I was very lucky growing up, and my little middle school in my little village in Nova Scotia offered French Immersion (late, started grade 7).
Sure, some of my teachers were anglophone, but the rest were Acadian. When I went to university I didn’t think much about it, but soon discovered that I was functionally and operationally bilingual. I continued to study French at university where all of my teachers happend to be from la belle province and graduated.
Now I’m a professor in France. I’ve been doing this for about 17 years. My students greatly underestimate their level in English, yet here I am correcting 750-word essays written by 1st year students who have only “studied” English for an hour or two a week since middle school. Are they good? Meh… But they are better than they imagine.
Canada is supposed to be bilingual. I’ve seen different numbers fly around over the years regarding the percentage of bilingual Canadians. How about you, are you bilingual? How bilingual?
Addendum:
These maps are not directly related to the question, but I came across them while looking things up.
This is from 2016. I like showing this to my students. They always ask me why I bothered learning French.
And this is from 2021 and is a little bit related to my question, but only covers English and French.
I grew up in Alberta and was forced to take french from grades 1-6 and I believe it was an option from grade 7 onward. Most of my french teachers sucked at teaching, didn’t know the language that well, or just didn’t care. I know my french sucks and I can hardly string a few words together, however I can understand a lot more when spoken to me, and I can figure out 70% while reading it. Just don’t ask me to wright in french.
However I drove across Canada this summer and I apparently know enough to get fuel while in Quebec!
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I grew up in Alberta and was forced to take french from grades 1-6 and I believe it was an option from grade 7 onward. Most of my french teachers sucked at teaching, didn’t know the language that well, or just didn’t care. I know my french sucks and I can hardly string a few words together, however I can understand a lot more when spoken to me, and I can figure out 70% while reading it. Just don’t ask me to wright in french.
However I drove across Canada this summer and I apparently know enough to get fuel while in Quebec!
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… Just don’t ask me to “wright” in french 😭😭😭🤐😶🌫️
i blame voice to text, even tho i didnt use it
😂