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.

source

  • rbesfe
    9·
    1 year ago

    As someone from the GTA, I can tell you that no amount of mandatory French class will make you bilingual if you aren’t using it outside of that class or are in an immersion program. I took French all the way through grade 12 but I can barely hold a conversation now because I’ve had no reason to use it since.

    • skankhunt42
      7·
      1 year ago

      I’m from B.C. and only grade 7 is mandatory so that’s all I took. Outside of that class, French was nonexistent and was a huge reason I didn’t care about it. I regret not sticking it out, especially now that I live in a French community in Ontario.

      • Grimpen
        3·
        1 year ago

        Also in BC. Similar experience. My eldest daughter was in French Immersion though, and it’s served her well. As for myself, I have my high-school French, but also naika tenas kumtuks Chinuk wawa.