Evidence of meeting #17 for Official Languages in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was students.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:10 a.m.
Acting Director, Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs, Simon Fraser University
So a program should be reintroduced—
10:10 a.m.
Acting Director, Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs, Simon Fraser University
There's also a benefit in working in your mother tongue. For example, we've had students who've worked in a summer camp in their second language in Quebec. You have to have imagination and try to offer those students different options.
It's true that our students need to work. We know that. Combining the two would be a possibility, an option.
10:10 a.m.
Director, Departement of Languages and Literatures, Acadia University
I completely agree. In fact, I think there are programs enabling students in the Explore program to stay at the same place and to work there. One of our students did that last summer. She found a job and worked in French.
10:10 a.m.
Director, Departement of Languages and Literatures, Acadia University
Yes, exactly.
10:10 a.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
They nevertheless have to have a fairly advanced level in order to be able to work.
10:10 a.m.
Director, Departement of Languages and Literatures, Acadia University
It depends. It's not guaranteed. We've also seen that our students who took the Explore program were the ones who wanted to do another language stay. A lot of students take part in a first and a second Explore program. Then, in third year, they go on exchange programs. I think that's an excellent program, except that—
10:10 a.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
It enables them to determine whether they really want to learn the second language and whether they're comfortable with that.
10:10 a.m.
Director, Departement of Languages and Literatures, Acadia University
The scholarship helps enormously.
10:10 a.m.
Associate Director, Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs, Simon Fraser University
At the Faculty of Education, the Explore program is linked up with the initial training program. The generalists in the anglophone class are first given an introductory course to the teaching of French as a second language.
In fact, we teach them French by showing them how to teach it. Then we send them for further training and immersion in the culture as part of the Explore program. I think the cultural side of that course has extraordinary value.
It enables them to understand the purpose of teaching our language and to discover ways of continuing to develop that.
10:15 a.m.
Acting Dean, Faculty of Humanities, University of Calgary
I think you have to look at the Explore program not as if it were intended solely for French specialists, teachers for example, but also for others who won't necessarily teach French or do a specialization.
My son studied in the Explore program at Chicoutimi and he did a major in political science. He went into late immersion, but he's able to read documents and work in French in his field.
So you have to consider the non-specialists and continue to increase the linguistic levels of all our students. The Explore program is an excellent way to promote this linguistic ability as well as the cultural aspect.
I'm thinking here in Quebec. If you study political science in Calgary... Well, I'm going to refrain from making political comments.
10:15 a.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
Studying in Quebec is obviously not the same thing as studying elsewhere.
Mr. Ipperciel?
10:15 a.m.
Assistant Dean to Research, Saint-Jean Campus, University of Alberta
You also have to understand that the experience of students today differs to a great extent from what we experienced when we were students. The image of the hard-up student doesn't at all correspond to what they know, at least in Alberta. They go around in cars, go to restaurants.
10:15 a.m.
Assistant Dean to Research, Saint-Jean Campus, University of Alberta
They've got money. A consumer mentality prevails, so that they want to work and make money in the summer. They're very independent. Paid programs work well with them. Back home, employment as an English-language monitor in France, for example, is popular. This kind of work is popular, provided it's paid.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Steven Blaney
You see there's also a cultural component to a language. We can come back to that.
We now turn to Madam Tilly O'Neill-Gordon.
Tilly.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
Tilly O'Neill-Gordon Conservative Miramichi, NB
First of all, I want to welcome the witnesses for being with us today. I am from New Brunswick, Canada's only bilingual province.
In my last few years of teaching I was in an immersion school, so I saw first-hand how the students, just like a sponge, can absorb all this. I wasn't teaching French, as you can figure out.
I agree with Janice Best when she says that quite often principals have to grab the first person they can get. In our school we were very fortunate in having a young man who throughout his years of university travelled through different provinces in Canada and studied French. He also then travelled to Europe for maybe even several summers after he became a teacher. There is a great benefit, and you see that with the students. Not only does he bring all kinds of ideas, but he also opens the idea of travel to children and shows that there's more to life than just the Miramichi, even though we like to think that's not true.
Are there not more initiatives that we could have to offer advantages not just to university students, but to these young teachers who are going into the classrooms? I know I have a godchild up there who is just starting her first couple of years of teaching. She is teaching French immersion. I was just thinking not only she, herself, but other teachers in our province could benefit from programs that would help teachers to see different involvement and so on.
I am wondering if the universities have anything for teachers. That question is open to anybody, it doesn't matter who.
10:15 a.m.
Associate Director, Office of Francophone and Francophile Affairs, Simon Fraser University
I think that teacher experience outside the country is very important. One thing we have done at the faculty of education is organize a short four-week practicum in a country. We've been to Cuba. We've developed relationships with teachers and universities there who train their teachers to teach French and English, and our students spend some time with them, preparing lessons, teaching in the schools. We are interested in developing this sort of short-term practicum in other regions as well. This is something that is certainly important in our eyes.
We've also developed a dual certification program by which we send our students to Université François-Rabelais. They're very big on the international exchange. They do spend three months in a master's of French as a second-language program there. When they come back, they integrate our teacher training program, which is a one-year program, at the end of which they are trained to teach in our province and they can also qualify for a diploma in France.
Vice versa, we integrate people from France into our program that way. The enrichment goes both ways. Some of the students who come from France are indeed interested in teaching in the province as well.
10:20 a.m.
Director, Departement of Languages and Literatures, Acadia University
I think it would be a great idea to put in place a system of exchanges for teachers. I know at the university level we do have that possibility, if you can find someone who switches from their university to ours and then you can basically change houses and change jobs. It's quite easy to do.
Something like that, if it could be organized for teachers, would be tremendously beneficial, because a teacher would have the opportunity to go and live in another province or another country and just find out all these things that are going on in other places and come back with so much more material to bring to the classroom. I think that would be an excellent initiative.