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Editorial

Eva Kartchava and Michael Rodgers

Éditorial

Eva Kartchava and Michael Rodgers

What's wrong with bilingualism and becoming multilingual? An analysis of discourses in Alberta's updated French policy

Steven Gillis
This paper employs the 'What's the problem represented to be?' (WPR) method to explore language learning and language planning policy in Alberta, Canada through the provincial government's newly published update of a document titled 'French Policy'. Through an analysis of its discourse, along with the political and pedagogical contexts in which the French Policy finds itself, the underlying belief emerges that learning in languages other than English in Alberta should only be reserved to the few who qualify for official minority education obligated by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The argument is made in this paper that the province would actually benefit from the opposite: that an educational turn towards promoting the learning of multiple languages would better achieve the goals of inclusion and social and economic progress for which the government is claiming to be endeavouring in the French Policy and elsewhere.

Les freins à la prise en compte de la pluralité linguistique à l’école francophone : perspectives enseignantes

Catherine Levasseur and Mylan Allen
Linguistic plurality is not a new phenomenon in Francophone minority environments. For over twenty years, research has been urging Francophone schools to be more inclusive (Bouchamma, 2009; Dalley, 2003; Gérin-Lajoie, 2004 ; Jacquet et al., 2008). Yet, what we observe is the difficulty of implementing pedagogical approaches that recognize, value, and mobilize students' plurilingual repertoires (Dagenais, 2017; Fleuret, 2020). What are then the obstacles to taking linguistic plurality into account? Rooted in a systemic approach to education, this secondary analysis of ethnographic data is drawn from a doctoral study conducted in a Vancouver school. The article gives voice to 12 teachers in order to identify factors that could help achieve inclusion: linguistic ideologies and representations, staff training and resources, and school-team leadership and support.

La transmission du français en contexte multilingue anglodominant : étude monographique de couples à l’Est du Canada

Marie-Hélène Marquis, Marianne Cormier and Nathalie Bigras
Parents' life experiences and language representations influence the nature of family interrelations and language practices. The object of this empirical paper is to describe the educational and family sociolinguistic contexts of the Southeastern Canadian province of New Brunswick, and then identify, from the comments of new plurilingual parents, certain ecosystemic factors that may structure their family language choices. A cross-sectional analysis of narrative summaries obtained from semi-structured interviews with seven couples of future and new parents of children under 5 years of age showed that the parents' ethnolinguistic experience influenced their language behaviours and representations. These representations, combined with the access to educational services in a minority language, which itself is made possible by language policies supported by the macrosystem, would influence the child's language microsystem. Nevertheless, it seems that the belief of being able to influence their children's language development is the main factor structuring parents' family language choices.

Compétences professionnelles perçues chez quatre groupes ethnoculturels de la Ville de Québec

Suzie Beaulieu, Kristin Reinke and Adéla Sebkova
This study examines the professional characteristics attributed to members of four ethnocultural groups established in Québec City. Thirty-eight female respondents evaluated audio and audiovisual stimuli. Based on a list of professional characteristics commonly found in public service job postings, they selected those they associated with the person they heard, across three analytical dimensions: solidarity, status, and dynamism–communication. The analyses show that respondents attributed higher levels of professional competence to audiovisual stimuli than to audio stimuli. The ethnocultural groups were evaluated differently depending on the speaker’s gender and the dimension under evaluation. Finally, among the covariates considered, only respondents’ age and their beliefs about immigration had an effect: emerging adults attributed higher professional competence on the solidarity and status dimensions, and individuals favourable to immigration attributed higher professional competence on the dynamism–communication dimension.

Effets d’une intervention en syntaxe et en ponctuation sur le développement de la complexité syntaxique en production écrite chez des élèves de 10 à 13 ans en français langue d’enseignement

Claude Quevillon Lacasse, Marie Nadeau, Carole Fisher, Marie-Hélène Giguère and Rosianne Arseneau
Transposing ideas into correct, complex sentences is at the heart of writing competence in a school context (Saddler, 2019). However, the teaching of syntax and punctuation in French could be improved to facilitate the transfer of grammatical knowledge taught in class into free writing production (Nadeau & Fisher, 2011). In a quasi-experimental study carried out in an underprivileged environment with students aged 10 to 13, a teaching sequence comprising ten open sentence-combining activities (Saddler, 2019) was developed (Nadeau, Giguère et al., 2020b), then tested. To measure the effect of the sequence on the development of syntactic complexity, narrative and descriptive texts were collected before and after experimentation in 11 experimental and 6 control classes. The results show an increase in several indices of syntactic complexity for one of the grade levels. This article presents these results and the implications for teaching.

La cohérence textuelle dans le texte explicatif d’élèves francophones de 3e secondaire

Rose Restom and Anila Fejzo
This study aimed to evaluate textual coherence in explanatory texts written by third-year secondary school students. To do so, the participants, 47 French-speaking third-year secondary school students from a school located in the Montreal area, were asked to write an explanatory text on the therapeutic effects of laughter. To assess the coherence of these texts, appropriate markers and errors related to themes, connectors, and arguments were compiled. Our results indicate that the students tended to use a constant theme progression with a high rate of errors in thematic recurrence, omission of essential connectors, use of inappropriate connectors, and illogical arguments. The interpretation of these results allows us to identify the strengths and needs related to textual coherence with a dual aim: to inform future intervention research on coherence and to support practitioners in their efforts to help writers in the age group of our participants improve textual coherence in their texts.

Student reflections and recollections: Key outcomes of a post-secondary English for Academic Purposes program moved online

Scott Roy Douglas and Karin Wiebe
As an alternative to standardized testing, English for academic purposes (EAP) programs provide a language development pathway to higher education for students working towards meeting English language proficiency requirements. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these programs moved online; however, the outcomes of that move and the relationship with additional language learning are still to be fully explored. Based on student reflections and recollections, this study identifies key outcomes related to their online EAP program experiences. Nine participants completed an online questionnaire, with three taking part in interviews. Using a qualitative thematic approach, data were coded and gathered into the following themes: academic and interpersonal skills, network creation, language development, and knowledge building. These findings are presented as building blocks in the additional language socialization process and underscore the potential of online teaching and learning along with the importance of holistic and general approaches to EAP curriculum development and program planning.

Wette, R. (Ed.). (2024). Teaching and learning source-based writing: Current perspectives and future directions. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003283485

Gillian Baxter