French-Medium Instruction in Anglophone Canadian Higher Education: The Plurilingual Complexity of Students and Their Instructors

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada. We employ the lenses of plurilingualism and plurilingual competence in the analysis of data from a one-year qualitative study of plurilingualism across the disciplines at the university. We analyze interview data and students’ writing samples, focusing on how French and other languages are used by instructors and students in classes, and on the professional dilemma that instructors face in such courses: are they disciplinary experts and/or French immersion teachers? In our discussion, we suggest that instructors’ and students’ classroom practices are the result of several factors, including institutional discourses around plurilingualism and the French language, personal beliefs and ideologies, experiences of mobility from France and Quebec to British Columbia (instructors), and normative practices previously experienced in French immersion schools (students).

Promises and realities of foreign language medium instruction in the light of internationalization: A case study on EMI and AMI at an Indonesian Islamic University

“…Another foreign language medium instruction like French or Arabic as in the expanding circles is scarcely investigated. For French-medium instruction, few studies have investigated this topic, for example, Marshall, Moore, and Himeta (2021) in Canada, Ucar and Soruc (2018) in Turkey, and Courcy and Burston (2000) in Australia. To the best of our knowledge, however, studies on Arabic as MoI are not yet sufficiently explored.…”

Plurilingual or not plurilingual? Plurilingual competence and identity of Canadian EAL peers in a francophone post-secondary context

“…These results echo findings from other studies showing that AL proficiency is tied to identifying as bilinguals (Sia & Dewaele, 2006;Zubrzycki, 2019), or that Canadians tend to identify as bilinguals due to the strong influence of the country's official English-French bilingualism on Canadian language education and civic identity (Churchill, 2003). Beyond Québec and its French-only policy, research on EAL students in French immersion or English-French bilingual Canadian post-secondary contexts also shows that institutional discourses within learners' educational settings and learners' language ideologies can foster, disrupt or lead them to negotiate their plurilingual identities (e.g., Marshall et al, 2021;Moore et al, 2015Moore et al, , 2020Séror & Gentil, 2020;Séror & Weinberg, 2021).…”

“…Overall, while past studies show that learners' PPC can be measured and are influenced by certain factors (Galante, 2020;Galante & dela Cruz, 2021), and that PPC and PI can be positively influenced by plurilingual instruction (Galante, 2018), none so far have investigated how exactly these two factors relate to each other. Further, while some trends have been identified regarding how AL learners perceive their PI (e.g., Bono & Stratilaki, 2009;Galante & dela Cruz, 2021;Oliveira & Ança, 2009;Sia & Dewaele, 2006;Zubrzycki, 2019), and despite emergent literature on EAL learners' PI in French immersion and bilingual Canadian higher education, (e.g., Marshall et al, 2021;Moore et al, 2015Moore et al, , 2020Séror & Gentil, 2020;Séror & Weinberg, 2021), postsecondary EAL learners' PI in officially French-only settings like Québec remain underexplored.…”