Dual-language books: addressing linguistic and cultural diversity in french immersion classrooms

Abstract

Students in French Immersion (F .I) in many parts of Canada are now bringing with them home languages other than French or English. This diversity requires extensive modifications in the classroom to attend to the needs of children with linguistic roots from around the world. Typically the focus and delivery of early elementary F .I. teaching is on French alone. However, a growing body of literature suggests that qualified inclusion of the child's first language is also advantageous. The main objective of the research was to study one method of employing dual-language books written in both French and a variety of mother tongue languages spoken by the parents of children in a selected Kindergarten F .I. classroom. The results of the study demonstrated that there was no negative effect of using dual-language books in the classroom. On the contrary, there was strong support of dual language book use by the classroom teacher and the volunteers who participated in the study. The most significant finding was that dual language books offer a meaningful volunteer experience in F.I. classrooms. As well, this study supports past research, which demonstrated that dual-language books allow students to share their linguistic knowledge and cultural roots with their teacher and peers.