Immigrant students outperforming peers in French

Immigrant students outperform their Canadian born peers in French as a second language testing according to a new study published by Dr. Callie Mady, associate professor in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University.

The paper, titled Learning French as a second official language in Canada: comparing monolingual and bilingual students at Grade 6, is published in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. It shows immigrants have a greater proficiency in French as a second language on multi-skills language tests compared to Canadian-born English-speaking and multilingual students.

Dr. Mady’s study, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, compared the French as a second language achievement of three groups of students: (1) Canadian-born English speaking, (2) Canadian-born multilingual, and (3) immigrant multilingual students. Statistical comparisons revealed the immigrant group outperformed the other two groups.

“In the past, it was believed that these students would be less likely to perform well in French second language education, as they were simultaneously learning English. We know now that that is false thinking,” said Mady. “The question now is ‘how and why do they outperform others?’ I found that the immigrant group’s advantages are beyond language(s) proficiency, motivation, attitude, metalinguistic awareness, or strategy use. It appears their status of immigrant has a positive impact on the results. Although not part of groups that traditionally outperform Canadians, this study's participants viewed learning French as a second language as an opportunity to add another language to their repertoire and judged themselves capable of succeeding in this regard.”

The published paper is available from the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13670050.2013.767778