Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen members of the committee, thank you for inviting us.
First, I would like to talk about the Albertan context and about the context in south Alberta. There is an incredible need for teachers in French immersion and core French programs. The Albertan government had proposed to require that second-language instruction be provided over five years. Unfortunately, it decided to make that a recommendation, not a requirement.
Immersion programs are operating very well, and enrolment is up. We also have a lot of immersion programs in Spanish, German and Chinese, but 75% of second-language students enrol in French immersion. French is taught in the Department of French, Italian and Hispanic Studies. We note that multilingualism is quite widespread because a large number of our students are doing a double major. We are not competing with Spanish or Italian, but we have students who are doing double majors.
Enrolment in French courses is roughly stable, both for registration in the courses as such and in the major fields. We also offer courses under the acronym FLIP, which means French Language Instruction Program. We offer courses in disciplines such as history, sociology, religious studies and others, in French. This enables students from immersion to stay in touch with French, even if they are not specialists in that language.
In addition, the Centre français is working with the department. We do approximately 8,000 or 9,000 individuals visits there a year. The centre also gives not-for-credit courses to more than 500 students a year and organizes immersion weekends and so on.
As regards special initiatives for French, we are aiming in particular to organize short-term language stays to introduce students to French so that they will continue and spend a year or a semester in a francophone environment.
In winter, during reading week, we organize a course in Quebec. A teacher and a graduate student accompany a group of some 20 students. They visit museums and other institutions, with activities before and after their stay in Quebec.
We have had exchange programs with certain groups for some time now, including the Université François-Rabelais in Tours. We send students to Tours for the entire year, but their numbers are quite limited. We will be organizing a one-month course with a group that will be accompanied by a Calgary professor and also courses with professors from Tours.
As regards education programs, the Faculty of Education already has a two-year program which is given entirely in French. We have a joint five-year French and education program, which is just starting and for which we still have to solve a number of administrative problems. We're working on that.
We would like to increase the number of scholarships awarded to students who go on language stays.
As my colleague just said, the idea is to put the study of French in a university context and to promote participation by post-doctoral research fellows and guest professors. We've done this, but we're trying to do more. For example, next year, we will be welcoming a Senegalese linguist for a semeste, and, over the next semester, a guest professor from Quebec will come and give courses at our university.
The language research centre has teaching technology projects, and we now have a pilot project designed to evaluate our programs by comparing them with the European common framework. In addition, my colleague has worked on a project on francophone immigration.
I believe I would like to stop there for the moment. We are prepared to answer your questions.
Thank you.