2023 Ongoing

DCOLS Project

The development of oral competence in second language learners in a school context.

The project aims to collect and analyze the performance of second language learners in school contexts in Canada. The analyses focus on developmental aspects of produced and perceived fluency, accuracy and complexity, as well as stress and comprehensibility.

Second language learning usually takes place for a few hours per week in schools. There are also different immersion programs or intensification of second language learning in Canadian schools. The aim of these programs is to develop students’ ability to interact in the target language. In Quebec, this objective is also found in the Quebec Education program: « students must be able, at the end of secondary school, to be easily understood by an English-speaking interlocutor, to express themselves fluently, and to understand it (English) without difficulty » (MELS, 2013).

Second language acquisition, its trajectory and its underlying factors are of great importance from both an empirical and a practical point of view in Canada. Canada is a bilingual country that spends billions of dollars every year to maintain this bilingual status. Studying the development of oral competence of young people enrolled in different language programs in Canada will allow, among other things:

• To better understand the language development of young Canadians.
• To better understand oral production and the aspects that most influence the perception and, above all, the comprehension of native speakers.
• To better target programmes, pedagogical approaches and knowledge of language programmes, both in the English-speaking and French-speaking parts of the country.