Yurun Zhang
One of the things that most people would do when they arrive in Quebec is to learn French. When I first arrived here, I was really excited to take the free French courses and expected to speak fluent French.
However, my expectations and feelings changed after I stayed in this full immersion program for one year. I felt that the course did meet up my expectation and finally decided to drop out. Apart from me, I also saw many of my classmates drop for different reasons. Generally, there are some reasons for quitting:
- Financial assistance for courses is not sufficient for living in Montreal. As their financial needs increased, they needed to start working, even though they haven’t reached the threshold for linguistic autonomy.
- The language benchmark needed to obtain Canadian citizenship is proficiency level 4 (d’Haese, 2018).
- French is too hard to learn, and people cannot see their progress in French and start to forget English words.
- Certain professors treat students impatiently or intentionally target certain students.
- People are too busy with school or work, so they have to give up learning French in class.
- Some want to have courses but just cannot register because there are no available seats.
Here is a video about one student who dropped out of the francization program and talked about his reasons:
Can those concerns be solved? Probably, learning French during working hours can be a solution. Denis Hamel, vice-president of workforce policy development for the Conseil du patronat du Québec (CPQ), believed that teaching and learning French in the workplace during working hours is the best and most efficient way to learn French.
He said,
“You cannot expect either an immigrant or a Canadian-born person to follow courses in the evening or on a Saturday morning above all the duties we have in our lives.”
Providing opportunities to learn in the work place can solve many of those concerns, such as not having enough financial assistance, no time to learn, and no available seats to register. More flexible learning opportunities can be offered after working hours. Besides, instead of sitting in the classroom for 4 hours every day, some activities can be organized to practice French in real life, so people do not feel tired but still have to sit in class to learn. People can also see the progress of their French when using in real life.
Questions
If you are taking or once took a Francization program, what are the reasons that make you stay or drop out?
How can the Francization program be improved to keep students staying and learning French?
Reference
D’Haese, S. (August 20, 2018). Francization in Laval: The state of the issue. Government of Quebec. https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/blogue-blog/francisation-francization-laval-eng
