New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in Canada. Quebec is officially French and the other provinces are officially English. The federal government and the country of Canada are officially bilingual. About 30% of the population of New Brunswick is French speaking.
Recently New Brunswick announced a change in the program of French instruction(click to see CBC article) for English speaking schools.
Some of the information from the article that I have linked here is as follows: Beginning in September, parents will no longer be able to enrol their children in the early French immersion program. The core French program, which currently makes the language a mandatory subject in school, beginning in Grade 1, will also be eliminated.
The 30 minutes of daily instruction currently offered to the students enroled in the core French program will be replaced with art, music and gym classes.
Report commissioners James Croll and Patricia Lee released 18 recommendations for the province's French second-language programs on Feb. 27, after reviewing the outcomes of French instruction for students who began school in 1995 and graduated in 2006.
The report found approximately 91 per cent of the 1,500 or so students who started early immersion in 1995 had dropped out of the program by the time they reached high school.
The study also found that only 0.68 per cent of the high school students that graduated in 2006 after completing the core program had reached the provincial objectives of intermediate oral proficiency.
'Our kids deserve better' The Education Department's goal is to have 70 per cent of high school graduates speak fluent French. The changes will provide a universally accessible system that will better serve all students and create an equal-access learning environment, Lamrock said.
Not starting French until Grade 5 will ensure that students have a solid foundation in literacy, math and science in English before learning a second language, said the minister.
...................... Predictably various lobby groups like "Parents for French" are lobbying against this change. However, if something does not work, it is usually a good idea to look at changing it.
I posted the following comment to the CBC article.
Early or late, the problem is the way the language is taught, and the lack of motivation of the learners. Elementary school language learners should just be allowed to listen to and read stories of interest, without any need to speak or write correctly. Just let the learners choose content of interest and enjoy the language. They can use modern digital sound and text resources and learning tools, often available free on the Internet, to build up familiarity with the sounds, words and structures of the language, with no pressure. In high school they can then start more formal learning, and they will be much more likely to do well. Even in high school the formal, grammar instruction based , ritualistic learning model that has been so spectacularly unsuccessful, should be abandoned. I speak 10 languages and know something about what it takes to succeed in learning a language. It has far more to do with the time spent on the language (usually listening and reading) away from the class, and the interest of the learner (the two are connected), than any explicit instructional effort in the classroom.
