CEGEP students are asking for a boost to improve their command of French

Cégep students are not prepared to meet requirements in French, deplores the Quebec Collegiate Student Federation (FECQ), which is calling for a major boost from primary school, as well as in particular access to proofing software as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the uniform french test.

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Last weekend, the FECQ adopted several recommendations aimed at improving the proficiency of the Molière language among CEGEP students.

This stance comes on the heels of the adoption of Bill 96 last spring which aims to strengthen French’s place as a working and teaching language.

For its president, Maya Labrosse, strengthening French skills must begin well before arriving at college, since various notions of grammar should be acquired from primary school and throughout secondary school.

“The work must have started much earlier than in college,” she says. We have the impression that there is a way to allow university students to be better prepared in French when they arrive at CEGEP”.

Among the solutions proposed, the Federation specifically requests that schools devote a minimum of 200 hours a year to teaching French. Over the years, the proliferation of special programs has led to a reduction of French periods in the disciplinary schedule.

Quebec should also “strongly encourage” teachers to report French mistakes made in other subjects, without them counting towards the final grade, the FECQ brief reads.

“By making students aware of their shortcomings, in K-12, we can improve later on,” says Maya Labrosse.

Currently, teachers are not required to correct their students’ mistakes unless they are engaged in the context of a French written production. A student can score 100% on a reading comprehension exam even if his or her answers are full of errors.

Funding for French language support centers should be increased at CEGEP, because they do not meet the needs, argues the Federation, which would also like all students who wish to have access to reinforcement in French.

Uniform French test

The FECQ is also calling for a major revision of the uniform French test, the passing of which is mandatory to obtain the university diploma.

More than a quarter of CEGEP students do not get a passing mark in spelling in this exam.

The event, if kept in its current form, should be 100% digital, says Maya Labrosse. It currently takes place in a paper-and-pencil version with limited access to reference materials, although it has taken place on screen during the pandemic.

“The context of the event is artificial. There aren’t enough dictionaries in a classroom for the number of people taking the exam when in real life anyone can use proofing software. We don’t see what it’s like to silence to make the context more suitable for reality, “says M^myself The brush.

If the correction software was allowed during testing, the correction grid could also be improved to take this into account and avoid reducing requirements, he adds.

The debate on the modernization of the uniform French test was started last year by the Fédération des cégeps, which proposed teaching the use of correction software in the classroom so that it would be the authorized continuation during the language test.

For her part, concerned about the shortcomings of students in French, the former Minister of Higher Education Danielle McCann had set up a working group to establish possible solutions, but the report of this committee was never made public, regrets Quebec Collegiate Student Federation.

English teaching also needs to be strengthened

In secondary school, English teaching should also be strengthened in French-speaking schools, in order to reduce interest in English-speaking CEGEPs, argues the Federation of Collegiate Students of Quebec.

“If the student population had access to higher quality English courses at primary and secondary levels, enabling them to reach an acceptable level of English for the job market, fewer French-speaking students would choose to study in English at university” says the organization in a brief adopted at the end of the week.

According to several studies, learning a second language “does not jeopardize the survival of the French language in Quebec,” the FECQ points out.