three groups of Grade-6 students in English-dominant Canada: Canadian-born monolingual English-speaking students, Canadian-born bilingual students and immigrant bilingual students (IMBs). The goal of the study was to examine if and how proficiency in previously known languages impacts students' FSOL proficiency while taking into account the broader societal context of English-dominant Canada as well as the observed classroom contexts. Analysis of variances showed IMBs to have higher FSOL proficiency scores. Multiple regression analysis determined that membership in the IMB group is advantageous even when considering language of origin proficiency.