12,000 native English teachers to teach Spaniards

This story from last year is reminiscent of plans by France's Sarközy (de Nagy-Bocsa) to boost English teaching at French public schools. Zapatero's desire for Spanish children to become fluent in English highlights the spread of English in Europe, a region where French used to be dominant in the second and third language slots but is now increasingly losing out to English in spite of stiff resistance from French institutions and the French government's funding of Lycées Français and Instituts Français throughout the European Union. On the other hand, the kind of Spanglish used in this article would suggest that the Spanish still have some work ahead of them before they can compete with the likes of the Swedes, let alone English native speakers on the global marketplace.

Spanish Prime Minister announces plans to develop English education in Spain
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By h.b. - Feb 19, 2008 - 2:41 PM
Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - Photo EFE
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero set a ten year target for students to dominate what the Spanish often refer to as 'the language of Shakespeare'

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has unveiled ambitious new plans for the teaching of English in Spain. He has given an undertaking that 15% of total classes given in Spanish schools will be in English within four years, with the intention that children who pass through the Spanish education system will be bilingual and dominate the language in ten years.

For the plan to be put into action some 12,000 native English teachers are to be employed, together with a further 8,000 native teachers assistants. 20,000 Spanish teachers of English will meanwhile be given a month’s course in an English speaking country.

Speaking at an institute in Fuenlabrada, Madrid, the Prime Minister said that Spain needed the move to complete economically, and that Spanish youngsters would benefit by being able to compete professionally.
‘There are families who can easily pay for their children to travel or study abroad’, he said, ‘but our priority is for those who cannot’.

Courtesy of Edward J. Cunningham

Speaking French Can Get You Killed

There has been a lot of talk about how French air controllers' poor English skills or refusal to speak the tongue that Shakspere spake endangers people's lives. The following blog post from strategypage.com shows that the French military doesn't do a better job: it doesn't teach its soldiers enough English before sending them to operate in joint international operations. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows France well from the inside: French foreign language learning standards being very low, many French think they speak good English when they don't, while few are conscious that failure to practise will result in loss of fluency. The educated are often the worst as many have the most thwarted notions of what English should be (they revere French grammar rules and refuse to accept that those don't necessarily apply to other tongues).

May 15, 2009: While the French Army has recognized the importance of smart bombs and missiles, they found themselves poorly prepared to make the best use of these weapons when they sent troops to Afghanistan. They had several problems. First, they did not have enough FACs (Forward Air Controllers, teams trained to call in warplanes and smart bombs), and those FACs they had often lacked good enough English to deal with the non-French pilots. NATO pilots, like international commercial aviation pilots, use English as a standard language (for working with ground controllers and each other). Unlike pilots, the French FACs don't practice their English regularly, and have problems communicating with non-French pilots. Another problem was that the French FACs didn't have the Rover terminal (which allows U.S., and most NATO, FACs to see what pilots see via their targeting pods).

Many of these French problems arise from France having left the NATO military organization back in the 1960s. France remained in NATO, but its armed forces did not participate in training and standardization efforts with other NATO troops. There were some problems with this back in 1990, when France sent troops to join the effort to throw Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. But in 1991 the solution was to place the French division out on the western flank, where they did not have to worry about interoperability with other NATO forces. In Afghanistan, everyone shares the same pool of warplanes and helicopters, and many other forms of support as well. Interoperability is essential. Decades of NATO efforts to develop interoperability standards for basic things like communications, air and artillery support, supply and medical evacuation, have paid off. Not perfect, but not a lot of costly confusion either. The French now have to play catch up after decades on their own.

Hat tip: O. Mayer

a seismic event in Man's history

Health issues have prevented yours truly from posting new stories to this blog for these past few weeks. I am getting better and expect this place to be back and running relatively soon. Meanwhile, I would like to thank Edward J. Cunningham for drawing my attention to the below report about the phenomenal rise of English and the failure of all other languages to achieve global status.

Times Online, January 15, 2005:

WHAT WOULD you think was the biggest thing to hit human culture, worldwide, in the past quarter century? To the anthropologist of modern Man, what change would head the list? The explosion of air travel? No, most of those alive today will never fly. HIV-Aids? No, just one of many terrible scourges our species has faced: diarrhoea and malaria still kill more. The collapse of communism and rise of the global free market? The internet? These point the way, but still reach only a minority.

The answer stares us in the face. Like much that does so, it is widely overlooked. But it struck me forcibly in Africa this week (and I bet it will have struck Gordon Brown) as I sat in the back row of the Grade 1 class at Digum Complete Elementary School, by the side of a dirt road nearly 1,000 kilometres north of Addis Ababa in the Tigra region of Ethiopia.

This country, you will recall, was for many centuries a remote and independent African kingdom whose only colonial experience was as an Italian possession for a short period before the Second World War. The British never came here much. Ethiopia is in nobody’s “sphere of influence”.

My class at Digum school were aged between five and seven: 44 boys and girls, some barefoot, some decently dressed, many in rags; some fit and healthy, some with sores or burns, or eye problems. Few would ever have been to Addis Ababa. None had seen another country and few ever will. None will ever have been in a lift or seen an escalator. Some will not have entered a two-storey building. Most will never have made a telephone call and some will never have seen one taking place: a fascinated crowd gathered as I made a satellite call from our campsite to The Times. None will ever have had a television, though some of their parents will have owned a radio and all of them will have listened to one.

The children were divided into a morning shift and an afternoon shift. Thus did their impressive headmaster, Mr Getachew, and his 30 staff, manage to run a school of 1,644 children housed in six long single-storey cabins scattered over an acre of dust.

I had arranged my visit quite by chance. Our guide thought we would be welcome, and we were. Every child stood as we entered a class. “George Bush and Mr Tony Blair will never visit our school,” said the Grade 8 teacher, Mr Hailay, “so you are our most important foreign visitors.” He should invite Mr Brown.

The Grade 1 classroom where I sat had no teaching aids at all, save tiny wooden benches and single-plank desks, dog-eared newspaper-covered exercise books, a blackboard, and a keen and patient young teacher, Mr Hadush. Discipline was absolute.

“Let us sing, children” said Mr Hadush. “Come to the front Abraham.” A tiny boy marched confidently up, all the others rapt. “This is the way I wash my face, wash my face, wash my face,” shrieked Abraham, making face-washing motions with his hand. “This is the way we wash our face,” shrieked all 44 tots, in an ear-splitting chant, “Early in the morning!”

There is no piped water in Digum — just a well with a hand-pump, down by the dried up river.

“This is the way I put on my clothes, put on my clothes, put on my clothes,” shrieked Abraham delightedly, doing the motions. “This is the way we put on our clothes.” Yelled the class, full of excitement at learning and at showing off their learning, “Early in the morning.” Some of them barely had any clothes.

Mr Hadush called a little girl, who looked about five, to the blackboard and handed her a stump of chalk. She wrote out the English alphabet perfectly on the blackboard. Ethiopia’s native script, which she also knew, is composed of the bewildering symbols of Amharic.

The spread of English across the globe is a seismic event in our species’ history. It is one of the biggest things to happen to mankind since the dawn of language. Speech is fundamental not just to communication but to the process of thought itself. No single language has ever before approached universality. English is now doing so. No other language has ever advanced as far, as fast, as ours. This is the first time in history that it has been possible to denote one language as predominant.

Within the lifetimes of Times readers, every other serious contender for that status has been eliminated. French is dying outside France. “Francophone” Africa is turning to English. Portuguese Africa is abandoning Portuguese. German made a small, temporary advance across emergent Eastern Europe but elsewhere outside Germany it is dead. Russian, which we once thought we would all have to learn, is finished. The Japanese are learning English, and developing their own pet variant. China will resist, but Mandarin and Cantonese are not advancing beyond their native speakers. More of the world’s new Muslims are learning English than Arabic. Spanish alone is raising its status and reach — but among Americans, who have English already. India is making an industry out of English speaking, as call-centres daily remind us. A quarter century ago, as the dismemberment of our Empire neared completion, we might have thought that the predominance of our language had passed its zenith. It was only dawn.

It is imponderable what may be the consequences of the advance of this linguistic tide. Within a few generations and for the first time in the story of Homo sapiens, most of our species may be able to communicate in a single language.

The advantage lent to us British by our fluency (and that of the Americans) in this world language should not be exaggerated. The number of native English speakers may not grow much; our relative influence may decline. They know little of us in Ethiopia. Yet all over that country street signs and business billboards are appearing in English, beneath the Amharic. English is cool. The very lettering confers status.

At Digum school I also sat through a Grade 8 class of 56 students. Here in the top form boys and girls aged between 10 and 20 were being coached by the excellent Mr Hailay. He was teaching the uses of “just”, “already” , “up to now”, “yet”, “ever” and “never”, and, astonishingly, most of them had a pretty good grasp. Over the shoulder of the boy in front I read his battered computer-printout English textbook, instructing the reader in the correct tenses to use in reported speech. I asked Mr Hailay if I might ask his pupils a few questions.

Did they want to learn English? Yes, replied everyone. Why? “It is the language of the world, and I want to know the world,” replied one boy.

I asked what other languages they would acquire if they could. Spanish, Chinese and Arabic were cited in reply, but none had any plans to learn these. To my surprise, one of the boys asked me afterwards what language I spoke — was I Italian, he wondered? I saw that knowledge of English was not regarded as an indication of nationality, but as a possession, a philosopher’s stone: one which anyone could get. At Digum they were struggling to get it.

English, I realised, as I left the school while the children chanted “I was a pilot, a pilot was I,” isn’t really ours any more. We are losing ownership of international English. Internet English is already looking unfamiliar. Africans rely heavily on the present continuous, and manage perfectly well. Different parts of the globe will develop their own pidgins.

There will be no point in fighting this or regretting it. We should just take pride in what we have started. It gives us no mastery and nor should it, but it gives us a link. All the world will have an open gate into our story, our culture, our ideas, our literature, our poetry and our song. And we into theirs.

Montreal People See French Losing Ground

Mathieu Turbide
Le Journal de Montréal
18/02/2009 09h10

La langue française perd du terrain à Montréal, et l'économie se dégrade, constatent une majorité des Montréalais interrogés dans le cadre d'un sondage Léger Marketing-Le Journal de Montréal.
Trois Montréalais sur cinq trouvent que l'état de la langue Française dans leur ville se détériore.

L'opinion des Montréalais rejoint donc les conclusions de plusieurs rapports -et d'une récente enquête du Journal de Montréal -qui démontrent que l'utilisation du français recule à Montréal, particulièrement dans les commerces du centre-ville.

Le gouvernement a lancé plus tôt cet hiver une vaste campagne pour promouvoir l'usage du français dans les commerces montréalais.

Click here to read more

Useless Govt Ad Campaigns Try To Halt Decline of French In Quebec

CBC ran a story in October of last year on Quebec's Bonjour campaign:

A new Quebec-funded ad campaign that encourages people to speak more French is getting bad reviews from some English-speaking Montrealers.

The $1.5-million "Bonjour" campaign urges Quebecers to greet each other in French.

The radio version tells listeners that "Bonjour is the best beginning" for every conversation.

Montrealers don't need to hear that, especially when the province has bigger problems at hand, said Ted Duskes, who runs a technology equipment business.

"Don't spend all these kinds of money when you don't have the money to spend," he told CBC News. "You have people lining up in the halls in the emergency rooms, and you haven't got nurses. It's frustrating."

The campaign comes after months of public debate over the vitality of French in Montreal.

Recent provincial studies suggest French is losing favour as the main language of commerce on the island of Montreal, especially among small businesses.

The majority of Quebec francophones feel the French language is threatened in Quebec, but the ad campaign misses the mark, said Jack Jedwab, executive director of the Association for Canadian Studies.

"In terms of outcomes, in terms of the degree to which non-francophones are going to say 'bonjour' more, or use more French in retail outlets of downtown Montreal, I doubt this will have any meaningful impact," he said.

Government officials wouldn't comment on the campaign.

But Quebec's Office de la langue francaise, the province's language watchdog, said it expects similar campaigns to be rolled out soon.

PARIS HAS PLENTY TO READ (IN ENGLISH)

While New-York's French-language bookstores close down, Paris offers a huge choice of books in English:

There are surely as many good English-language bookstores in Paris as in all but a handful of cities in the United States. Whatever that may tell us about relative cultural priorities, it's also an indication of the American (and British) presence in Paris, the importance of American literature to literate Parisians and the large number of Americans visiting and living there.

I discovered 10 bookstores in Paris that specialize, more or less - a few exclusively - in English-language books, four on the Right Bank and six on the Left. One can visit them all in a long day's walk. For a city of its size, compared to New York or London, Paris is readily accessible by foot.

A useful place to start our walking tour would be on the Right Bank, on the Rue de Rivoli where, at Rue Cambon, one finds W. H. Smith (subtitle: The English Bookstore), a larger, more glamorous version of the stationery shops in the notable British chain. The Paris Smith's is a place to get English newspapers and The New York Times, best sellers and a wide range of English paperbacks - Penguin, Pan, Methuen, Virago. There is an imitation English tea shop on the second floor. The books, which are mostly imported from England (Penguin has a terrific list of American titles), cost about half again as much as they do in London, which means they cost about the same as paperbacks in the United States. W. H. Smith is similar to American chains like B. Dalton, a good place to pick up a recent book of no great obscurity but hardly a hangout for book lovers. Still, for a mass market store, Smith's stocks a large number of interesting paperbacks, including American titles generally unavailable in the States. The Louvre is a few minutes' walk from Smith's, though perhaps too great a distraction on this particular tour.

Walking east on the Rue de Rivoli, two blocks or so from W. H. Smith, one comes to the oldest and most elegant English-language bookstore in Paris, the Librairie Galignani. If W. H. Smith has the feel of an upscale Dalton, Galignani is reminiscent of Scribner or Rizzoli in New York. Galignani, lined with dark wood shelves and with a skylight overhead, is easy to move around in, well-stocked, a mix of shelves and tables displaying few if any best sellers. Unlike the chains, it is a store for which books are objects of respect and affection. Galignani has a good selection of poetry and a small though impressive selection of art books. Its prices are generally comparable to Smith's. The staff is knowledgeable and helpful. Browsing is encouraged. Originated in 1805, and at the present address since 1856, Galignani carries 15,000 volumes in English and 15,000 in French. It is a favorite among American writers living in Paris and a place to visit for those who love bookstores as esthetic objects in themselves.

Walking north on the Rue des Pyramides, turning left on Avenue de l'Opera, one comes to the huge, mass market bookstore, Brentano, which appropriately has a golden facade. On entering the store, customers are confronted by records, key chains and souvenirs, as if the absence of books were a selling point. If W. H. Smith is a bit of England on the Continent, Brentano might be perceived as its American counterpart, a bookshop seemingly embarrassed to display books. In the back, however, is a winding blind alley of paperbacks, a first-rate collection hidden away like a secret vice. Brentano's thousands of books in English include a travel shelf comparable to Smith's and a considerably more extensive children's books section. (The other shops on this tour are less rewarding than Smith and Brentano for visitors seeking maps and travel guides in English.) Although disguised as an upscale tourist bazaar, Brentano is, in fact, a fairly substantial store of its kind. Prices are about the same as Smith's and slightly higher than the least expensive of the Left Bank bookstores. Brentano is a short walk from the American Express offices and the Paris Opera.

The one other English-language bookstore on the Right Bank, Librairie Albion, is an anomalous presence. It is a store you are not likely to stumble on unless thoroughly lost. The way to find it is to take Avenue de l'Opera south to Rue de Rivoli, walk east for about 12 blocks along Rivoli until it becomes Rue St. Antoine and then ask directions to Rue Charles V, a street with no other shops but Librairie Albion. From a distance, Albion looks something like an English pub. The front door was locked when my companion and I arrived and an employee let us in through the back. Although Albion exists to serve the University of Paris, which is nearby, stocking French, German and Spanish texts in addition to English, it is a real bookstore - a place of books - cramped, charming, incomplete, eccentric, the expression of a personality. If you are after a particular volume, Brentano and Smith are more likely to have it, but if you are willing to discover what you might want, Albion is a sweet place to browse.

Crossing the Seine to the Left Bank at

Pont Marie and working one's way past Notre Dame, the walker comes to the Rue de la Bucherie and Shakespeare and Company, namesake and self-styled spiritual heir to the legendary Sylvia Beach bookstore of the expatriate 1920's. Shakespeare has stalls in front selling used books, starting at about 60 cents. There may be books of interest among the long forgotten popular novels, mysteries and outdated anthologies, of interest to someone - there are always browsers on display - but I found virtually none. The crowded interior, an olio of old and new books, seems somewhat more promising, though chaos seems to be the shop's reigning principle of organization. Run by George Whitman, a theatrically bohemian septuagenarian with an avowed sense of mission, the store regularly sponsors readings, offers free shelter to young writers (and potential writers) in its apartments upstairs and invites selected visitors to browse in its private library, reputedly totaling 50,000 volumes.

It is, in its own way, a service bookstore, a haven to the errant literary spirit, a place to rub shoulders with literary ghosts. Most of the writers in Paris I talked to thought Shakespeare and Company, for all its good intentions, was of negligible use. Originally called Mistral (one of the celebratory articles I was shown called it Mistrial), Mr. Whitman's shop changed its name to Shakespeare and Company in 1964 to make connection with the original in which, legend says, James Joyce wrote ''Ulysses.'' The 13-room house that Shakespeare occupies, a beautiful building in bohemian disrepair, was, in one of its lives, a monastery and in another an Arab grocery. Today it is a kind of shrine in the guise of a bookstore.

Moving south on Rue St. Jacques, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel, then turning left on Rue des Ecoles, one arrives at Attica, in the Sorbonne district, a former avant-garde bookstore domesticated by the needs of survival. French intellectuals are particularly interested in new American fiction and Attica reflects that interest. There are more books from American publishers here and more small-press books than in the Right Bank supermarkets. Visitors who remember with great affection the haphazard and highly personal collection at Attica's original store will be somewhat disappointed by the relative impersonality of its present quarters. What started out as an obsession of the owner, Stephan Levy, has metamorphosed into a better than average English-language paperback bookstore, a good example of what you might find in an American university town. The difference is that English is not the primary language of Paris. Browsing is welcome. Prices are reasonable. Next on the tour is the Librairie Internationale on the Boulevard St. Germain. To get there, one backtracks on the Rue des Ecoles to Boulevard St. Michel, turns right toward Boulevard Saint Germain, going by the enormous Chez Gibert (a good place to buy inexpensive maps and travel guides - in French), and arrives after a five-minute walk. The elegant Librairie Internationale, which has a high-tech look, specializes in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish books, the English texts making up 40 percent of the stock. The place has achieved a certain notoriety among some writers. Two American poets were evicted from Internationale for having taken books off the shelves to look at the texts. A visit to the shop readily conjures the scene. The manager, a former finance specialist, presides over the store like a grim schoolmaster. Although Internationale has an impressive stock of almost 50,000 books, it is a place without definition or focus or passion. The shop has books on economics (in English) and philosophy that are probably not available elsewhere in Paris. It is, clearly, not a place to browse.

One continues on the Boulevard St. Germain, turning left on the Rue de Rennes, and arrives after about a half-mile at the main branch of the department store FNAC. Among its seemingly endless stock of French books are a half-dozen English-language shelves, broken up into the rubrics: Policiers, Science Fiction and Literature. It is an efficiency bookstore without pretensions, an amusing place to browse and shop. Moreover, it is air-conditioned; it was the only bookstore I visited with the air-conditioning switched on. The selection is smaller than at Smith or Brentano, but in a sampling I took the prices were two to five percent cheaper. FNAC is a part of a chain that sells electronic and photographic equipment and develops film overnight.

Going right on the Rue de Vaugirard, taking the occasion to cross the Jardin du Luxembourg - a particularly pleasant walk - to the Boulevard St. Michel, the stroller turns south and comes to the Nouveau Quartier Latin, a large, sprawling store that, like Attica, serves the students and faculty at the Sorbonne. The Nouveau also distributes English-language texts to most of the other bookstores. An inelegant, spacious shop of some 50,000 volumes, it is particularly good for hardcover cinema books and for coffee-table books on American popular culture. It is neither mass market, like Smith and Brentano, nor literary, like Attica, but something in between, a solid middlebrow way station, an Americanized French-English language bookstore. The service is low key and helpful. Browsing is acceptable and prices are somewhat lower than those of the Right Bank shops.

The last stop on our tour is the cafe-bookstore on the Rue Princesse, a side street off Boulevard St. Germain, a place called the Village Voice, which provides a center for much of the American literary activity in Paris. On my visit, I was shown three recently established literary periodicals, ''Frank,'' ''Paris Exiles'' and ''Moving Letter,'' containing work primarily of American writers living in the city. A reading given by the contributors to ''Paris Exiles'' while I was there - Village Voice sponsors six to eight readings a month - drew a crowd that overflowed the store. The owner and proprietor, Odile Hellier, a translator, has made Village Voice into the kind of place Shakespeare and Company merely imagines itself to be. Although small, the cafe-store has an impressively varied collection of large and small press publications. It carries The Village Voice (no relation) and The New York Times Book Review. In existence less than three years, Village Voice best exemplifies the new literary vitality among Americans in Paris. Alone among English-language bookstores there, it also carries European literature in translation.

It is a telling paradox that the United States is a source of some of the most exciting serious literature available in France. Largely this is thanks to English paperbacks, the intermediary in what is a fairly complex cultural transaction. A further reason to visit this beautiful city - as if one needed one - is to discover the vitality of one's own culture when separated from it by over 3,000 miles and hundreds of years of tradition.

The following is a postscript, a separate tour, a rundown of French-language bookstores of passing interest to the visitor. The Librairie Dupuis on the corner of Rue St. Jacques and Boulevard St. Germain is a shop devoted solely to cartoon books, a hot item in Paris. Some are wonderfully inventive while others seem merely excuses for avoiding the written word. There are two fairly good movie bookstores, Le Minotaure on Rue Beaux Arts (near Rue de Seine) and City Lights, Rue de la Gaite. For chess enthusiasts, the Librairie St. Germain on the boulevard is a place given over to chess books and texts dealing with games of strategy. According to ''Passion,'' the English-language magazine of Paris, Librairie Ulysse on the Ile St. Louis is the best travel bookstore in the city. And for bookstore aficionados I recommend a visit to La Hune or Le Divan, both on the Boulevard St. Germain, to see what a serious French bookshop is like. For the book lover, a browse through the beautiful Hune is a two-star meal. La Hune has a large, perhaps complete, collection of French art magazines and literary journals. I had the feeling, browsing in the hospitable store, that there is not a book on its shelves or tables that is not of some interest to the serious reader. A reader's guide Right Bank W. H. Smith (English Bookstore), 248 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement). Telephone: 42.60.37.97. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Librairie Galignani, 224 Rue de Rivoli (1st arrondissement; 42.60.52.37. Metro: Concorde. Hours: 9:30 to 6:30; closed Monday.

Brentano, 37 Avenue de l'Opera, (2d arrondissement); 42.61.52.50. Metro: Pyramides or Opera. Hours: 10 to 7 daily.

Librairie Albion, 13 Rue Charles V (4th arrondissement); 42.72.50.71. Metro: St. Paul or Pont Marie. Hours: 9:30 to 7:30 Sunday to Friday; 10 to 6 Saturday. Left Bank Librairie Internationale, 141 Boulevard St. Germain (6th arrondissement); 43.29.38.20. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Village Voice, 6 Rue Princesse (6th arrondissement); 46.33.36.47. Metro: St. Germain-des-Pres-Mabillon. Hours: 11 A.M. to 8 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday.

Librairie Attica, 34 Rue des Ecoles (5th arrondissement); 43.26.09.53. Metro: Maubert Mutualite. Hours: 2 to 7 P.M. Monday; 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Tuesday to Friday; 10 A.M. to 1 P.M., 2 to 7 P.M. Saturday; closed Sunday.

Shakespeare and Company, 37 Rue de la Bucherie (5th arrondissement); no telephone. Metro: St. Michel. Hours: Open every day, noon to midnight, approximately.

FNAC, 136 Rue de Rennes (6th arrondissement); 45.44.39.12. Metro: Montparnasse. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Nouveau Quartier Latin, 78 Boulevard St.Michel, near Rue Auguste-Comte (6th arrondissement); 43.26.42.70. Metro: Port-Royal or Luxembourg. Hours: 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Monday to Saturday; closed Sunday.

Hat tip: Edward J. Cunningham

Bill 101 Has Failed

Even the Angry French Guy has to concede defeat: the unilingual Anglos are back in business in Quebec, especially in Montreal. Enjoy the bitterness of the post:

English is Back in the Québec Workplace

with 233 comments

“I just love Montreal”, I overheard a lady tell her friend in Avenue Video in Montréal. “I’d live here if I spoke French.”

“I don’t speak French”, scoffed a passerby. “Don’t worry about that.”

English is getting stronger in Montreal. I’m not the one saying it. The Montreal Gazette is saying it. There’s just no way around the numbers. Québec’s English-speaking population rose by 5.5% between 2001 and 2006 according to StatsCan.

How did this happen?

“The easy answer to the question of why young anglos aren’t leaving Quebec like they did a generation ago”, writes David Johnston, “is that they speak better French, and aren’t being chased away by political uncertainty.”

You will all remember that the “political uncertainty” started in the 1950’s and 1960’s when francophones started asking why they were paid less than any other nationality in Québec, why no francophones held any management position in Canada’s banking and finance industry and why they were forbidden to use their language to speak to each on the shop floor.

English-Canada’s business elite responded by moving the country’s entire financial sector and 800 000 jobs from Montreal to Ontario where discrimination against French-speakers was allowed.

But a more important reason, according to the Montreal edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, is that it’s getting easier and easier for English-speakers to live and work in Montreal because there has been a “cultural shift” that has made English “acceptable” in the workplace.

“By the 1990s”, continues our man, “speaking English had become more acceptable in Quebec as firms came to see the need to improve the capacity of their workforces to operate in English. This created new opportunities for anglophones.”

As if English had ever disappeared from the Québec workplace! As if the French-speaking majority of Québec that had been forced to work in English for 250 years suddenly found itself unable to communicate with the outside world in the international language of business after bill 101 gave them the right to work in French!

The failure of Bill 101

When I was a truck driver satellites communications between French-speaking drivers and French-speaking dispatchers had to be in English so the English-speaking security team in Toronto could understand what was going on.

In 2005 the Metro chain of grocery stores bought A&P Canada and Christian Haub, the CEO and chairman of the board of A&P got a seat on the Québec company’s board. Thirteen Francophones and one Anglo. Guess what language the board meeting are in now?

Yep. Even when the French businessmen win, they lose.

That’s the way the modern workplace functions. It is entirely structured around the needs of the less qualified people. French-speakers in Québec, and all non-English speaking people around the world, are required to acquire additional language skills so that unilingual Anglos won’t have to.

Québec briefly tried to change that with the Charter of the French language, but the truth is that the rules that were supposed to protect the right of Québec workers to work in their language are broken. They don’t work anymore.

They were designed for businesses that could be contained in a building, to make sure that the 15th floor would communicate in French with the 6th and 2nd floor, all the way down to the shop floor.

But businesses don’t work like that anymore. Management is in Toronto, accounting’s in Alberta and IT is in Bangalore. Toronto’s and New York’s business culture is once again being imposed on the workers of Québec, and the entire world, actually.

Québec’s workforce has always been the most multilingual in Canada, and probably one of the most linguistically versatile in the World. Québec’s business culture did not change, it’s the world’s business structure that changed.

And once again, after only a brief interruption, unilingual Anglos can come back to work in Montreal.

And just in time, as the stellar generation of brilliant financial minds that left Montreal a generation ago have now managed to completely scrap Ontario’s economy and is now ready to come back home.

Hat tip: Edward J. Cunningham

Education Reform in Italy

There wasn't much on this blog yet about the decline of French teaching in Italy, even though this subject deserves this blog's full attention since we're talking about one of France's neighbors. Here is a story documenting an ongoing reform of foreign-language teaching in elementary school and secondary education in Italy. I had begun to translate it into English, but since it's taking me too long, I might as well publish it untranslated before it gets too old.

La récente réforme du système scolaire italien a fait couler beaucoup d’encre. Les projecteurs se sont cependant dirigés davantage vers l’école primaire que vers les nouveautés importantes introduites dans le secondaire, qui mettent en danger l’apprentissage d’une deuxième langue vivante

Pour les élèves italiens, l’heure des inscriptions a sonné. La date limite a été cette année repoussée au 28 février. Ce délai est particulièrement important pour l’inscription dans les collèges car la mise en place de la réforme Gelmini, initialement annoncée pour septembre 2010, aurait été anticipée à la rentrée 2009. Or, les nouveaux formulaires d’inscription ne sont disponibles que depuis le 16 janvier 2009…
Pour bien comprendre les tenants et les aboutissants de la réforme, il faut revenir en arrière au mois de mars 2003, quand Letizia Moratti, ministre du gouvernement Berlusconi, propose une réforme du système scolaire. Au nom de la "loi des trois i", anglais (inglese), informatique et entreprise (impresa), on assiste alors à l’introduction de l’anglais, seule langue autorisée, dans le primaire (alors qu’il était jusque-là théoriquement possible d’y enseigner le français ou une autre langue). En sixième en revanche l’étude d’une deuxième langue (français, allemand ou espagnol) devient obligatoire (et non plus optionnelle, comme elle était proposée dans certains établissements). La réforme respectait donc pleinement les directives européennes en matière d’enseignement des langues étrangères. Cependant, deux ans plus tard, l’article 25 du décret du 17 octobre 2005 relatif à l’enseignement secondaire prévoyait "la possibilité, au niveau du collège, pour les familles qui en feront la demande, d’utiliser, pour l’apprentissage de la langue mentionnée ci-dessus (c’est-à-dire l’anglais, n.d.a), le nombre d’heures consacré à l’apprentissage de la deuxième langue communautaire."

L’article 25 : une épée de Damoclès
Silvia Diegoli est professeur de français au lycée de Carignano, dans les environs de Turin. Elle est présidente de la section turinoise de l’ANILF (photo ANILF)

"C’est l’existence de cet article, suspendu sur nos têtes comme une épée de Damoclès, qui est à l’origine de la création, le 22 décembre 2005 à Cuneo, de l’Associazione Nazionale per l’Insegnamento della Lingua Francese", explique Silvia Diegoli. Au fil des réunions, grâce au travail d’information effectué sur Internet et au bouche à oreille entre collègues, ce petit groupe de professeurs s’est élargi. C’est ainsi qu’il devint nécessaire de créer, le 14 mars 2006, une section turinoise de l’ANILF. Aujourd’hui, l’ANILF compte une centaine de membres au sein de ses deux sections, Cuneo et Turin. C’est l’ANILF qui rencontre en juillet 2007 Giuseppe Fioroni, ministre de l’Education du gouvernement Prodi. Une rencontre rassurante : "Nous avons obtenu la promesse que l’article 25, "congelé" jusqu’en 2009, serait aboli à cette date-là", poursuit Silvia Diegoli. Seulement voilà : la chute du gouvernement Prodi en 2008 change les données du problème et Mariastella Gelmini, dans sa réforme, reprend et applique le texte de l’article 25. Concrètement donc, en septembre 2009, les élèves des collèges auront le choix entre deux possibilités : étudier une deuxième langue étrangère (rappelons que l’anglais première langue est obligatoire pour tous) ou opter pour une section d’"anglais renforcé".

Contre le modèle unique
Pour Silvia Diegoli, ce n’est certes pas l’apprentissage obligatoire de l’anglais en première langue qu’il faut remettre en question. "En revanche, nous considérons que le monolinguisme est une tentative d’imposition d’un modèle culturel unique qui va à l’encontre des besoins de notre temps. Face à cet indéniable appauvrissement culturel, il faut bien voir que ce qui est vraiment grave, c’est que nos élèves présents et futurs vont se trouver dans une position inférieure par rapport aux jeunes européens qui, pour la plupart, connaissent deux sinon trois langues européennes. Alors, pourquoi ne pas proposer cet anglais renforcé comme une option, tout en gardant la deuxième langue pour tous ?" Par ailleurs l’ANILF, qui ne doute pas du succès que risque de rencontrer la section d’anglais renforcé telle qu’elle est proposée aujourd’hui, se bat pour que le français bénéficie du statut de deuxième langue officielle du Piémont en raison de la proximité géographique de la région avec la France. Dans ce combat, l’ANILF devrait pouvoir compter sur un allié important : la Région Piémont, par l’intermédiaire de madame Pentenero, chargée des dossiers relatifs à l’éducation. L’Union européenne, qui a toujours prôné "la maîtrise de plusieurs langues par le plus grand nombre", pourrait également venir à la rescousse…

First Public Library To Be Built In Rwanda

After the Rwandan government announced at the end of last year that Rwanda's school system would be mandated to use English instead of French as a medium of instruction, some Western commentators sneered that this decree would likely change little on the ground. However, here is one project that could change a few things for the Rwandan population:

During my time in Rwanda, I have had the pleasure of connecting with the organization of my roommates Amir and Anna, called “Miracle Corners of the World” (MCW). This is an international network that empowers youth to become positive agents of change, to improve their lives and contribute to their communities. MCW serves youth through leadership training, community development, oral healthcare, and partner initiative programs.

In Rwanda, MCW has begun building a community center inspired by the ideas of youth throughout the Bugesera District, several kilometers south of the capital city of Kigali. This center will house an ICT center for learning computer skills, a classroom for language instruction, and a preschool, among other facilities.

This project will be particularly important in facilitating Rwanda’s switch from Francophone to Anglophone, which occurred officially only several weeks ago at the end of 2008. In fact, Miracle Corners Rwanda hopes to build the first public library in the entire country, focusing on making English-language books available to the community.

"Kubaka" in Kinyarwanda means "Construction." This film tells the story of the groundbreaking ceremony for the center, highlighting some of the ways MCW has been working with the community, and celebrating the opportunities for education, networking, and socialization that have been and will be "constructed."

click to watch two related videos

English Learning Craze In China

In the Book Of Joe blog, May 23, 2005. link to original post

'By 2025 the number of English–speaking Chinese is likely to exceed the number of native English speakers in the rest of the world'.

So said Gordon Brown, the U.K. finance minister, during a recent trip to China.

If we won't learn Chinese then the Chinese will simply do the heavy lifting and learn English. It's as simple as that and it's happening.

The Financial Times is well aware of who's going to be ruling the planet in decades to come and is doing its level best to tell us, in our own language, how it's going to happen.

The Times article that follows, by Andrew Yeh, appeared on April 13, 2005. It speaks for itself.

New Dawn in a Shared Language

Many more Chinese are learning English to further their opportunities, driving the market for education

On a typical weekday morning, Gao Long retreats to a snow-covered park among the grey buildings of Beijing Normal University to practise English by herself.

Several other students do the same.

Some sit on benches mumbling over books while others saunter to and fro in sub-zero temperatures while reading aloud.

They come to work on their spoken English and escape the cramped dormitories they share with many roommates.

"You don't disturb anybody in the park because everyone is reading out loud," said Ms Gao, a bespectacled college undergraduate.

"You have to rely on yourself - others can only give you a form or teach you certain ways but it's still up to you in the end."

Ms Gao spends her time here reading passages from her heavily marked English text, stopping every now and again to perfect her pronunciation of tricky words such as "pesticide".

As the weather warms up, she says, even more students from the college will come to the park to practise.

There are countless Chinese youths with the same curiosity and drive as Ms Gao for mastering the English language.

In a country imbued with the values of self-improvement, learning English is often viewed as one of the surest ways to improve one's career opportunities.

And these attitudes are expected to yield significant demand for education-related products and services in the years ahead.

China is a country that has historically placed great value on education. Yet its current fanaticism for learning English is unique.

"It's a phenomenon," said Zhou Chenggang, a former BBC correspondent who is now vice-president of New Oriental, a private Beijing-based company that runs a network of English teaching services around the country.

"The biggest motivation is that they know it will help their lives."

In China today, the keenest students of English tend to be those cramming for foreign exams, with the aim of going abroad and winning scholarships.

To do well on the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), a test of verbal, quantitative and analytical skills, for instance, a Chinese student must be familiar with up to 20,000 words.

And someone taking the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) needs to learn around 7,500 words, Mr Zhou estimates.

Students in the capital, where the country's best universities are located, are known for reading and watching everything they can get their hands on.

This hunger for learning is expected to generate huge growth in the market for English education products, which includes teaching services, textbooks, test preparation manuals, dictionaries and information technology products and services.

The demand for classroom instruction has been increasing, too, though spending power in many Chinese cities remains limited.

New Oriental estimated its total enrolment was 750,000 last year, up from 450,000 in 2003.

And the demographic range of students is widening.

Mr Zhou of New Oriental says that in the 1990s nearly all students learning English were preparing for specific foreign exams - such as GRE, TOEFL and the International English Language Testing System - to give them a chance to study abroad or raise their prospects of a job at a multinational company.

These days those studying the language include children, older people and those with a general interest.

English texts are now the fastest growing sector in China's book education market and account for up to 8 per cent of the retail book market, according to Xin Guangwei, a publishing industry researcher and author of Publishing in China.

Numerous foreign education and publishing companies have been positioning themselves to cash in.

Their success, however, will be determined by the extent to which they can access the market and how well they can outperform and co-operate with Chinese publishing houses.

There is considerable Sino-foreign co-operation in the market for learning English. Oxford University Press and The Commercial Press, one of China's oldest publishing houses, together produce a bilingual English-Chinese pocket dictionary.

Oxford University is also involved in producing English coursework materials for China's classrooms.

Gunawan Hadi, Asia vice-president of McGraw-Hill Education, says his company has been working with Chinese publishers to develop English texts and reference materials.

He adds that the company's China revenues have grown steadily in the past five years.

Other foreign publishers such as Pearson Education and Cambridge University Press have also been trying to target the country's English enthusiasts.

Gordon Brown, the UK finance minister, said during a recent trip to China that Britain's education exports were now the fastest growing export earner, having nearly doubled in five years to £10.3bn ($19.5bn) - equivalent to about 1 per cent of the country's gross domestic product.

Mr Brown said that education exports would be vital to the UK economy - possibly reaching £20bn a year in 15 years time - and that China is expected to be the primary driver of growth.

Many believe that China already has the world's largest number of people learning English.

"In 20 years time, the number of English speakers in China is likely to exceed the number of speakers of English as a first language in all the rest of the world," Mr Brown said during a speech in Beijing.

"I believe this is a huge opportunity."

Those on the crest of the wave of learning are endlessly creative about study methods.

Jessy Zhao, a 23-year-old from China's western Xinjiang region who is now studying for a Masters in education at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, covered her dormitory room wall with memos with English words she wanted to remember.

"There was a movie that I really liked a lot when I started to learn English, so I tape recorded the conversation and repeated it again and again just for fun," said Ms Zhao.

Students can be particularly obsessive about memorising vocabulary. Maggie Cheng, a student of English at Beijing Foreign Studies University, recalls how someone from her home town was given two Oxford dictionaries by her family as study aids.

She ended up using one as a reference guide and the other for memorising.

"She would read a page and then rip a page - for a sense of accomplishment, I guess," Ms Cheng says.

There are many study aids available to Chinese students.

Aside from the internet and English books sold in stores, outdated foreign newspapers and magazines are often for sale at a discount from street vendors and underground hawkers.

Ms Gao of Beijing Normal University has been studiously flipping through issues of Time magazine because the "stories are real rather than a sham", she writes in an e-mail.

"I read every book I can, I'm very interested," explains Ms Gao, who spends long hours in the library.

"I think books help broaden our modes of thinking and knowledge."

********************

Cost and Complications Take Some of the Appeal Out of Studying Overseas

Despite China's fascination with the west, the number of Chinese students heading overseas has been declining in recent years, while those returning have been on the rise.

More than 114,600 students went abroad to study last year, down from 125,000 in 2002, according to statistics from China's education ministry.

And in the last five years, the number of Chinese returning from overseas stints has been increasing, exceeding 25,000 last year.

Many students are choosing to stay at home to avoid the cumbersome visa procedures associated with foreign travel and the heavy financial cost of studying abroad - in marked contrast to the trend of the 1990s.

UK universities in particular have witnessed a significant drop in the number of postgraduate applications from China, as well as other Asian countries.

But for many students, the returns they seek can only be met by leaving China, where the job market for young professionals is tight.

English language skills, coupled with scarce expertise in a technical area, are seen as a combination for success.

"I regard [learning English] as a key to open the door to another world in which there are different cultures and people I want to understand," says Annan Yang, a 23-year-old from Hangzhou, near Shanghai, who is studying for a PhD in biology at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

"It's a tool like a computer to get information," she explains.

"Especially in science, if I want to know the development of a field, I must know English because the best magazines are in English."

Gao Long, a student at Beijing Normal University, says she wants to go to the US since it represents fairness and better opportunities.

A book she is now reading describes an American town where life is "in harmony with its surroundings".

"It's an open country," says the 16-year-old.

"In China, many jobs are based more on background. In America, people pay more attention to your ability."

Tunisia To Step Up English Language Teaching

In Kongo Times, 27 Jan 2009. Here is the link to the original story. Another nail in the coffin for the French language in Africa.

The Tunisian Ministry of Education and Training signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the British Council in London Tuesday, to prepare for a huge project aimed at English language teaching reform in all state primary and secondary schools in Tunisia. The MoU signing ceremony was attended by Hatem Ben Salem, the Tunisian Minister of Education and Training; and Lord Kinnock, Chair of the British Council and former Leader of the Labour Party.

The project, known as 'English for the Future', seeks to design and introduce new English language materials and course books for primary and secondary education in order to produce output standards that are within the Common European Framework for Languages, and to equip learners of English with better vocational language abilities.

During the ceremony, Lord Kinnock stressed the Council's commitment to Tunisia.

"Our commitment to Tunisia, to education specifically, and within that to English language teaching and training is very very strong indeed and we would like to do much more of it," noted Lord Kinnock.

The English language is not only vital for employability, but "the fact is: an international language can be a medium of tolerance and comprehension," Lord Kinnock said.

The Tunisian Minister underscored his country's focus on improving education.

"Since its independence, Tunisia has decided not to invest in arms but to invest instead in education," said Ben Salem.

"The budget for the Ministry of Education is one fifth of the whole state budget," he added.

However, the Tunisian education system had mainly invested to enable people to have access to education, noted Ben Salem, adding that now is the time "to go further and work more on quality, not only in education but also in vocational training."

Tunisia, which boasts of around 2,200,000 students in primary and secondary schools, has the burden of 100, 000 high diploma holders who are unemployed, prompting more focus on vocational training, where mastering the English language is key.

"Now there is a target; to have students go to vocational training," said Ben Salem, adding that learners would not benefit by finding jobs in Tunisia only, but also by being employed in Arab Gulf States.

"Ministers in the Gulf are asking for experts from Tunisia who are skilled in English," noted Ben Salem.

The project also aims to focus on training Tunisian teachers of English to reach a certain level of expertise, especially since there has been an increase in the number of English language teachers and students.

"The Tunisian President Ben Ali had decided to impose teaching English for sixth year primary school children, which was revolutionary in Tunisia where people are accustomed to French. So the new teachers will need more training," explained Ben Salem.

The project initiative will begin by assessing the current situation of English language teaching in Tunisia before planning to set out a clear feasible strategy.

But the Tunisian Minister is optimistic that the project's success will make it a positive model for neighbouring countries.

Preparations for the project have already begun.

"Just over a year ago we had a three person scoping mission - distinguished consultants from the UK - who worked with a team from the Ministry and looked at the whole situation of English language teaching, root and branch," said Peter Skelton, British Council Director.

"The team produced a very weighty report," said Skelton, which will be the basis for work on the way forward, adding that the project could last as long as 8 years "as it is one of the biggest investments the British Council has made anywhere."

"It is being launched in Tunisia as a pilot not only for the Near East and North Africa region but for the rest of the world," explained Skelton, to see "what can be done using the British Council's new products and services."

"The absolute key in this is sustainability," stressed Skelton.

When asked about the significance of this project in comparison to previous British Council initiatives in Tunisia, Skelton said the Council "was involved with one off projects, good at the time but did not have a lasting impact. Now we're looking at long term impact and sustainability."

Is French program headed for guillotine at Manchester's Memorial Elementary School?

The Gloucester Times ran this story on January 27, 2009. Scrapping French-language programs in schools is a good idea since French as a subject is a waste of taxpayers' money, while languages such as Mandarin Chinese or Spanish are going to be more and more in demand.

Is French program headed for guillotine at Manchester's Memorial Elementary School?
By Robert Cann
Staff Writer

MANCHESTER — Proposed cuts to Memorial Elementary School's French language program will be among the items on the table tonight as part of a budget workshop hosted by the Manchester Essex Regional School Committee.

At an earlier School Committee meeting, Superintendent Marcia O'Neil proposed that the French program at the elementary school be cut as a part of a reallocation of funds.

Since that Jan. 6 meeting, however, committee members, parents and language teachers have demonstrated strong opposition to the proposal.

At last week's School Committee meeting, Manchester Essex Regional Middle School French and Spanish teacher Dorris-Ann Vosseler suggested introducing an "exploratory" language program in both elementary schools — Memorial in Manchester, and Essex Elementary.

The exploratory program would share one teacher between the Manchester and Essex elementary schools, with that instructor teaching Spanish for one semester and French the other, giving students at both schools the opportunity to try both languages. Essex Elementary does not now offer French.

According to School Committee Chairwoman Susan Beckmann, Vosseler's proposal will be given more consideration this evening.

Vosseler said the district's program has traditionally been very successful. Last June, four seniors received linguist awards for completing all four advanced placement language courses offered: French language and literature, and Spanish language and literature.

Vosseler referred to the district's language program as a "marble column that could be devastated by these cuts."

The meeting will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the high school music room.

Robert Cann can be reached at gt_reporter@gloucestertimes.com

Hervé Bourges: Francophonie In Crisis

RTL info ran this story on June 4th, 2008:

France “is not protecting its language” and la Francophonie is in a crisis: a report submitted Wednesday to the government calls for a broad and “uninhibited” francophone campaign against English-language dominance, and especially for giving more importance to Southern countries.

“La Francophonie is little known. It gets little notice because in France we do not believe in la Francophonie, and the country does not protect its language”, explained Herve Bourges, author of the report submitted to Secretary of State for Co-operation and Francophonie Alain Joyandet.

“In France Francophonie appears dated, obsolete, out of touch with the young”, this one-time high ranking official for audio-visual affairs wrote, now a left-wing public figure and a Third-World activist.

According to him, France bears her share of the blame for this “unease” within the French-speaking community, one that claims more than 200 million from Haiti to Vietnam.

France is “too self-centered”, especially due to the “burden of its colonizing past” it “is perceived more and more as hostile by the French-speaking populations of the South”, he observed.

Herve Bourges advocates “ridding the Francophonie of its inhibitions”, making the work of the International Francophonie organization with its 68 States and governments more noticeable, and launching a “linguistic counter-attack, while emulating the US in pushing for commercial or diplomatic agreements to include as many French-language provisions as possible.

“We ought to regain the offensive and further the French tongue in an uninhibited way, the English way, because the linguistic battle is not only about culture or aesthetics: the real stakes are political influence and economic growth”, he wrote.

He stressed that the British Council had just launched a program aiming at increasing the number of English speakers from 2 to 3 billion with an investment of 150 million euros, whereas the OIF programs for the teaching and promotion of French amounted to about 6 million.

To protect the French language, Herve Bourges suggests among other things that Francophonie be taught at school and junior high and that a “French-speaking Academy” be created on the model of the French Academy, but where French writers would be in the minority, along with an “Erasmus program” that would foster exchanges between the universities of the North and those of the South.
(...)
We need to ask Southern countries for “a financial contribution and to allow them to be part of the decision-making process”, he explained.

All in all, the Francophonie must be less financially reliant on France “which today shoulders 50% of the Francophonie budget”, he said.

He proposes the creation of a “Francophone Foundation” which would report to the OIF but could raise private funding for language programs.

ULK Dumps French

Allafrica had this story on Jan 22nd, 2007:

Rwanda: ULK Adopts English as the Only Language of Instruction

Robert Mugabe
Kigali — The founder and Chancellor, Professor Rwigamba Balinda, of the Kigali Independent University (ULK) has announced the scrapping of French as a language of instruction at the university.

This was publicly announced, during the student's orientation briefing for this academic year by the Chancellor at the ULK stadium.

Professor Balinda said that no more use of French in all courses in both the Kigali and Gisenyi campuses.

The development follows last year's announcement by the government to promote the use of English as the medium of instruction in all public schools from primary to institutions of higher learning.

The decision was taken by the government to help build a competitive workforce that would compete favourably on the international market.

"ULK has taken that decision to enhance international standards and adapt to the cabinet decision (encouraging use of English); We have invested in everything needed in all areas to implement this...French is an expiring language," Balinda advised the students.

According to Dr. Rose Kasibirege, the Vice- Rector in charge of academics, ULK has hired other lecturers for five months to take over while their own undergo English training.

She revealed that, ULK had also hired some professionals who will teach listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills which will be offered free of charge to students.

According to the national curriculum, students in universities who underwent secondary education in the country are meant to be bilingual since both English and French had previously had the same hours in terms of lessons right from primary school.

Regarded as the country's biggest private university, ULK previously used both English and French as languages of instruction. It has so far awarded 5802 Bachelors degrees.

The Inevitable Decline of French in Quebec

Le Devoir, a Quebec media outlet, published this letter from a francophone reader, on January 2008:

For a few years, I have read, I hear and I feel that a decline of the French language is inevitable within the current Canadian institutions: many immigrants are moving to Quebec, but where they are really moving to is Canada.

English suits them better and, with French classes being now cut, all they do is mangle the language of Molière when ... they can't help using it. Many manage to avoid French school over generations (see private schools, English-speaking cégep) and continue to grow up to become Canadians first (Anglos, if you want): they gorge themselves on anglophone media, music and attitudes.

What enables me to make such statements? Simply put, my experience. I was born in Bas-de-Rivière, lived there 16 years, then I went to Quebec to study at the Cégep and the University for seven years. Until then, I had lived all my life in French; even foreign students and teachers had to speak French to become integrated, or else they would end up alone.

Yet at the Laval University Hospital (CHUL), I had my first experience of working in English, in the lab of a researcher who had recently arrived and spoke only English. Since I can speak English, I accepted this situation. However he soon had to speak French for survival, and his three daughters are now little Québécoises like any others: demographic pressure had been at work.

Things changed when I arrived in Montreal: first I worked for a Lachine company, then with the McGill university. Needless to say, virtually everything that happened there was conducted in English, even when no more than one English-speaker was present. Why? Because, at every given moment, everyone on the staff included a number of immigrants for which English was easier...

However, I started to ask myself serious questions when I had to see a doctor at the Jewish Hospital. On several instances, the staff could not utter a word of French, or even give me forms and regulations in French, except sometimes in bad French!

After six years of this, I began inverting word order («bleue porte», for example) or answering a spontaneous “What?” when asked a question. I reacted in a Draconian way to this change and I tried to reject English. Since then, I have practically stopped listening to English-speaking music or movies and I am less keen to learn new English words. Survival was somehow at stake.

Finally, we moved (with the family now) to Gatineau and have been there two years. Here, I sense a demographic crush: unilingual English-speakers are served in English by mechanics and grocers, without an "au revoir", why, the checkout clerk even treats them to a heartfelt “Have a good day!” and a broad smile.

Also, when riding the bus to Ottawa General Hospital where I work, I sometimes hear French-speaking people meet their anglophone friends (always in Gatineau) and greet them in English. As soon as the river is crossed, another country begins for me: 99% English-speaking commercials, unilingual drivers, businesses serving their customers in English only. What can French-Ontarians do about it? Some whinge a little against it but a majority of them folds, and… does so with pleasure!

More often than not, I can make out three French words in between two English sentences, or else someone speaks English and receives an answer in French. One might call it symbiosis, but English-language dominance is felt all the same.

click here to read the rest of the letter in French