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The History and Evolution of the English as a Second Language (ESL) Curriculum in Quebec 
 

May Tan 
McGill University 

 
Language is intrinsic to the expression of culture. As means 
of communicating values, beliefs and customs, it has an 
important social function and fosters feelings of group 
identity and solidarity. It is the means by which culture and 
its traditions and shared values may be conveyed and 
preserved. Language is fundamental to identity. 
(http://www.racismnoway.com.au/library/understanding/inde
x-The.html) 
 
 From the above quotation, we can see how charged 
language is with meaning for its speakers. As a vehicle for 
values, beliefs, culture, identity and tradition, language can 
easily be, and often is, an object of struggle. Cummins (2000) 
has demonstrated how debates and power struggles are 
ongoing in contexts as varied as Japan, Israel and the United 
States over the right to, or the necessity for, bilingual 
education. On the other hand, from a more pragmatic 
perspective, language can often be regarded as a tool for 
socioeconomic development. This is happening, for example, 
in a developing country like China where learning English is 
seen as a key component for speeding up transfer of 
technology on a national scale and accessing job 
opportunities on a more personal dimension (Chau, 2005). 
However, in situations where the learning of a language is 
imposed by one group upon another, it can potentially 
become a tool for control and assimilation. Bourdieu’s 
(1982) analysis of the use of standard French illustrates, for 
example, how even the imposition of a specific form of 
language can create possibilities of symbolic domination.  
         The teaching and learning of English in the province of 
Quebec, Canada, is situated at the confluence of these issues 
concerning cultural survival, identity and the desire for 
economic development.  The development and 
implementation of the ESL curriculum illustrates how 
history, economic necessity and sociopolitical concerns work 
to influence the school curriculum. As Goodson (1995) has 
already noted, curriculum does not develop in a social or 
historical vacuum: Quebec’s history, first as a French colony 
and subsequently, as a British colony, has greatly influenced 
the evolution of its educational system and has had a 
significant impact on language issues as well. Therefore, in 
the following sections, a retrospective of its language history, 
the development of its educational system and language 
debates arising from these antecedents will be elaborated 
upon before issues touching on the teaching of English as a 
Second Language (ESL) is discussed.        
 
A brief retrospective of the French and English language 

in Quebec History 
           The province of Quebec was first founded as a colony 
of France in 1608. In this colony, known as Nouvelle France 
(New France), French was the principal language of law, 
daily life, trade and religion (Lacoursière, 1995). In terms of 

educating the young, religious orders such as the Ursulines 
and the Jesuits were of paramount importance; in fact, the 
first schools in the territory were established and entirely 
staffed and run by these orders.  This situation changed with 
the conquest of New France by the British in 1760. The 
territory was divided into Upper Canada, which was mainly 
populated by the English Protestants and Lower Canada, 
which consisted mainly of the French Catholics. After the 
conquest, French lost its official status. However, the British 
rulers were forced to make concessions to the local language 
in order to govern the territory. As Plourde, Duval and 
Georgeault (2000) note, until the 1830s, French speakers 
formed the majority of the population. Aware of this 
demographic fact and the difficulty of governing a population 
that spoke almost exclusively French, the British Crown, 
although anxious to convert their new subjects to the 
Protestant faith, allowed the continued practice of the Roman 
Catholic religion. The majority of the religious orders were 
also permitted to continue their activities, but were obliged to 
sever all ties with their European counterparts. However, the 
Royal Proclamation of 1763 stipulated that the Catholics 
were free to practice their faith only within the limits of 
British law (Lacoursière, Vaugeois & Provencher, 1970). The 
governor could and did intervene in the selection of church 
leaders at the episcopal and parish levels.  In effect, the 
Catholic clergy and elites of French Canadian society formed 
an unspoken (and uneasy) pact with the British 
administrators: the former maintained their social roles and 
positions under the new regime, and served as the principal 
interlocutors between the population and the government. 
According to Voisine (2000), in the post-conquest epoch, it 
was not unusual to have priests explaining official 
government documents to their congregation during the 
Sunday sermon. 
           The secular leaders and clergy of the French 
community were active in the defense of their language, 
which they saw as being closely linked with the survival of 
racial and religious identity. They fought for the right of 
French Canadians to be educated in French within Catholic 
schools and seminaries. They also won the right to be heard 
and represented in French in the courts of law and to be 
judged under the French Civil Code, rather than British 
Common Law. However, in the major urban centers such as 
Montreal and Quebec, the French language was in constant 
contact with the English language. Major commercial 
interests were in the hands of the British, and immigration 
from the American colonies was increasing the numbers of 
English-speaking, Protestant residents in these areas.  The 
British government hoped, with the combined effect of 
economic and demographic pressure, to begin assimilating 
the local population. The cohabitation of the two languages 
did start to affect the French spoken in Quebec. “Anglicisms” 
(words borrowed from English) began to creep into French, 

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http://www.racismnoway.com.au/library/understanding/index-The.html


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much to the dismay of French purists. In many ways, this 
was viewed as another kind of invasion. Only this time, it 
was an assault on the language and culture (Homel, 1992). It 
is within this context that the particular variety of Quebec 
French, known as Quebecois, developed. Maurais (2003) 
remarks that when speakers of a minority language realize 
they do not speak a “pure” language, they might no longer 
value what they perceive to be a “debased” language. 
Therefore, it is more likely, and tempting, for them to adopt 
the dominant language as their own. This is compounded by 
the ideological discourse often accompanying social and 
economic domination, which regards the dominated group as 
intellectually inferior and less civilized.                       
            In this hostile environment, many French speakers 
had no choice but to learn the English language for reasons 
of economic survival: if they wished to obtain employment in 
most companies, they had to know English. Although French 
was used out of necessity in government and to conduct legal 
affairs, it did not have any official status in the colony. It was 
not until the British North American Act of 1867 was passed 
that the French language regained its legal and political status 
as one of the two official languages in the Canadian 
confederation.  
 
Development of the Quebec Educational System 
            The development of the education system in Quebec, 
from its days as a colony to its present day reality, has been 
marked by two major historical events: the passage of the 
British North American Act mentioned above and the advent 
of the Quiet Revolution. 
  

The Historical Basis of the Confessional 
(Denominational) System 

 
           As mentioned earlier, in the colony of New France, 
schools and other educational institutions were almost 
exclusively run by the Catholic church and staffed by 
members of the clergy. In 1867, after the British conquest, 
the British North American Act designated education as the 
exclusive responsibility of the provinces. However,according 
to Milner (1984, p.28) the Protestant English –speaking 
minority, fearful of the threat of  assimilation by a 
predominantly Catholic, French-speaking majority, insisted  
that a clause be included to limit the legislative powers of the 
province (Section 93 of the BNA). This act reinforced and 
protected the right of each group to be educated in their own 
faith and language. In concrete terms, this meant that 
separate school boards were set up for each denomination: 
Catholic school boards, which mainly used French as the 
language of administration and instruction and Protestant 
school boards, which principally used English as the 
language of administration and instruction. While this 
safeguarded the cultural, linguistic and religious elements in 
these two founding communities, it also created a system that 
would be extremely recalcitrant to change and reform.  
          This was especially true of the Catholic school boards. 
These were usually controlled by ultramontain (ultra-
conservative) clergy. The Catholic Church at that period  
 

glorified rural life and encouraged the French population to 
stay on farms in rural areas so as to shield themselves from 
the threat of Protestant assimilation. In these remote regions, 
education was more of a luxury than a necessity. The clergy 
also spoke out firmly against science and modern ideas. Even 
as late as in 1960, a school official once boasted that in 
Catholic schools, “You will find no traces in our schools of 
progressivism…the exaggerations of the Dewey 
school…would not apply to our French schools.” 
(Magnuson, p.95) In its ideology, education was a means of 
producing priests and an elite to guide the people. It was 
staunchly against state intervention in the realm of education. 
In the view of the Catholic Church, education was a question 
of moral and spiritual guidance: something too important to 
leave to the whims of politicians. Until 1956, free public 
secondary education was not available to the Quebec 
population and the primary schools did not or could not 
prepare their students for university. Although the British 
government passed a law in 1801 called the Royal Institution 
Law, which aimed to multiply free schools for the instruction 
of the young, the Cardinal Plessis had recommended that the 
Catholic parishes not take advantage of this law for fear that 
good Catholics would be converted to Protestantism 
(Galarneau, 2000). What this translated into, in practical 
terms, was that in the first half of the twentieth century, the 
French Catholic school sector was behind every other 
Canadian province in terms of spending per student, teacher 
training and school completion of students. 
           The English Protestant sector evolved in a different 
manner. Schools were nominally religious, and “stressed 
several aims, including a grounding in subject matter,  
development of character and preparation for 
citizenship.”(Magnuson, p. 95) The English Canadians were 
economically better off and had fewer children. Therefore, 
with more financial resources and a smaller school 
population to serve, the Protestant schools were able to offer 
“kindergartens, better equipped schools, higher qualified and 
better paid teachers, all of which added up to a higher pupil 
retention rate.”(p.79)   
           The great disparity between the two sectors would 
continue until the French Catholic sector was able to break 
out of the grip of the Catholic Church at the outset of the 
movement called the Quiet Revolution. The following 
section sets out to examine how it affected the educational 
system in Quebec. 
 

The Quiet Revolution and its impact on Education in 
Quebec 

 
           The Quiet Revolution is a term used to designate a 
period in Quebec history, in the 60s when it underwent rapid 
political, economic and social changes (Lacoursière,  Histoire 
populaire du Québec, v. 4, 1997). According to Porter 
(1965), from 1945 – 1960, the Quebec economy grew 
rapidly, becoming a major supplier of natural resources to the 
North American industrial economy. Politically, it was 
however, under the grip of the ideologically conservative 
Union Nationale party led by Maurice Duplessis. During the 
reign of Duplessis, the state did not actively participate in the 



27 

province’s economy. Very few francophones formed part of 
the economic elite and, under the constant admonition of the 
church to remain poor and humble, many Quebecers resigned 
themselves to a fate of poverty and menial jobs. Raynauld 
(1961) found that at that time, English Canadians controlled 
43% of the manufacturing sector, while foreign firms 
controlled 42%  - the rest, a meager 15%  was in the hands of 
French Canadians.  However, when the Lesage government 
was voted into power in 1960, it’s slogan was  “Maître chez 
nous” (Masters in our own land). The Liberals under Lesage 
were an actively interventionist government. As part of its 
effort to reassert the rights of Quebecers over their resources 
and have a say in the decisions concerning the economy, the 
state began to invest heavily in local companies and to 
encourage the establishment of small and medium 
enterprises. It instituted the separation of church and state, 
nationalized electricity production and reformed vital sectors 
of the economy such as public services, health and education.  
(Those interested can watch Quebec inc. - La petite histoire 
d’une grande revolution a documentary by Gil Courtemanche 
(2003) where key actors describe the momentous events of 
the period.) 
           This period also saw the flowering of a latent 
sentiment among the French Quebecers that they constituted 
a nation, a people, in their own right. Based on an ethnic 
sense of identity grounded in a common history and 
language, those who believed in this idea claimed the 
necessity of making the province an independent country, 
where Quebecers could live, work and study in French. In 
place of former feelings of shame and embarrassment at the 
particular variety and dialect of French that was spoken in 
Quebec, artists, singers and writers proudly began using 
Quebecois (Quebec French) in literature, popular songs and 
theatre. These sentiments of nationalism would lead to the 
founding of a new party on the political landscape, the Parti 
Québecois (translated as the Quebecer’s Party, commonly 
known as the PQ) which would actively fight for the 
independence of Quebec from the rest of Canada. This party 
was elected to power in 1976 and would bring in key 
legislation to promote the use of French in all arenas of work 
and public life. 
           Along with these changes, came demands from 
concerned politicians, intellectuals and parents for a review 
of the educational system. The first ever Ministry of 
Education in Quebec [MEQ] was set up under the Liberal 
Lesage government despite the protests of religious 
authorities. The Parent Commission, which was set up to 
study the state of education and did so from 1961 to 1966, 
produced five reports which would be crucial for the new 
direction which education would take in Quebec (Smith & 
Donahue, 1999). One of their recommendations was the 
establishment of provincial guidelines for the teaching of  
subjects in school in 1971. This was, in effect, the precursor 
of  the present Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec (MEQ) 
programmes which define the general, overall orientation of 
education and also the content and structures of  specific 
subjects as well.   
 
 

Development of the formal ESL programme in Quebec 
 
           Prior to the curriculum guidelines of 1971, the 
teaching of English in Quebec was based on the Grammar 
Translation Method (Little, 1994), which emphasised rote 
memorization, grammar rules and vocabulary as well as the 
translation of written texts. Moreover, due to the historical 
issues surrounding the survival of the French language and 
culture, the teaching and learning of the English  language 
met with resistance in the French community: “English was 
also taught but with mixed emotions. It was deemed 
necessary on economic grounds but was regarded with 
suspicion on ideological grounds…” (Magnuson, 1980; p.52)  
 
           The first ESL curriculum issued in 1971 by the MEQ 
was strongly influenced by the Audiolingual Approach. It 
stressed mastery of grammar and syntactic rules as well as 
the development of good language habits. Intended as a loose 
set of guidelines, it did not lead to satisfactory results for 
learners. The “general inability of pupils to communicate 
effectively outside the classroom” and “the community’s 
clear desire for more pertinent and detailed programs”  were 
cited as the underlying reasons for a new version of the ESL 
programme in 1981 (MEQ ESL Elementary school 
curriculum, p. 13). More structured and rigorous than its 
predecessor, it imposed a minimum core of basic knowledge 
and skills that pupils were supposed to have acquired on 
completion of elementary school. In this version of the ESL 
curriculum, which was largely inspired by the 
communicative approach, English learning was situated in 
the local and North American context. At the elementary 
level for example, its general overall aim was to foster 
positive attitudes and openness towards English and English 
speakers in the students’ environment. More specifically, its 
focus was on communicative competence. Therefore, 
teachers were advised to emphasis meaning rather than form. 
Oral performance took predominance over written 
production, but nonetheless, students were expected to 
acquire listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. In the 
programme, each skill was subdivided into specific 
objectives to be attained for each skill at a specific grade.(See 
Appendix 1 for sample of skills and objectives.) In some 
schools, at the request of parents anxious to ensure that their 
children would master English, immersion programs were set 
up to speed up the learning process. (The interest in 
immersion programs was sparked by research in second 
language learning which suggested that children learn 
another language faster and better in naturalistic, language 
rich environments)  This ESL curriculum served as the basis 
for ESL teachers in elementary and secondary until a new 
curriculum was proposed in the year 2000 by the Quebec 
Education Ministry under the auspices of an educational 
reform called  “La Grande Réforme”.   
       

La Grande Réforme 
          La Grande Réforme is an ambitious school reformation 
project which aims to equip the youth of Quebec with the 
necessary knowledge, social  and cognitive competencies1 to 
become active, aware citizens of Quebec society and of the 



28 

world. A series of reports on the state of education paved the 
way for this reform (See The Quebec Education Program 
[QEP], MEQ,  2000,  p.3). 
 
           The reform recommends that as many connections as 
possible should also be made between different cycles and 
levels of education. As such, learning targets are defined as 
subject competencies and also cross-curricular competencies. 
The focus of student learning should not only be on the 
acquisition of knowledge, but also on how that knowledge 
can be used in real life as well. Learning and evaluation is 
learner centred. The role of teachers is clearly stated as being 
that of mediators between knowledge and students. Teachers 
are in class to provide a stimulating learning environment. 
They should also be there to motivate, encourage, guide and 
support students at all stages of their learning process. 
Students are the principal agents of their learning. Parents are 
viewed as partners of teachers and the school in the 
endeavour to educate children. Teachers are encouraged to 
communicate with parents and to keep them informed about  
what is happening in classrooms. 
           It could be said then that the new reform attempts to 
make the process of learning more permeable, inter-related 
and therefore, more coherent for students across grades and 
subjects. 
 

La Grande Réforme vis-à-vis the ESL Curriculum 
           Following the changes affected by La Grande 
Réforme, students will have one more year of ESL  at 
elementary level because ESL instruction begins in Grade 
Three rather than in Grade Four as was the case in the past. 
The transformation which the ESL curriculum has undergone 
under the present reform however is not one which involves 
drastic change. The new curriculum2 grafts onto the 
communicative approach, already present in the previous 
curriculum, other approaches based on cognitive psychology 
and social constructivism. However, while meaning and 
notions or functions were formerly taught implicitly, the 
present ESL programme recommends that the semantic and 
syntactic structure of English be made explicit to the learner 
(See Appendix 2, p. 102 of QEP English as a Second 
Language curriculum guidelines). The programme also 
insists that the English language be presented to learners in 
varied forms, media and contexts representative of the 
linguistic and cultural environments where English is used. 
The use of computers as a teaching tool is highly 
recommended in order to familiarize students with a 
technological, multimedia environment. The new programme 
places more emphasis on developing the capacity of 
understanding written texts and being able to produce written 
texts than its predecessor. In this new programme, the use of 
French, the first language of the majority of learners in 
Quebec, in the classroom is clearly situated: “teachers should 
use it solely as a means of  providing corrective feedback and 
to make students reflect on their learning”(The QEP, 2000, 
p.153 ) It also explicitly recommends that since ESL starts 
only at Grade Three,  teachers should try to draw upon the 
cognitive capacities that learners have already acquired in 
their native language, French, and other subjects. 

           The three essential competencies which the new 
programme targets are the ability to: 
 

1) interact orally in English 
2) reinvest understanding of oral and written texts 
3) write appropriate texts. 

 
From the brief  summary of the new ESL programme, it 
could be said that for teachers and learners, it represents an 
expansion and re-orientation of the ESL  programme 
formerly in place. 
 

Best practice versus political concerns 
           The descriptions given above of the constant changes 
that the ESL curriculum has undergone in Quebec since the 
inception of its Ministry of Education, indicate that teaching 
guidelines and recommendations, in terms of methodology, 
have often kept pace with developments of what can be 
considered ‘best practice’ in language pedagogy. These best 
practices are often derived from the research done in the field 
of linguistics and applied linguistics. However, apart from 
methodology and pedagogy, as Sarkar (2005) has noted, 
questions around the teaching of ESL in schools continue to 
attract intense local attention because they are linked to 
linguistic issues the continued survival of the French 
language in the province of Quebec. The prevailing policy 
concerning the ESL curriculum is also subject to shift 
according to the political party in power at a specific time.  
 

Language issues surrounding French  in Quebec 
  “Le Québec est un ilôt de français entouré par une 
mer d’anglais". The statement can literally be translated as, 
“Quebec is an island of French surrounded by a sea of 
English”. Its colonial history and geographic location has 
placed Quebec in a rather perplexing situation. MacMillan 
(1998) describes the case of Quebec in the following manner: 
“a local majority language perceived to be perpetually 
threatened by the language of its minority” (p.4). This is 
because, despite being a majority within the province, French 
speakers are a minority in Canada, constituting 25% of its 
population.  In Canada, both French and English are 
recognised as official languages under its constitutional act. 
However, Quebec is the only predominantly French-speaking 
(francophone) province in Canada. It is also the only 
geographic area in North America whose population 
officially uses a language other than English in its public 
institutions such as parliament, courts, medical 
establishments, schools and so on. The use of French in 
private and public life has continued despite the fact that 
Quebec became a British colony in 1763. On the other hand, 
Maurais (2003), quoting the Conseil de la langue française 
(Council for French Language in Quebec), emphasizes that 
of Canada’s two official languages, only French is 
threatened, even in Québec…[Conseil, 1988: 21 & 25]  
              Why do francophones (French speakers in Quebec 
terminology) feel that there is a threat to the continued 
survival of French, in spite of language laws such as the 
French Language Charter (commonly known as Bill 101) that 
make the use of French mandatory on public signs, in the  



29 

delivery of public services and in schools? The historical 
factor cannot be underestimated – although the British North 
American Act (BNA) of 1867 guaranteed separate school 
systems for French and English speaking communities, the 
balance of political and economic power has definitely been 
in favour of the latter community. Spolsky (2004) has 
pointed that up until the early 1960s, in Montreal there was 
an apparent “imbalance between the widespread public use of 
English in signs and large stores, and the fact that 80 percent 
of the population spoke French.”(p. 5). Other reasons are the 
proximity of neighbouring Canadian provinces such as 
Ontario and even more importantly, the economic weight and 
cultural influence of the United States. Kachru (1981) 
discusses the growing impact of American English and 
mentions how it is slowly becoming the world’s language. 
The linguistic pull towards American English is even more 
intense for Quebec since it is located just across the US 
border and is directly subject not only to the economic 
imperatives of trade with the US (outside Canada, the United 
States is, in fact, Quebec’s biggest trading partner) but also 
the cultural influence of American television, radio, film, 
advertising and so on. These are powerful factors that work 
towards assimilation of francophones into a linguistic 
environment which is principally English.  
            From the 60s onwards, the arrival of new immigrants 
who have neither French nor English as their mother tongue 
(the term, allophones, is usually used in Quebec to describe 
this group) has constituted another force that threatens to 
change the linguistic balance within the province. Plourde 
(1988) gives us the example of St-Leonard, a neighbourhood 
in the city of Montreal. Until the early sixties, 99% of the 
residents of St-Leonard were francophones. By the end of 
that decade, the population had grown tenfold, but the 
proportion of francophones had dropped to 60%. Before the 
implementation of Bill 101, many immigrant parents chose to 
send their children first to bilingual primary school and then 
eventually to English secondary schools and colleges. As a 
result, these children would eventually be integrated into the 
anglophone (English-speaking) community. They did so 
because they considered English to be a key component to 
achieving success in North America. Globalization is another 
element which impacts on the survival of French in Quebec. 
According to Maurais (2003), globalization opens the door to 
linguistic domination:  the fear is that, “…economic 
globalization will lead to the hegemony of a single language 
– English to be precise.”(p.92). Rassool (2000), in speaking 
of ‘world languages’, of which English is probably the 
foremost in this age of media and technology, comments on 
the hegemonic value and powerful signification of , “the 
ubiquity of American films and the global marketing of 
English language-based popular culture [and]…the 
dominance throughout the world of English broadcasts via 
cultural sites such as the BBC World Service, CNN 
Television, and the Voice of America.”(p.58 ). Although 
French itself, due to Fance’s colonial past, might be 
considered a world language (albeit on the wane),  Ager 
(1999) posits that linguistic insecurity, based on the belief 
that the French language was threatened both within the 
country and also from without, is the rationale that drives the 

agenda of language-management policies in France; this also 
seems to be the case in Quebec. 
                In Quebec issues of language are very closely tied 
to the concept of ethnic/racial identity and nationhood as 
well. René Levesque, one of the most influential figures in 
the Quebec nationalist movement had once commented that 
“everything else springs from the fact that Quebecers speak 
French”. British documents of the post –conquest period 
speak about the French-Canadian race and the English race. 
Influential public figures in Quebec, such as Lionel Groulx, 
continued to use this term at the turn of the twentieth century. 
In recent years however, the term race has been replaced by 
the notion of a peuple (people, in French) and there have 
been attempts to distance movements that promote French-
use from arguments based on the racial concept. Instead, 
organisations that support the maintenance and increased use 
of French in schooling and public life now tend to focus their 
arguments around the building of a civic nation (CEQ 
[Quebec Teacher’s Union], 1992). Ager(1999) summarises 
the three motives that characterize language policy 
formulated around the world in the following manner: 
“insecurity or fear of others, identity or pride in one’s own 
community, and the creation or projection of an image, or the 
desire to ensure that others adopt or at least recognise the 
force of that identity.” (p.8)  
           These concerns tend to manifest themselves mainly in 
three ways when controversies regarding the ESL curriculum 
and its implementation arise. 
 

Debates surrounding the teaching and learning of ESL 
           The first of these involves the question of when ESL 
courses should first be introduced in school. Under the 1971 
and 1981 curriculum guidelines, students started learning 
ESL at Grade Four and continued until Grade Eleven. 
However, as many parents had voiced dissatisfaction over 
their children’s lack of proficiency in English after 
terminating secondary school, ESL starts at Grade Three 
under the reformed curriculum. At the very start of the 
reform in 2000, the PQ Minister of Education, Louise 
Beaudoin, the Minister of Education, was petitioned to start 
the teaching of ESL to francophones and allophones in Grade 
One. There is some evidence that “younger is better”, 
especially when it comes to acquiring a native-like accent, in 
the research on language acquisition (Oyama, 1976; 
Thompson, 1991). The Minister, however, argued that while 
there was no doubt that Quebec should improve its teaching 
of English as a Second Language, but this could not be at the 
expense of young francophones who had to master their 
mother tongues first (The Gazette, August 15, 2000). She 
seemed to be drawing upon theories such as those proposed 
by Laponce (1987) that suggest it is not beneficial, if not 
actually harmful, to the linguistic development and identity 
formation of the child to learn a second language at too early 
an age. A second language should be learned after mastery of 
the first language had been thoroughly established. He 
postulates that if two languages are learned simultaneously, a 
conflict of ethnic identity results, leading to tensions between 
language and social roles. If neither of the languages 
becomes dominant, the intellectual development of the child 



30 

could be slowed down.   In 2002, however, the Liberal Party 
came to power. The Liberal Minister of Education, Pierre 
Reid, swung in the opposite direction: in fact, raised an 
outcry from concerned parents and teachers when he 
announced that the planned implementation of ESL courses 
beginning at Grade One (Le Devoir, 2003) would have to be 
postponed to 2004 due to budgetary constraints.                
           The second major issue concerns the modality of ESL 
courses offered. In most schools in the French system, 
children receive one hour of ESL instruction per week at the 
primary level. This hour is often broken into two thirty-
minute periods. At the secondary level, students can receive 
between 150 to 200 minutes of ESL instruction weekly. This 
method of spreading out instructional time over a long period 
is often called the “dripfeed” method. On the other hand, 
more and more parents, concerned that their children will not 
be competitive on the North American job market without 
mastering English, are pressuring the Quebec government to 
run more intensive ESL or immersion programs. These two 
alternative modalities of delivering ESL to students allow 
children to experience a part of their school year entirely in 
English, while being schooled exclusively in French for the 
rest of the year. At present, only 10% of French school 
boards offer a special Intensive ESL program for Grade Six 
students.  
           Finally, there is the issue of who can have access to 
publicly funded schooling in English. Under the Quebec 
French Language Charter, which was enacted in 1977, Bill 
101, English public schools could only enrol children who 
had at least one parent who had gone to school in English at 
primary level in Quebec or Canada. This effectively excluded 
the majority of immigrants and French mother tongue 
speakers from access to an education in English. The parents 
from these groups have to send their children to private 
school if they wish their children to be schooled in English. 
This is seen by certain parents as discriminatory and 
unconstitutional – Quebec anglophones have the right to 
choose between English or French schools, but francophone 
parents do not. They accused the state of practicing what 
Gaarder [as cited in Bratt Paulston (1981)] has labeled “elitist 
bilingualism”. This kind of bilingualism is a mark of prestige 
among the intellectuals and learned in many societies, and 
involves choice. In Quebec, francophone parents who have 
the means can send their children to language camps, private 
lessons or summer school abroad in order to learn English, 
the language of success and opportunity. The less financially 
privileged on the other hand, must usually content 
themselves with the dripfeed ESL courses available in public 
schools.  A group of francophone parents took their case up 
to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that the charter 
was overly rigid, but constitutional (The Globe and Mail, 
2005).  
           At question here is whether the right to educate one’s 
own children in the language of choice is an individual right 
or a collective right: should personal choice and individual 
interest in social mobility take precedence over the survival 
of a community’s ancestral language? According to Larivée 
(2003), due to the competitive nature of languages in contact, 
inherent in the possibility of choice is conflict and tension 

because one person’s choice can lead to denial of opportunity 
for another. Furthermore, for an entire community, the 
corollary/consequences of such choices can mean linguistic 
assimilation or linguistic and cultural survival. Witte and Van 
Verhoven (1999) discuss the dilemma that arises in such 
situations: 
 

“According to the supporter of the dominant language 
group, the process should certainly not be inhibited. 
Every individual should have the right and opportunity 
to work his way up and become integrated in the 
language group with the greatest prestige, which 
functions best at a social level…For those who do not 
project their cultural identity solely on language, there 
is some loss of language, but no loss of identity. For 
those who support the view that “the language is the 
people” this process of the shift in language does result 
in internal conflicts for the individuals concerned and 
also to serious problems of identity.” (p.21) 

 
The same question is compounded for members of non-
anglophone or non-francophone immigrant communities, 
although it could be argued that the element of identity loss 
comes into play regardless of whether they opt for English or 
French. As MacMillan (1998) has remarked, “rights to 
official (French and English) language minority education 
are properly designated as fundamental because they are so 
designated in the [Canadian]Charter [of Rights and 
Freedoms]. The precise status of other languages remains 
unclear.” (p.48)  This constitutional bilingualism stands in 
stark contrast to the linguistic reality of young allophones 
living in Montreal, a multi-ethnic, multilingual, pluricultural 
metropolis of Quebec. Since Quebec, like the rest of Canada, 
relies heavily on immigration to maintain its population base, 
the choices that these new citizens make will be crucial in 
determining the future outcome of these linguistic debates. 
 
 

Conclusion 
           From the description and discussion of the ESL 
curriculum in Quebec, it is evident that the complex legacy 
of a colonial past continues to weigh heavily in the present 
educational context. The teaching and learning of the English 
language, which is at once the language of colonization and 
assimilation as well as the key to economic opportunity in the 
global economy, provokes intense reactions, within the 
francophone community. As the contemporary demographic, 
socio-economic and political landscapes continue to change, 
it is almost a certainty that the ongoing dialogue and contest 
over the “when”, “how” and “how much” of teaching ESL in 
Quebec schools will continue to evolve. 
 

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1 A competency is defined as a set of behaviours based on the 
mobilization and effective use of a set of resources (QEP, 
p.5) 
2 The description given applies only to the ESL programme 
for Cycle One, Two and Three of the Elementary school. At 
the time of writing, the ESL programme for secondary 
schools had not been finalised yet. 


