Examining immigrants’ English and French proficiency in French immersion

Abstract

Demographic changes in the Canadian population have also brought a more diverse community of learners to French immersion programs. This study responds to the changes in the immersion student population by comparing the French and English proficiency of three groups: Canadian-born English-speaking students, Canadian-born multilingual students and immigrant multilingual students in Grade 6 early French immersion. The quantitative data from English and French tests showed that the immigrant group outperformed the Canadian-born English speaking and the Canadian-born multilingual groups on French proficiency measures of reading, writing, and speaking, whereas there were no significant differences among the groups on the English test components.