Teaching French as a Second Language in Canada: Teachers' Perspectives. Research Report (PDF)
L'Enseignement du français langue seconde au Canada: Points de vue du personnel enseignant. Rapport de recherche (PDF)

The FSL Teacher Survey was released at the CASLT/ACPI Conference hosted by the Saskatchewan Association of Teachers of French on October 26 and 27 in Saskatoon. The report was prepared by Doug Hart, Sharon Lapkin, Alina MacFarlane and Larry Vandergrift and was jointly sponsored by the Canadian Association of Immersion Teachers (CAIT/ACPI), the Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers (CASLT/ACPLS) Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF/FCE) and funded by Heritage Canada/Patrimoine Canada. Over 1200 teachers of core, immersion, extended and intensive French programs were surveyed electronically.

In a press release by CASLT, available on its website, it was reported that “gaining access to adequate teaching resources and to increased professional development opportunities, as well as improving public opinion and community support towards French as a second language (FSL) programs are among the most pressing needs of FSL educators in Canada”. (It should be noted that the data indicate a lack of culturally-rich resources rather than of teaching resources in general.)

The sample of responding FSL teachers was:

• predominantly female;
• well distributed across FSL program types;
• geographically well represented except for Quebec and BC;
• represented a range of size of board and school;
• generally very experienced teachers;
• generally Anglophone;
• quite confident about their own abilities in French; and,
• mostly from core French backgrounds.

It must be noted that the number of respondents from British Columbia was proportionally low (80 out of 1265 teachers) and included almost no Grade 5 to 7 generalist teachers.
Interestingly, there is no existing complete list of FSL teachers in Canada. Many teachers who teach FSL also teach other subjects, and in some cases, regular classroom teachers are required to teach FSL to their own class as well as all other subjects.

Read the report...... Lisez le rapport