https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Richard-Bourhis/publica...
While some English-speaking families were choosing to cross-
over to French schools, others put increasing pressure on English
schools to improve French second language teaching, particularly in
respect to writing. By the 1990s, French had become a high profile
subject in English schools on a plane with English Language Arts
and Mathematics (ABEE, 1995, p. 8). Parents’ perception of the level
of French skills needed to live in Quebec had clearly heightened, as
have their expectations of what schools should provide (ABEE, 1995,
p. 6). Although a minority of parents still feels that a functional level
of French-English bilingualism is enough, the majority want their
children to graduate from high school fully bilingual and biliter-
ate.
As students
move into high school, the preoccupation with obtaining French skills
loses ground to the need for good marks in preparation for post-
secondary education in English. As table 2 shows, there is a decline
in the number of high school students in immersion programs at the
secondary level. For example, in 2003-04, 40.8% of students in pri-
mary schools were in French immersion, dropping to 32% at the high
school level. Furthermore, fewer hours of instruction time are allocated
to French within French immersion programs at the high school level,
as compared to the models found at the primary level. Similarly, very
few of the children that crossover to public French elementary schools
continue into French public high schools (Mc Andrew & Eid, 2003).
As regards French-language skills, “teachers remark that the advan-
tages which students have gained in the elementary grades are lost by
the end of high school” (ABEE, 1995, p. 17). Questions can also be
raised concerning the level of French skills achieved by grade six and
it is clear that a major challenge in the coming years will be how to
provide Anglophone students with the required biliteracy needed for
full participation in Quebec society. And just how well are English
schools doing at producing bilingual graduates? This is a difficult
question since bilingualism depends not just on the school, but also
on the local sociolinguistic context in which the school is located and
language use in the family. While in some school boards, English sec-
tor students are writing and doing well on high school subject exam-
inations intended for mother tongue Francophones, students in other
school boards are showing strong oral skills but not necessarily strong
reading and writing skills in French (ABEE, 1995, p. 14). In its report,
the QCGN identified the lack of proficiency in written French at the
high school graduate level as a major issue, one that could impede
the ability for further studies or entry into the workforce in Quebec
(QCGN, 2006, p. 22).
French language learn-
ing takes place mostly at the primary school level whether in the form
of French immersion or in the form of crossover to French schools.
While students are obtaining a fairly high level of oral proficiency, it
is obvious that the oral and written French skills of a grade six stu-
dent are below what is required of adults in many jobs in Quebec. At
the high school level, instruction time in French diminishes and the
question of maintenance of bilingual competence comes to the fore.
Furthermore, Anglophone parents are increasingly realizing that con-
tact with French speakers is required not only to improve the language
skills of their children, but to help young Anglophones feel comfort-
able and at home in Quebec society (Quebec Advisory Council, 2006;
Laperrière, 2006).
In the 1990s, an Advisory Board on English Education
(ABEE) was established to advise the Quebec Education Ministry
Language convergence can also be accounted for by speakers’
motivation to maximize “rewards” and minimize “costs” (Homans,
1961; Van den Berg, 1986). Other interpersonal determinants of lan-
guage convergence include the need to foster intelligibility (Triandis,
1960), predictability (Berger & Bradac, 1982), and interpersonal
involvement (LaFrance, 1979). Using interpersonal attribution theory,
a study of language switching in Montreal showed that individuals
were perceived more favourably when their language convergence was
attributed to their personal dispositions and good will than when it
could be accounted for by external pressures such as situational norms
(Simard, Taylor & Giles, 1976).
Marc Ryan
Author