Two French Immersion students at St. Mary School are preparing to take an exam that will test their language skills and provide them official certification of their bilingual status.
Jackson Bourgeois and Bilal Toure are both Grade 8 students in the school’s French Immersion program who will be taking the Diplôme d’études en langue français (DELF) exam this April.
St. Mary School principal Meghan Bourgeois, who is also Jackson’s mother, said the students are the only remaining Grade 8 French Immersion students at the school, who have also taken the language very seriously.
“They’ve really stuck with the program, and they have done a really great job at utilizing their French language skills,” Bourgeois said.
“They speak French in many facets of their day at home and at school. So they’re just pretty remarkable kids.”
According to the official website, the DELF is a series of six separate diplomas issued by the French Ministry for National Education that certify French language skills. Each diploma, which moves in certification levels from A1 to C2 depending on age and competency level, reflects the six levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). The exams test French language speakers in several core areas, including oral and written comprehension and expression.
Bourgeois noted that the certification is a permanent indicator that the holder is bilingual, and was something the school was interested in presenting to the students as a way to recognize their French Immersion journey and give them something they could take with them into high school and beyond.
“It’s something that we’ve been looking at for a little bit of time,” Bourgeois said.
“So because the French Immersion program ends at St Mary’s School, we wanted our students to have an opportunity to highlight kind of what they’ve achieved from completing the program. These students have been immersed in the program since they started their second year of kindergarten, so they’ve kind of gone through this program up until grade eight, and we wanted there to be some recognition for their accomplishments and for sticking through the program.”
As the principal of both accomplished students, and mother to one of them, Bourgeois said preparing to see them take the exam is validating, both for the students and for the French Immersion program as a whole. The program has seen ups and downs over the years, but is once again going strong at the school as it continues the legacies of the former St. Michaels and St. Francis schools.
“I think it’s very validating for our students, especially for my son as well,” she said.
“Although it isn’t continuing on into the high school, I think really honouring the work that they’ve done by having them do this is really a point of pride. They’ve spent a lot of hard work and dedication sticking with the program, and I feel as a school it’s important for us to really highlight the work that our teachers have done to prepare them up to this point and really ensure their ability to see this program through will provide them with this really great opportunity that they can use in jobs or when travelling in different avenues of their life.”
As for the students, they recognize that learning French indeed presents them with different opportunities that will benefit them in the future.
“It opens up a lot of job opportunities,” Toure said of the importance of learning the language.
“My whole family speaks French, and I feel it’s important to continue to learn French to keep our family history alive,” Jackson added.
On being able to take the test to prove their proficiency, the students said they felt like being successful would open more doors for them in the future, along with proving just how capable with the language they really are.
In the future, the students expect that when it comes time to travel to other countries, their language skills will benefit them, giving them plenty of opportunity to continue to strengthen their knowledge of French. On a more personal level, though, with both having French-speaking families, they will both keep up on their language skills so that they can continue to talk to the people most important to them.
