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Abstract:
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Since its inception in St. Lambert, Quebec in 1965
the Quebec language immersion program has attracted
attention of socio-linguists, bilingual education
experts, and government officials throughout the world.
The aim of this program is to give students the opportunity
to achieve, by secondary school graduation, a level
of bilingualism sufficient to function well in a French-speaking
community. Its second language methods have been studied
with great interest and are currently being used in
many countries for the teaching of Spanish, French,
English and other languages. In the last few years
some academics and second language educators have
proposed the adoption of Quebec-like immersion programs
in some Latin American countries. These studies and
recommendations have focused mainly on immersion methodological
aspects. However, the linguistic policy issues behind
Quebec immersion program- are less known. Research
findings show that the program achieves successful
outcomes when it is implemented as elite bilingual
education, i.e., education for middle class, white,
Anglophone, non immigrant students, with parents that
have the -intellectual and financial- resources to
be highly involved in the every day education of their
children. Access to the French immersion program in
Quebec is severely restricted and recent changes in
language legislation have closed the entrance possibilities
even further by denying eligibility to students that
attended private English schools, a strategy used
mainly by immigrant students as the right to attend
a French language Immersion school -considered part
of the English school board system- is restricted
only to children whose parents had been educated in
English in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada. The proposed
paper explores the linguistic policy behind the French
Immersion program as applied in Quebec and the Quebec
governments' opposition to adopt alternative non-elite
bilingual education programs. The objective is to
deconstruct the Quebec linguistic policy context in
order to assess its real value. This will help evaluate
the convenience of adopting immersion programs in
Latin America.
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