Speakeasy wrote:…(to be fair, all Canadians living in the ROC (Reste du Canada) receive years of French language training through the public and private school systems)
Lianne wrote: That is a VERY generous description of anglo-Canadians' French education.
Lianne wrote: ... French education in anglo-Canadian schools is notoriously awful. So I thought that describing it as "years of French language training" was generous because it makes it sound so much better than it is.
My assertion was an accurate statement of FACT: the vast majority of non-francophone Canadians, living outside of the Province of Quebec, receive instruction in French as a second language beginning in the fourth grade and ending in the twelfth grade. Unless I am mistaken, the average person would qualify
nine years of language instruction as “years" of French language training; to dispute this FACT is disingenuous.
Lianne wrote: French education in anglo-Canadian schools is notoriously awful… In reality I took French class from I think grade 3 (I don't remember exactly) until grade 8, and still couldn't string together a few sentences in French. I learned to conjugate avoir, être, faire, and manger, only in the present tense, and learned to count and name school supplies. It's embarrassing how little French is taught in those French classes. I work in a school now, and I do think perhaps it's getting better. But, it's still taught by people who don't speak French.
You are confusing quantity with quality and, while I might tend to agree with you on the matter of quality, I am not convinced that either one of is is sufficiently well informed on the subject to offer anything but a personal opinion ("notoriously" suggests wide-spread agreement). Furthermore, your personal experiences -- which you seem to believe are a sound basis for making generalizations about a nation-wide educational system -- are
deeply at odds with the findings of a national organisation of professionals and parents who evaluate French second language teaching across Canada on an annual basis.
The State of French Second Language Education in Canada: Final Report, Year 2017https://cpf.ca/en/files/State-of-FSL-Education-Report-Final-Web.pdf[/quote]
Nevertheless, the “anecdotal evidence” of the effectiveness of second language instruction – throughout North America – is that the actual results achieved, in terms of, practical, functional communication skills, fall short of many people’s expectations.
As to the “effectiveness” of the “years” of French language instruction to which ROC students are subjected,
my personal impression is that, despite the truly massive and incredibly expensive efforts deployed, most students would be unable to partake in a conversation in French with their Francophone counterparts. Regrettably, the same could be said of ROC high school graduates’ first language literacy, skill in mathematics or the hard sciences, as well as their general knowledge of the world history or current events.
Without (quite seriously) wishing to turn this into a political discussion, I would say that a “cultural bias” might partially explain the less-than-sterling results of French as a Second Language instruction across Canada. I am confident that you, as a fellow Canadian, would recognize that the “politics of language” and Québec-ROC relations are never very far from the surface. These cultural biases are real, they are passed from generation-to-generation, and they are highly resistant to efforts to educate the holders of a deep set reluctance to learn French as doing so is seen as an unreasonable concession to our “other half” in our shared Two Solitudes. In other words, it is quite possible that many ROC students DO NOT WANT to learn French, that they view this part of their education as a particularly onerous imposition which offers them no genuine value, that it is supported by nothing more than a political justification which they view as unsustainable, and these attitudes effect ROC students’ acceptance of what-might-be good language instruction. It is quite possible that, should the Canadian Education System offer second language instruction in a more “fashionable” and “politically correct” language, the results would be better. But, then again, discussing this further would get us both into deep trouble with the moderators!
Finally, my comment "to be fair ... years of French" was
an expression of my understanding why ROC "internal immigrants" to Quebec should not qualify for the province's generous efforts at providing language instruction to external immigrants, students, et cetera.
EDITED:
Formatting, tinkering.