Walking down the streets of Ottawa, you might hear protests about politics, whines about wait times, or buzz about new businesses. Listen closely. Some of this chatter will probably be in French. You’ve heard our second official tongue spoken by your neighbour, your relative, your seat partner on the bus. The back of the cereal box you read this morning was divided into two neat columns of language.
The University of Ottawa (U of O) and Carleton University are not only both located in the capital of our bilingual country—they’re also only minutes from Quebec. But only one school offers a French immersion program. Hint: it isn’t Carleton.
If you took French classes before university, you might want to take a few French courses during post-secondary to sharpen your skills. Additionally, as young adults starting to wet our feet in the workforce, many students take French for the first time when they enter university as they realize how valuable the skill of a second language is to an employer. But although French is a useful course, it’s also a widely detested subject and a difficult one.
U of O combats these issues by making French more accessible for its students. The school offers a program where students can take two courses in French per term and receive a $1,000 annual scholarship. The scholarship is already tempting enough for any student on its own, but being able to study your subject in French, whether it’s your first or second language, also supports the idea of a bilingual country and more significantly, a bilingual capital.
It seems like university would be the logical place to learn the highly-demanded language, especially in Ottawa. Unfortunately, unlike U of O, Carleton isn’t known for its French classes. The modest French department tucked away on Dunton Tower’s seventeenth floor seems like a distant place for anyone—francophone or frequent user of franglais.
As an immersion graduate, I decided to declare a French minor in university. Each year, I choose some French courses from a limited selection of literature and linguistics. Sometimes the course I chose was tentative, likely to be cancelled without enough enrolment. But most of the time, I end up as one of barely a dozen students in the class.
Of course, smaller class sizes and fewer professors to choose from can be an advantage for building stronger relationships and asking more questions. But one of the essential parts of both learning and maintaining a language is to use it repeatedly in a variety of situations. This is difficult to do in a class of a handful of people.
This isn’t to say Carleton’s French program is awful. It isn’t. Some of my favourite courses have started with FREN. The professors and instructors are knowledgeable, kind, and incredibly helpful. The courses, while they may be small in number, are informative and rich. One of my French courses this year is about zombies. Enough said.
However, Carleton needs to do more to strengthen its French program in order to offer a program on par with U of O and deserving of a bilingual community. This support must come both from professors and university administrators, as well as students. The next time you’re walking down the streets of Ottawa and hear the singing slur and skilfully rolled ‘R’s of our neighbours, consider taking a French class at Carleton, and join the conversation—even if your accent isn’t perfect.
