Cultural learning in French as a second language in Ontario, Canada — The Association Specialists
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  2. SESSION 4: Translingual, immersion, heritage, and minority education
  3. Cultural learning in French as a second language in Ontario, Canada

Cultural learning in French as a second language in Ontario, Canada (20192)

R. Marika Kunnas 1
  1. York University, Toronto, ONTARIO, Canada

Given the connection between culture and language, it is generally accepted that culture must be taught alongside a language (Liddicoat & Scarino, 2013). In the province of Ontario in Canada, the French as a second language (FSL) curriculum requires intercultural learning in every FSL course offered (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013, 2014). Despite having a cultural learning requirement mandated in the curriculum, the extent to which culture is taught is not yet known (Author et al., forthcoming). This paper shares the findings related to cultural learning from a dissertation study investigating the experiences of racialized minority students in French immersion (FI) programs in Ontario. FI is a program where students undertake content courses (i.e., History, Geography, Drama) entirely in French. This three stage multimethod study first used a modified version of Playbuilding (Norris, 2016) where three racialized minority participants reflected on their experiences related to race in FI, and created counter-stories (Delgado, 1989) and monologues which were hosted online. Stage two invited FI stakeholders to react to the stage one website in an anonymous online questionnaire. Finally, participants from stage one reflected on the stage two findings. The data generated and collected were: monologue transcripts, researcher notes, transcripts from stories, counter-stories, and, ratings and open responses from the stage two questionnaire. Data was analyzed using thematic analysis (Nowell et al., 2017) and descriptive statistics (Byrne, 2007). Stage one findings revealed that culture was not being taught adequately, in depth, or at all. When culture was being taught, it focused on White cultures. Participants from stage two emphasized the importance of teaching culture in FI and confirmed the lack of diverse representation in FI. A tension emerged between teaching culture and teaching grammar. This paper concludes questioning how to teach diverse cultures from an intercultural lens in FSL programs and beyond.

  1. Author et al. (forthcoming).
  2. Byrd, D. (2014). Learning to teach culture in the L2 methods course. Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, 11(1), 76-89.
  3. Byrne, G. (2007). A statistical primer: Understanding descriptive and inferential statistics. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 2(1), 32-47.
  4. Delgado. (1989). Storytelling for Oppositionists and Others: A Plea for Narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87(8), 2411–2441. https://doi.org/10.2307/1289308
  5. Liddicoat, A. & Scarino, A. (2013). Intercultural language teaching and learning. Wiley-Blackwell.
  6. Norris, J. (2016). Playbuilding as Qualitative Research : a Participatory Arts-Based Approach. Taylor and Francis.
  7. Nowell, L. S., Norris, J. M., White, D. E., & Moules, N. J. (2017). Thematic analysis: Striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16(1), 1 - 13.
  8. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2013). The Ontario Curriculum, French as a Second Language: Core French Grades 4-8, Extended French Grades 4-8, French Immersion Grades 1-8. Queen’s Printer for Ontario.
  9. Ontario Ministry of Education. (2014). The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9-12: French as a Second Language. Queen’s Printer for Ontario.