Learning French as a second official language in Canada: comparing monolingual and bilingual students at Grade 6

This paper presents the results of a study that compared the French as a second official achievement of three groups of students: (1) Canadian-born English speaking (CBE), (2) Canadian-born multilingual (CBM), and (3) immigrant multilinguals (IMM) as determined by multiskills test results. ANOVAs and subsequent post hoc tests revealed that the immigrant group outperformed the other two groups on some test components. In order to identify statistically significant predictors of the French as a second official language (FSOL) results, multiple linear regression analyses were conducted considering groupings, attitudes and experiences as revealed through a questionnaire. The results indicate that the immigrant group's advantages are beyond language(s) proficiency, motivation, attitude, metalinguistic awareness, or strategy use. The author suggests the immigrant group's status of immigrant has a positive impact on the results.