Learning to Speak Everyday (Canadian) French

Abstract

This article examines the sociolinguistic competence of French immersion students. We first present an overview of the range of variation found in L1 speech and make a distinction between vernacular, informal, formal, and hyper-formal variants. We then compare the use of these forms in the speech of Canadian francophones and Grade 9 and 12 students enrolled in a French immersion program. Our analysis shows that the immersion students' sociolinguistic competence is lacking in that they rarely or never use vernacular and informal variants and overuse forms that are formal or hyper-formal. In order to address this shortcoming, we propose a pedagogical methodology for improving students' sociolinguistic competence, concentrating in particular on the need to increase students' use of informal variants (e.g., ne deletion and /l/ deletion) and to decrease their use of hyper-formal ones (e.g., the verb habiter and subject pronoun nous).Résumé : Cet article porte sur la compétence sociolinguistique des étudiants inscrits dans un programme d'immersion française. Dans un premier temps, nous présentons un survol des variantes utilisées par les francophones au Canada et identifions quatre catégories de variantes, à savoir les variantes vernaculaires, informelles, formelles et hyperformelles. Par la suite, nous comparons l'emploi de ces différents types de variantes, dans le contexte d'une entrevue enregistrée, par les francophones canadiens et par des étudiants de 9e et 12e année d'un programme d'immersion française. Cette comparaison démontre que la compétence sociolinguistique des étudiants diffère considérablement de celle des francophones dans la mesure où les étudiants font un emploi minime des variantes vernaculaires et informelles et surutilisent les variantes formelles et hyperformelles. Afin d'améliorer la compétence sociolinguistique des étudiants, nous proposons une approche pédagogique qui a pour but d'amener les élèves à augmenter leur emploi des variantes informelles (par exemple, l'effacement de ne et l'effacement de /l/) et à diminuer leur emploi des variantes hyperformelles (par exemple, le verbe habiter et le pronom sujet nous).

Factors driving lexical variation in L2 French: A variationist study of automobile, auto, voiture, char and machine

“…While the frequency of voiture in the teaching materials is higher than in spoken Canadian French the disparity is not as extreme as what we observed with other hyperformal variants (e.g., consequential conjunction donc see Nadasdi et al 2005). Furthermore, the frequency of variant voiture in the educational input of the students is higher than in spoken Quebec or Ontario French (including the most frequent 2005 corpus).…”

Second Language Teaching and Learning with Technology: Views of Emergent Researchers

“…One interesting finding is that L2 learners will generally overuse formal variants and underuse informal variants in similar communicative situations (Nadasdi, Mougeon, & Rehner, 2005;Tarone & Swain, 1995). According to Dewaele (2004), the overuse of formal variants by NNS is one fairly consistent result of research studies on stylistic variation linked to the lack of access to the community of practice of NS and the exposition to one communicative context that is the classroom.…”

Investigating pragmatic language learning in foreign language classrooms

“…The authors illustrate that teachers' range of requests was narrow compared to those offered in interaction with a classroom guest, and how the interaction with the classroom guest offers benefits for both the students who are performing and those who are listening. With respect to content-based environments, the studies by Dalton-Puffer (2005), Nadasdi et al (2005) and Nikula (2005Nikula ( , 2007 are examples of how the nature of contentbased classrooms can be explored as an environment for pragmatic learning. As illustrated in these studies, content-based classroom settings allow the researcher to carry out qualitative discourse-based analyses on how learners express pragmatic meanings as the interaction unfolds.…”