A May 17, 2007 report from the Canadian Council on Learning, French Immersion Education in Canada, shows that immersion programs are on the rise again in Canada. However, these programs may not be suited to every child.
Learning to Read in a Second Language
Early immersion programs begin in Kindergarten or grade 1. This one year makes a big difference, but not because of the child’s age. French immersion programs are meant to immerse a child in the French language while covering the same curriculum as the English programs. This means that if a child begins his French immersion education in grade 1, he is learning to read in the same year as he is learning to speak French.
Reading teachers know that starting with a rich oral language base is vital in ensuring reader success. When a child possesses a large oral vocabulary he is better able to use comprehension strategies such as seeking meaning from context and referring to prior knowledge to extract meaning from what he is reading.
Starting an immersion program in Kindergarten would therefore offer huge advantages. This would be accurate, but teachers vary in the amount of French they use in their classrooms. Some translate into English for the children while others offer a true immersion and speak only French, relying on visuals, facial expressions and body language to get the message across. When one thinks about how an infant learns his first language, the true immersion is the only method that makes sense. The ideal situation would therefore be to find a program that begins in Kindergarten, with a teacher who will only speak French.
If a child is beginning his French immersion education in grade 1, however, all is not lost. There are certain skills that may offer your child an advantage when learning to read in French. Many reading skills are transferable from one language to another. If a child already knows how to read in English, he also knows that language has a certain structure and he knows how to look for cues to help with reading comprehension. Some studies also show that letter recognition is a predictor of reading success.
Identifying Learning Disabilities May be More Difficult
Some children experience difficulties when learning to read. When a child encounters difficulties in a second language setting it may be a challenge to diagnose whether the obstacle is a learning disability or a developmental obstacle due to an inadequate oral language base. There may, therefore, be a delay in identifying children who are at risk of falling behind their peers, and because the French immersion program is considered a special program, special education classes to help cope with learning disabilities are rare.
Does French Immersion Work?
French-English bilingualism has been proven to offer a number of economic, cognitive and cultural benefits to Canadians. Parents are recognizing these benefits and immersion programs continue to grow. Some parents are concerned that their child’s first language will suffer if the learning focus is on a second language.
However, the Grade 3 immersion students’ performance in literacy and mathematics: Province-wide results from Ontario (1998-1999) referred to in French Immersion Education in Canada show that early-immersion students were found to perform as well as their English-school counterparts on English reading and writing skills.
A Statistics Canada 2004 Education Quarterly Review based on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, also referred to in French Immersion Education in Canada, indicates that 15-year-old French-immersion students perform better on reading-assessment tests than mainstream English students, even in English.
It would seem, therefore, that there are only benefits to having one’s child receive an early French immersion education, given the right start, and assuming that a child does not have a learning disability. There is, however, one more serious obstacle to achieving a complete education in a second language. A lack of qualified teachers who are able to offer a quality education at a more senior level, coupled with an ongoing shortage of learning materials that both fit the curriculum and suit the appropriate levels of literacy make French immersion programs a challenge beyond grade 8.
It is important to keep in mind that although an immersion program would seem to have more obvious benefits than drawbacks for a Canadian child, parents should seek to become well-informed about the particular program their child will experience. Parents need to know whether of not their child will be truly immersed in French, at what stage he or she will begin to receive reading instruction, what they can best do to prepare their child for the program, and whether or not their child will be able to continue his or her second language education in later years.
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Chantal Moore - Chantal Moore is a teacher, reader and writer. She loves all that has to do with language and is fluent in French. She also understands ...
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