Chris' Conclusions
Having grown up in a bilingual military family, I was fortunate to have lived in both Ontario and Quebec. This gave me the opportunity to learn both English and French from a young age and I never felt the need to enter a French-immersion program.
One of the factors that I feel most adversely affects the teaching of second languages in school is the lack of ability on the part of the second langauge teacher. Throughout my elementary and secondary schooling, I never had a teacher that could actually speak French better than I could. This caused me to resent the fact that I even needed to go to such classes. My highschool had both a regular English and a French-immersion program, and none of my friends were exceptionally good at speaking in French. Academically, they were competent, but that was about it.
When this project started, I thought for sure that I would end up concluding that I am against bilingual education. There are many reasons that bilingual education could be viewed as detrimental to a child’s learning development, as shown in the ‘cons’ section of the website. However, in my life experience, people will generally spend much more time complaining about something online than praising its virtues. This leads me to believe that there is probably a lot that we are not getting from our research. In my opinion, the strength of the pros outweighs the cons.
While the language ability of the immersion teacher is sometimes below par, my experience shows that the majority of immersion teachers speak the second language to an acceptabe level to teach their subjects.
Although much of the research suggests that the students performance in the second language will never be at a native speaker level, I do think that their French – or other language – wil be much better than that of someone that just took the core French classes required of all students. This is something that is often underappreciated when children are young, but I guarantee you that everyone in our class wishes they could speak both of Canada’s national langauges.
One area that I feel should be looked at is standardizing across the provice as to which subjects are taught in which language. In my first practicum school, everything was taught in French in the Primary division except for English. In my upcoming practicum, they teach English, Math and Science in English. By maintaining a more rigid standard, it might relieve some of the stress that school-boards are facing with regards to the hiring of FSL qualified teachers.
One of the factors that I feel most adversely affects the teaching of second languages in school is the lack of ability on the part of the second langauge teacher. Throughout my elementary and secondary schooling, I never had a teacher that could actually speak French better than I could. This caused me to resent the fact that I even needed to go to such classes. My highschool had both a regular English and a French-immersion program, and none of my friends were exceptionally good at speaking in French. Academically, they were competent, but that was about it.
When this project started, I thought for sure that I would end up concluding that I am against bilingual education. There are many reasons that bilingual education could be viewed as detrimental to a child’s learning development, as shown in the ‘cons’ section of the website. However, in my life experience, people will generally spend much more time complaining about something online than praising its virtues. This leads me to believe that there is probably a lot that we are not getting from our research. In my opinion, the strength of the pros outweighs the cons.
While the language ability of the immersion teacher is sometimes below par, my experience shows that the majority of immersion teachers speak the second language to an acceptabe level to teach their subjects.
Although much of the research suggests that the students performance in the second language will never be at a native speaker level, I do think that their French – or other language – wil be much better than that of someone that just took the core French classes required of all students. This is something that is often underappreciated when children are young, but I guarantee you that everyone in our class wishes they could speak both of Canada’s national langauges.
One area that I feel should be looked at is standardizing across the provice as to which subjects are taught in which language. In my first practicum school, everything was taught in French in the Primary division except for English. In my upcoming practicum, they teach English, Math and Science in English. By maintaining a more rigid standard, it might relieve some of the stress that school-boards are facing with regards to the hiring of FSL qualified teachers.