Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on…

This study examined whether social bias manipulation can influence how naïve multiage listeners evaluate second language (L2) speech. Sixty native English-speaking listeners (Montreal residents) rated audio recordings of 40 Quebec French speakers of L2 English for five dimensions of oral performance (accentedness, comprehensibility, segmental…

What stories of the past do young Canadians tell? What impact does identity have on their ideas and ways of thinking historically? What role does schooling play in transmitting a national narrative? In this paper, we address these questions in a large-scale national study of young French Canadians' understanding of the collective past. Drawing on…

Purpose: This study examined the utility of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) recording system for investigating the language input to bilingual infants. Method: Twenty-one French-English bilingual families with a 10-month-old infant participated in this study. Using the LENA recording system, each family contributed 3 full days of…

This article examines the salience and content of representations of language education in a corpus of English- and French-Canadian newspapers. Findings suggest that English-Canadian newspapers foreground official-language education issues, in which public schools are represented as the primary means by which Canadians can gain equal access to…

This article presents the results of a study that analyses students' historical narratives of the nation in relation to historical consciousness and how their sense of self-identification with groups affects their narrative structure and orientation. This study was conducted with French Canadian students registered in two high schools (n = 58) and…

Taking a broad interest in the linguistic, educational, and identity issues relevant to young people, this article examines the experiences and discourses of linguistic minority youth in the French-dominant context of Québec City. Our analysis is based on qualitative interviews conducted with 10 young people who speak a language other than French…

Four out of five immigrants to Canada speak a language other than English or French as a first language. Immigration is increasingly transforming francophone minority communities. Allophone children acquire minority status on multiple levels within French-language schools, where they can become both a linguistic minority and a cultural minority…

In this article, we will examine some contrasted discourses on multilingualism that circulate nowadays in the field of education. Focusing on the cases of French-speaking Belgium and of the Franco-Ontarian community in Canada, we will show the existence of two discourses on multilingualism: one that insists on the positive value of multilingualism…

This study examined the level of collaboration between Francophone and Anglophone language teachers of 13- and 16- year-old Canadian students (N = 4,494) using data from the 2002 SAIP (School Achievement Indicators Program) of the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada. Among 32 factors, logistic regression identified six predictors of…

Drawing on discursive data collected during an 18-month reflexive critical ethnography of the transition to postsecondary education, this paper explores how graduates of a French first-language secondary school in Ontario, Canada, struggle to affirm their linguistic identity in their new academic and social communities. Despite not crossing…

This study compares the willingness to communicate (WTC) of Canadian Anglophone and Francophone students to measures of their self-assessed, multiskilled second language proficiency and strategy use before and after a short-term intracountry bilingual exchange experience. The central question is whether a student's WTC exists before an opportunity…

The goal of this study was to examine the extent to which bilingual speakers maintain language-specific phonological contrasts for homorganic stops when a cue is shared across both languages. To this end, voice onset time (VOT) was investigated in three groups of participants: early bilinguals speakers of Canadian French and Canadian English (n =…

This paper explores the challenges that neoliberalism and the globalized new economy present to the politics of linguistic minority movements by ethnographically examining language policy as a discursive process, rooted in political economy. Following the post-WWII period, as most Western States restructured from welfarism to neoliberalism, there…

This guide, aimed primarily at school administrators and school counselors, is a reference manual to be used in conjunction with the corresponding sections of the School Act, RSA 2000 and the Local Authorities Election Act RSA, and any other related legislation. The document provides historical background on the right to choose the language of…