French immersion

French immersion is a form of bilingual education in which students who do not speak French as a first language will receive instruction in French. In most French-immersion schools, students will learn to speak French and learn most subjects such as history, music, geography, art, physical education and science in French.
This type of education, in which most of the students are from the majority language community but are voluntarily immersed in the minority language is atypical of most language learning around the world, and was developed in Canada as a result of political and social changes in the 1960s, notably the Official Languages Act, 1969 which led many Anglophones to put their children in to French programs to ensure they could succeed in the increasing number of jobs in the federal government and private sector that required personal bilingualism.
Most school boards in Canada offer French immersion starting in grade one and others start as early as kindergarten. At the primary level, students may receive instructions in French at or near a hundred percent of their instructional day, called "total immersion", or some smaller part of the day. In the case of total immersion, English instruction is introduced in perhaps grade three or grade four, and the minutes of English instruction per day will increase throughout their educational career with up to fifty percent of English/French instruction daily.
As of 2020, 12% of Canadian students were enrolled in a French immersion program, compared to 34% who took conventional French classes in an otherwise-English school environment. As of 2021, 483,000 students were enrolled in French immersion programs only in public elementary and secondary schools in Canada outside Quebec and Nunavut.

Background

Canadian context

In many countries around the world, students are educated in two or more languages: often all students learn at least one foreign language, perhaps the language of a former colonizer ; commonly minorities learn the majority language, often this is required by law or is simply thought of as an economic necessity; and occasionally two or more language communities in the same country learn each other's languages. The Canadian model differs from most countries in that it is a wealthy and politically influential sub-set of the majority language community that has voluntarily decided to demand that local governments offer their children an intensive immersion in the language of a minority. This would have been unthinkable before the constitutional and societal consequences of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, and the passage of the Official Languages Act, 1969 by the federal parliament and the Official Language Act in Quebec in 1974, which together mandated that tens of thousands of jobs in government and industry including high-paying professional and managerial work now required French.
The idea of using immersion as a language-learning tool is not a new one globally. However, it needed influential English-Canadian champions who were able to convince others both that French was worth learning and that immersion was the correct method before it spread in Canada.
The University of Western Ontario began offering a language home-stay program for young adults in Trois-Pistoles 1933, for example, because of the advocacy of Western's president, Dr. William Sherwood Fox, who had learned French by traveling in Quebec in 1900.
The "founding mothers" of elementary school French immersion in Canada are generally cited as Olga Melikoff, Valerie Neale, and Murielle Parkes from Saint-Lambert, Quebec, three English-speaking housewives who wanted to see their children learn French to a higher standard than was usually achieved in the English schools in Quebec at the time. Unable to convince the school authorities, they hired a teacher and ran their own kindergarten on the principals of early immersion. The promising results of the experiment in Saint-Lambert were studied and endorsed by researchers at McGill University, Wallace E. Lambert and Wilder Penfield. After this endorsement, the school board adopted the program and it was quickly copied by other boards across Canada. As the number of French immersion schools grew, larger academic studies showed the students had very good, though not native-level French, and had no major delay in English.
The founding of the advocacy group Canadian Parents for French in 1977 represented the mainstreaming of the program across Canada.

Design of the earliest school programs

French immersion in the Canadian context differs markedly from other language programs aimed at teaching minorities the language of the majority. Researcher Marjorie Bingham Wesche offers the following contextual characteristics of the original Canadian model:

Learners were majority language speakers, and there was no sense of "threat" against the status of English in their home communities.
Learners were all in the "same boat" all learning French as true beginners, so teachers adjusted to their level
The program was optional, and learners were thus "volunteers" whose parents enthusiastically encouraged their learning.
Both languages were valued by parents, the immediate community, and the larger society.
The two languages were related, and have many cognates and loanwords.
School funding and decision making was under local political control, so the parents could pressure the board to take up their ideas.
Native speaker teachers of the immersion language were widely available and were willing to teach to children from the other language community.
Source material was easily accessible. French-medium textbooks and other materials were already available in Canada in a way that would have been very different for any other target language.

Besides these contextual factors, the program's design also had a few key features:

The earliest possible school starting age.
Intensive L2 exposure over an extended period.
Use of the L2 to teach the entire school curriculum.

Many variations have emerged since the earlier programs were designed; however, the original model has produced good results and is still one of the most popular in Canada.

Typical features

French immersion education remains optional and not compulsory; parents have the choice of sending their children to schools that offer such programs. Students are encouraged to begin communicating in French as consistently as possible. Teachers in French immersion schools are competent in speaking French, either having acquired specific French as-a-second-language qualifications or already being fluent in French and having a teaching certification. Classroom communication of French in French immersion programs is meaningful and authentic for students. Learning French becomes subconscious and there is a strong focus on understanding before speaking. Most students that enroll in French immersion programs are not experts in French and lack experience in it. Students in French immersion programs complete the same core curriculum subjects as students in the English-language program.
The French immersion concept was designed to: capitalize on children's ability to learn language naturally and effortlessly; take advantage of their social ability and open attitudes to language and culture; reflect on the building blocks of language by emphasizing the use of languages for communication and not stopping the children from participating in native language development, academic achievement or general cognitive development.

Formats

Programs

French Immersion: French as the language of instruction
Extended French: available only in Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Nova Scotia; French as the language of instruction for one or two core subjects in addition to French Language Arts
Intensive French: a more recent program which started in 1998 in Newfoundland and Labrador and branched out to six other provinces and the Northwest Territories; intensive period of French instruction for one-half of the school year
Age

The age an individual begins the French immersion program varies:

Early Immersion: Kindergarten or Grade One
Middle Immersion: Grade Four or Five
Late Immersion: Grade Six, Seven, or Eight
Time

The amount of time French immersion students spend in immersion varies:

Total: commences with 100% immersion in the second language and continually decreases to 50%
Partial: commences with close to 50% immersion and remains at this level
Benefits

A study shows that French immersion might improve academic performance.
Students participate in French immersion programs to gain employability-related skills and to increase job opportunities.
Students in French immersion demonstrate a superior level of mental flexibility, which is an ability to think more independently of words and to have a higher awareness of concept formation as well as a more diversified intelligence than students in the regular program.
Data illustrates that students in French immersion programs also have a linguistic advantage as they are able to adopt two different perspectives, offering alternative ways to look at the same information.
French immersion students also have a deeper appreciation and respect for various cultures. In addition, they also gain more fulfillment in learning a new language.
Students in French immersion programs also have greater opportunity to understand their own culture or their own nation. For example, Canada's identity is based on the fact that it holds two official languages, English and French. French immersion students have the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of what it means to be Canadian through the French immersion program.