The University of Ottawa Immersion Program

Abstract

This article reports on case studies of university students participating in the University of Ottawa French Immersion Study (FIS) program, the largest tertiary immersion option in Canada. This program allows Anglophone students to complete an undergraduate degree while taking academic courses in their second official language (French). Semi-structured interviews with case study participants were used to analyze immersion students’ accounts of their experiences within this program. Findings focus on the interactions offered to FIS students and their role in shaping students’ identities and orientation to French and Francophones. Through the FIS, students are able not only to acquire linguistic and disciplinary knowledge, but also engage, often for the first time, in in-depth and daily interactions with the French community. As a result, their discourse reflects an identification and coming together with the Francophone community thereby seeming to bridge a gap between English speakers and French speakers typically found in elementary and secondary immersion programs.