Adding Languages, Adding Benefits: Immigrant Students' Attitudes Toward and Performance in FSOL Programs in Canada

Callie Mady

Officially, Canada is an English/French bilingual country. This official language status affords the population federal services (e.g. federal judicial services) in the official language of their choice and supports the development of official minority communities (i.e. English minority in Quebec and French minorities in the remainder of Canada). These rights are recognized as law in the Official Languages Act (Canada, Department of Justice, 1985). Although the Act also seeks to advance the use of English and French (p. 3), Canada remains English-dominant with 68% of the population speaking English only (Statistics Canada, 2011a). Similarly, as it pertains to official language bilingualism, less than 10% of Canadian Anglophones are English/ French bilingual in comparison to to 42% of Canadian Francophones (Statistics Canada, 2006a). The aforementioned statistics show Anglophone and Francophone Canadians' tendency to remain unilingual. The seemingly greater resistance on the part of Anglophones to become official language bilingual, in combination with their larger population numbers, highlights the English language dominance of Canada.

Language Education in Canada

Although education is not federally governed, second language education in Canada, for the most part, mirrors federal statistics. In provinces and territories, with the exception of French-dominant Quebec, bilingual New Brunswick and Francophone minority regions, education is English-dominant. In regard to second language learning in the same contexts, three provinces (Ontario, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island) mandate the study of French, five provinces/territories (Alberta, Manitoba, Northwest territories, Nunavut and Saskatchewan) have no second language requirement and British Columbia mandates the study of a second language, French being among those offered. A minority of students, therefore, are studying French as a second official language (FSOL). Canadian Parents for French (2011), a national network of volunteers that promotes FSOL learning, reports that, in the aforementioned English-dominant contexts, only approximately 43% of eligible students are studying FSOL.

Adding to the dominance of English in Canada is a lack of focus on immigrants' languages. Absent from federal laws and marginalized, if not also absent, from Canadian education is protection for or formal promotion of immigrants' languages. Federally, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (2003: 4) states that the federal government's policy is to preserve and enhance the use of languages other than English and French. This issue is of particular importance due to the high percentage of the population (21%) who is immigrant (Statistics Canada, 2011a), approximately 6% of whom speak only their language of origin at home (Statistics Canada, 2011b). It is also of urgency due to the potential for language of origin literacy to positively impact immigrants' education (Cummins, 1979). Unlike the Official Languages Act, however, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act does not go as far as declaring language maintenance a right for immigrant communities. Again, reflecting federal government policy, the majority of provinces and territories offer education in Canada's official languages, relegating language of origin maintenance to hours outside of the school day.

The educational prioritization of English for immigrants is also evident in research that shows that immigrants have at times been denied access to learning FSOL. Research in Ontario (Mady, 2007; Taaffe et al., 1996), where the study of FSOL is obligatory, has shown that immigrants are only sporadically included in FSOL, with administrators occasionally exempting them from the mandatory requirement.

Immigrants' FSOL experiences

The exclusion of immigrants from FSOL study is contrary to research that shows their desire to add FSOL to their linguistic repertoire. National research shows immigrant populations to be more favorable of English/French bilingualism for Canada than Anglophone respondents (Parkin & Turcotte, 2003). Research with immigrant parents in British Columbia (Dagenais & Berron, 2001) and Ontario (Mady, 2012) also revealed a parental desire for their children to become official language bilingual.

In addition to opposing their desire to become official language bilingual, excluding immigrant students from FSOL learning opportunities is also in contrast to immigrants' ability to meet with success when included. Calman (1988), through FSOL listening tests, determined that immigrant students with less FSOL experience performed on par with their Canadian-born peers. By comparing the FSOL test results of immigrants with those of Canadian-born students, Mady (2007) found that immigrants outperformed their peers although they had studied FSOL for a shorter period of time. Despite immigrants' desire and ability to succeed in...