Bilingual schools in Canada such as French immersion and, lately, Spanish bilingual schools in Alberta, a Western province, are two good examples of how to promote language learning to majority English speaking children.... [ view full abstract ]
Bilingual schools in Canada such as French immersion and, lately, Spanish bilingual schools in Alberta, a Western province, are two good examples of how to promote language learning to majority English speaking children. However, we cannot pretend that everyone needs only English when diversity is present in the classrooms (Blommaert, 2010; Heller, 2007). In order to understand how bilingual and multilingual speakers use their languages and navigate through their cultural and linguistic repertoires, we have to look at their personal experiences in specific contexts but also at ideology surrounding languages. Ideology means a frame of interpretation found in discourses in social realities that functions in a normative way and are rarely questioned (Verschueren, 2012). In this presentation, using an interpretative lens and a discourse analysis frame (Blommaert & Jie, 2010), I will present selected data from teachers, students, administrators and stakeholders on what it means for them to plan, teach and learn French or Spanish as a second or additional languages and what are challenges that they encounter. The data comes from ethnographic and sociolinguistic studies in French immersion and Spanish bilingual schools which comprises of interviews, classroom observations and documentations. We will see that, even if learning languages allow to acquire cultural and linguistic resources, we are just starting to acknowledge the complexity of planning, teaching and learning languages in bilingual schools in Alberta. An understanding of the local, historical and social contexts become very significant in order to comprehend how to work with diverse language learners in Canadian bilingual schools.
Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blommaert, J. & D. Jie. (2010). Ethnographic Fieldwork. A Beginner’s Guide. Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Heller, M. (Ed). (2007). Bilingualism: a social approach. New York, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Verschueren, J. (2012). Ideology in Language Use. Pragmatic Guidelines for Empirical Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
