The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board is working to show how core French and extended French programs, can hold their own against the increasingly popular French immersion ones.
A new, voluntary Grade 12 French proficiency test for French immersion, extended French and core French students is in its pilot project stage across the city, says the board. The DELF test – officially called Diplôme d’études en Langue Française – tests for fluency. It is based on the Common European Framework of Reference, a new, globally-accepted language assessment tool.
The OCDSB is the first board in the province to offer this kind of internationally-standardized test, said Jennifer Adams, the superintendent of curriculum, in a recent panel discussion with TVOParent’s Cheryl Jackson.
“After some reviewing, we found out that parents want their children to be coming out of our core French programs with the ability to communicate in French,” Adams said. The test is a way to prove that core French students are just as proficient as French Immersion.
So far the test has only been run twice, but every core French student passed, she noted.
Jennifer McKenzie, board chair and trustee for Somerset-Kitchissippi, says Ottawa teachers are “very excited” for the test and how its results are feeding into the core French program.
“Right now, the curriculum is really focused on reading and writing,” says McKenzie. “We’re seeing French in the English programs needs to be much more about comprehension and verbal communication.”
In November the findings from the first trial of the test revealed that students were weakest in oral and listening skills.
Madame S. Verdoumi has been teaching core French to students in grades seven and eight at Glashan Public School for the past 10 years, and she says she is worried about changing the French curriculum and losing valuable grammar lessons.
“French is an elaborate language and if you’re only learning it orally and by gestures, you don’t fully understand it,” she says.
“Core French students do have the ability to become proficient, but they need good teachers and teachers need better resources. Core French is really the only program with no ESL or learning disability support and yet, our classes are the biggest classes because they include everyone.”
In Ottawa, 60 per cent of children are enrolled in French Immersion. Parents living in the bilingual capital want their children to be able to communicate in French, said Adams. They need to see that both the French Immersion and English programs can help their child thrive in a bilingual city, and that the choice should be based on the needs of the child, she said.
The DELF test is similar to Canadian language exams within the government. Students can choose to be tested in one of six different levels, with A1 being the highest and C2 the lowest. A B2 certificate gives students the chance to study at a university in France.
The test has been so successful that it is now being adopted provincially, says McKenzie.