P.E.I. gets federal funding to help improve French oral competency skills for junior high students

Prince Edward Island's Department of Education has received funding from the federal government to help improve the oral communication skills of French Immersion and core French students in junior high.

René Hurtubise, director of French programs, told Mainstreet P.E.I. that while teachers at that level were doing a good job with teaching and assessing reading and writing, assessing oral competency in a second language is a harder thing to do.

"At the end of the day, if our French second language students learn French they'll most likely be using oral French not so much the written part," he said.

"It's important for us that every student on P.E.I. develop some oral competency in French and therefore we need to put a greater emphasis on the teaching and assessing because you cannot teach if you do not know what the students know and what is the next step with that."

The funds will be used to develop the program and pay for mentors for teachers to improve their practices in teaching oral French.

Hurtubise said part of the funding will also go to the development of an oral communication performance scale for students to measure how comfortable they are with the language.

Program should be ready for September

Hurtubise said the new initiative is being developed and will be ready for teachers and students in September when the new school year starts.

"We are working to develop an oral competency scale and then we'll be working with teachers as to how do I find time during the day to assess where my student is on that scale and then once I have that information, what do I do with it."

Hurtubise said there will be two mentors hired for the next two years to help the teachers work through those issues related to oral competency.

That development work is happening now, with baseline evaluation of students happening in September.