University literacy in Francophone minority settings: The challenges of teaching effectiveness

Abstract

Abstract At the University of Alberta's Campus Saint-Jean, the only French-speaking campus in the province of Alberta in Canada, students are confronted with a variety of French spoken by professors, causing many challenges for learners who, for the most part, have French as their second language. This linguistic plurality among the faculty prompted us to explore the linguistic and pedagogical challenges that this diversity can create in the classroom. We used a qualitative method of inquiry to collect the corpus of this research. Specifically, we chose a written questionnaire with open-ended questions. The participants comprised 71 students (26 native French speakers and 45 non-native French speakers) enrolled in a bachelor program at the Campus Saint-Jean. Results indicated that this linguistic plurality posed many emotional, cognitive, and learning challenges for the participants of this study. These results are discussed in the perspective of teacher effectiveness.