Teaching English in Primary | A program ripe for Ministry review

For the first time in nearly 20 years, the Ministère de l’Éducation is in the process of evaluating the mastery of English, a second language, of students in Quebec. Among other unavoidable questions: the teaching of English from the 1st^D year, starting in 2006, has it borne fruit?

Louise Leduc
The Press

Last week, The Press revealed Quebec City’s desire to develop a program enriched with English in 6^and year.

But what about the vast majority of students (83% of primary school children) who follow the Basic English curriculum instead?

What impact did the implementation of English in 1^D year, dating back to 2006? In response to our question, the Ministry of Education sent us a 2019 study that did not focus on this, but on another avenue – moreover considered much more promising by researchers –, namely that of intensive english in 5^and and in 6^and year.

And while they may only be part of the answer, the results compared to the Ministry’s secondary school exams of the first cohorts to have started English at age 6 compared to previous generations do not show any clear improvement.

Questionable exams

Up to 5^and secondary, students do not have a Ministry exam in English as a second language. In June 2006, the average (for children who had only learned English from the 4^and year at the time) had been 81.3%. That of the 2017 cohort – the first to have done English in 1^D year – was 82.4%.

Success rates? In 2006, as in 2017, the pass rates for Ministry exams “are very, very high because the requirements are low. If you manage to jabber, you get a passing grade,” says Christine Baida, president of the Society for the Development of English Teaching, a Second Language in Quebec (SPEAQ) and educational advisor now retired. .

In secondary school, the number of minutes per week is still quite high, but in elementary school, it ranges from 30 to 90 minutes, depending on what the schools choose.

“The sprinkling [d’heures d’anglais]the research says that it does not work”, also says Josée Scalabrini, president of the Federation of teaching unions, which represents 65,000 teachers (all subjects combined).

The few researches and press archives show that the decision to impose English from the 1^D year in 2006 was taken due to strong pressure from parents.

In 2015, researchers Moktar Lamari and Eva Anstett wrote: “It cannot be said that the teaching of English as a second language at the undergraduate level [du primaire] as implemented in primary schools in Quebec, responds to scientific evidence clearly set out in the literature. On the other hand, it is clear that within the population and among parents, there is a demand for such early learning, which this measure seems to want to respond to. »¹

“The sponge child” has its limits

In an interview, Philippa Bell, professor of second language teaching at UQAM, points out that it is wrong to believe that we must hurry to teach English to toddlers, when their brains “is a sponge”, according to the established expression.

In a school context, “it is more towards the end of primary and the beginning of secondary” that the pupil is, cognitively, particularly ready to learn another language, even if early exposure nevertheless has the merit of achieving a moment when the child, emotionally, is more receptive to it and has no negative a priori.

This is what Guillaume Bouthillier has himself observed. Her two boys, now aged 13 and 14, have been going to an English camp in Nominingue since they were 6 and 7 years old. Mr. Bouthillier noticed two separate releases. “Their first camp immediately made them lose this apprehension by which on a skating rink, in winter, the Anglophones go on their side and the Francophones, on the other. »

But it was only at the end of primary school, he continues, that he noticed that his sons managed to converse.

His boys are lucky, he notes, that family finances allow them to attend such a camp that takes them further than school can.

“I myself thought it a good idea, after CEGEP, to spend a whole year of immersion in English to improve my English,” says Mr. Bouthillier.

An “ambitious” program, on paper

On paper, the English program is “ambitious”, wrote in 2014 the Higher Council for Education (a body independent of the government). “The levels targeted here for primary correspond to what is generally expected in Europe for the end of secondary. »²

The content is there, “the expectations of the population are high”, but “the time devoted is not sufficient and is not distributed in an optimal way”, adds the Higher Council of Education.

Added to this are the shortages, particularly glaring in special education and in English as a second language, indicates Nicolas Prévost, president of the Quebec Federation of Educational Establishment Directors.

At Laval University, only 50 of the 80 places available for students wishing to teach English are filled. At UQAM, we have managed to fill the 50 places available over the past few years. Concordia University receives 200 applications, but welcomes a maximum of 60 students.

How many schools will offer the intensive English programs advocated by researchers and requested by parents? Should we or can we continue to teach English from year 1?^D year or should we concentrate this teaching at the age when, cognitively, research says that it is ideal?

Eventual decisions by the government will be influenced by the scarcity of teachers and, inevitably, by the political context.

“In Quebec, the teaching of English as a second language, however, strikes a chord that is all the more sensitive in that it resonates with a certain ambivalence, noted the Superior Council of Education in 2014. As a parent […], everyone wants effective English teaching for their children. At the same time, as a citizen of a State where the linguistic majority is fragile, many fear that learning English will be done to the detriment of French and will send allophones an ambiguous message as to the priority of French as a common language. »

1. The teaching of English as a second language: What to remember from the Quebec experience?February 2015, Center for Research and Expertise in Evaluation, National School of Public Administration

2. Improving the teaching of English as a second language in elementary school: a balance to be foundSuperior Council of Education, 2014