News? EMSB recruits French teachers in France
Global says the EMSB will be recruiting French teachers in France as if that’s news.
When I was in high school, the old Catholic school board gave us French teachers from anywhere but Quebec. I had French teachers from France, Algeria, even Hungary. French was taught as if it was a dead language, not as if spoken in the street outside (well, this was the old Marymount building on Côte St‑Luc, so maybe not right outside, but someplace in the general area).
So I’m glad the EMSB is continuing in the same tradition.
I saw a tweet saying this means the kids will be saying “Du coup” and “Voilà” a lot…
Ian 10:03 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
Zut alors! I know a couple of Romanian French teachers that were applying for years at both the EMSB and CSDM but their credentials weren’t recognized … then suddenly no problem at all.
dwgs 10:48 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
My kids, who have English as a mother tongue, went to elementary school in the French system (CSDM) and had a native Russian speaker as an English teacher. They had to correct her English on a regular basis.
Kate 10:54 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
In early grade school we only had one teacher for everything. My grade 3 teacher was a very young woman from P.E.I. who had to try to teach us French. It was mostly lists of vocabulary words (I remember reciting “le chat, le chien, le couteau de poche”) but it went sideways when it came to parts of the body and we realized she had no idea how to pronounce “les doigts”.
jeather 12:10 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
As I think I mentioned before my elementary school French teacher taught us septante/huitante/nonante and when I switched elementary schools (from a religious school to PSBGM) it was a weird, surprising transition, and wow was our Quebecoise teacher surprised at the 3-4 of us who all came in with those numbers. So were my parents, who had had no idea.
I’m not entirely sure what else they can do. Surely it’s better to have a native French speaker teach, even if it’s a different dialect.
carswell 12:44 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
Years ago, I knew someone who taught French as a second language to managers at CN, most if not all of whom were anglophone, and was let go because he was teaching his students Québécois in addition to international French.
He felt they were learning French in order to be able to communicate with their employees, most of whom worked in east end shops IIRC, and so needed to understand, say, that être wasn’t conjugated je suis, tu es, il est, nous sommes, etc. but chuis, t’es, yé, on est, etc., and that rien que wasn’t three syllables in Québécois but two (yain-ke). The photocopy of his little grammar and term base that I received greatly facilitated my integration into Quebec francophone society and opened the door to some amazing theatre (La Triologie des dragons!), literature (Thérèse et Pierrette à l’École des saints-anges!), music (Beau Dommage!), comedy (Yvon Deschamps!) and unilingual francophone friends.
I wonder if he’d be fired for such an intelligent transgression today.
DeWolf 17:41 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
I did French immersion in Alberta from kindergarten to Grade 12. Although we had the occasional sub from Vietnam or North Africa, all the core teachers were francophones from Quebec or New Brunswick (and one from Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan) and the French we learned was decidedly Canadian in accent and vocabulary. I remember high school assignments that required us to interpret the lyrics of Mara Tremblay and Les Colocs songs. So I’m always astonished to hear about people who grew up in Ontario or even Quebec who only learned European French in school.
CE 17:47 on 2023-01-18 Permalink
I got frustrated when doing a placement test for French classes and the interviewer kept correcting me when I said “ouais” instead of “oui”. The first thing a native speaker told me when I arrived to Montreal with my broken French immersion French was that “oui” is almost never said. Literally, it was the first interaction I had with someone in French. I put a lot of work into learning Québécois pronunciation, partly to cover up my anglo accent which was and still is a thicker than I would like which has bothered some of my French teachers and delighted others. I really don’t understand the thinking of teaching language as if it’s a dead language.
JaneyB 09:04 on 2023-01-19 Permalink
Manitoban reporting in. Growing up, we always got European French, typically taught by Franco-Manitobans too. The prohibition on Canadian French comes from the guidelines and material generated by the Quebec government bureaucracy with its deep shame of local French. That’s still very alive both here and there, imo.