Motivation to Study Core French: Comparing Recent Immigrants and Canadian-Born Secondary School Students

Abstract

As the number of Allophone students attending public schools in Canada continues to increase (Statistics Canada, 2008), it is clear that a need exists in English ‐ dominant areas to purposefully address the integration of these students into core French. I report the findings of a mixed ‐ method study that was conducted to assess and com ‐ pare the motivation and investment of secondary Allophone and English ‐ speaking Canadian ‐ born students to study core French. Both the quantitative and the qualita ‐ tive results show that Allophone students are more motivated to study French than their English ‐ speaking Canadian ‐ born peers. Key words: multilingual language motivation, second language motivation, applied linguistics A mesure que le nombre d’eleves allophones dans les ecoles publiques du Canada s’accroit (Statistique Canada, 2008), il est clair qu’il faut, dans les regions ou l’anglais domine, s’occuper nommement de l’integration de ces eleves dans les cours de fran ‐ cais de base. L’auteure presente les conclusions d’une recherche menee a l’aide de plusieurs methodologies en vue d’evaluer et de comparer la motivation et l’implication d’eleves du secondaire, soit allophones, soit anglophones et nes au Ca ‐ nada, vis ‐ a ‐ vis des cours de francais de base. Les resultats tant quantitatifs que quali ‐ tatifs montrent que les eleves allophones sont plus motives a etudier le francais que leurs pairs anglophones nes au Canada. Mots cles : motivation et apprentissage d’une langue seconde, linguistique appliquee