Good for your son jumping in and make the most of it! Research on bilingualism in Quebec shows that the biggest predictors of achieving fluency are working in a French environment or having a francophone partner, and not the type of French education you had (i.e. French-immersion in school vs. courses). Nowadays though, it’s hard to get a job without B2 French, so becoming fluent requires moving to a francophone neighbourhood, finding a francophone partner, or joining groups off-campus that are mainly francophone. However, one of the elements of the English universities’ proposal was creating internships and co-ops in French work environments for anglophones.
Re: the B2 standard, you are right, the coverage of the initial proposal specifies that 40% of non-French speakers from outside the province would graduate with B2 French. (They do not define non-French speakers in the article; not sure if that means people with a non-French native tongue or students arriving without B2 level French). Assuming the latter definition, the only way that would be possible, I think, is if admission criteria for non-Quebecers were to include 4 years of French in high-school and a high degree of motivation to learn French. Unfortunately that would eliminate many top students with a STEM focus.
Yes, you’re right, the proposal (considered too modest by the government) would attempt to have 40% of non-French speaking (to be defined) out-of-province Canadians and internationals achieve a B2 level by graduation. Unfortunately, this is a bridge too far unless there is a radical change in the profile of admitted students.
AP (Foreign/World Language) exam - AP Spanish, AP French, AP German etc. (AP Chinese and AP Korean are rated differently on the scale since they’re so much harder, and AP Latin also functions differently).
If you mean score and not pre-req HS classes: you have B1-, B1, B1+ which would likely be scores of 3, 4, and 5.
AP Japanese, not Korean. And if by “harder,” you mean that completion of AP in those Asian languages would be a lower level of proficiency, you’d be correct
As an example, the AP Japanese exam tests about 400 kanji, which is what one would learn after 3 semesters of college Japanese.
Yes, sorry … reaching any level of proficiency in a non-European language is much harder for a European language native speaker (and Italian<->French<-> Portuguese<-> Spanish are the easiest combinations native/learning). I don’t remember the DoD chart now but it was something like 3 times longer to reach a Level 1 on their scale for Asian languages.
In Ontario students are only required to take French to grade 9. For grade 10 some students will take a different foreign language to fill one of the graduation requirement buckets but there are other course options beyond FL that they can opt for instead. S22 took French to grade 10 because it was a requirement of his regional choices program but S19 opted to take a year of Spanish (heritage language) instead. Neither of them wanted to have anything more to do with taking French in high school as the quality of instruction starting from elementary school was not great. I also have nephews who completed the French Immersion program to the end of high school in Ontario and they wouldn’t meet Quebec’s French proficiency threshold.
I would hope that if S22 did end up at McGill for grad school that he would take the opportunity to improve his French language skills. To be honest however for his particular field there are other foreign languages that might be more beneficial to learn like German.
It is amazing how things have changed in a lifetime. If I had been born in Montreal (instead of Boston) in the 1950’s I likely would have grown up in the West End or West Island. I would have attended public English Catholic schools. i would have studied French as just another academic subject. Even as an undergraduate at McGill in the early 1970’s I would have fully expected to live out my life in Montreal in English. Instead…
The linguistic apartheid/two solitudes of that era was not sustainable. But now the policy of the government is that everything must only be in French. Bilingualism is seen as a bad thing.
Quebec French is different from France French just as American English is different from British English. French taught in the Rest of Canada is sometimes Quebec, sometimes France French depending on where the teacher studied.
It’s like English as spoken by Londoners vs. English spoken by Scots. It’s the same language with a different accent, different slang words and some different expressions. Quebec and France French is not much different in formal settings. The differences are biggest in settings like pubs or talk radio where the speed of speech, the use of slang words and people falling into more exaggerated local/regional dialects (Saguenay for Quebec, Provencal for France) can make it harder.
In high school, people are generally taught formal grammar and formal French vocabulary so slang doesn’t enter into it. The accent you learn is from your teacher so it depends on if your teacher is from France or Quebec but wherever you are from you teach the standardized version of that accent not a local dialect.
I agree, Ontario students don’t have to take French after grade 9, and if they don’t, then B2 in university is not achievable. For those who choose French through Grade 12, B1 should be the level they graduate with. Getting to B2 from B1 is the challenge and could involve a few more higher-level French courses and/or 6-8 weeks immersion somewhere or living in a French neighborhood in Montreal, joining local clubs, watching French TV, movies etc.
Students finishing high school immersion French through high school should be able to pass the B2 exam; it is considered low intermediate in Quebec. It doesn’t mean one can function as a professional in French. It means one can understand what is said, can participate in conversations, can understand memos, and can write to communicate (not a professional letter, but a simple email to co-workers, for example, stating what tasks have been done today and what is the plan for tomorrow). My nieces were in Grade school immersion in Ontario and went to a French international school in France for a year (grade 5 and 8) when their family moved there temporarily, and although their French at home had led me to believe they’d struggle, they were able to understand the prof from day 1 and after 6 weeks could understand and jump in to the conversational fray in the schoolyard. The immersion base allowed them to improve incredibly fast.
I’m from Ontario originally. We learned Quebec French. I think most French teachers in Canada (maybe not in the west) are Quebecois, and our books had Quebec vocabulary.
When I studied in France in college the French would tell me how ugly my accent was and pretend not to be able to understand. I’ve been told that Quebec French is an old peasant French, which would make sense given that mostly poor immigrants started moving to what is now Canada in the 1600s.
I also had to take French through grade 11 so that may have changed.
Hah, you’re guessing to the west of St. Laurent and you’d be right! Westmount. But I think other close-to-downtown, historically-English neighbourhoods still have them, like Montreal West, NDG, CSL, Hampstead, maybe TMR… (Note that most signs are in French with Stop being an exception).
All of my French teachers and those of my kids and extended family members taught France French. I don’t know anyone who learned Quebec French. I took French in university back in the day as well. It was also France French.
… reaching any level of proficiency in a non-European language is much harder for a European language native speaker (and Italian<->French<-> Portuguese<-> Spanish are the easiest combinations native/learning). I don’t remember the DoD chart now but it was something like 3 times longer to reach a Level 1 on their scale for Asian languages.
