Hey Good Lookin’!! (by Kathleen Green)

Recently, a friend of mine returned from a five-minute walk down the street and commented, casually, about having been catcalled several times on her way back to the café in which we were studying. She was clearly annoyed by it, said something about it being a sign of the arrival of Spring and that she’d have to start wearing sunglasses and earphones again when she was walking in public.

What’s your story? (by Emmanouela Tisizi)

Emmanouela is a PhD student in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. Her academic journey entails studies in Modern Languages (MSt) and Language Education (MSc) and she is passionate about studying the ways in which languages and people evolve over time and through social interaction.

You can get in touch with her via email or visit her LinkedIn page! 

Vers une prise en compte des variations intralinguistiques dans l’enseignement de la grammaire du français au Québec (by Joël Thibeault and Dr. Isabelle Gauvin)

Didacticiens des langues, Joël Thibeault et Isabelle Gauvin sont professeurs, respectivement à l’Université de Regina et à l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Ils s’intéressent, entre autres, à la prise en compte du répertoire linguistique des élèves, aussi pluriel soit-il, dans l’enseignement de la grammaire du français.  

Queer and here in Montreal: My perception of living as an Asian gay man in a bilingual city (by Daniel Mo)

Daniel Mo is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Second Language Education program at McGill University. His research mainly focuses on second language assessment. He is now working on his thesis investigating the effectiveness of formative assessment at the tertiary level.

---

 

 

I got my first tattoo on August 16^th, 2016 to celebrate my one-year anniversary living in Montreal. I chose the pattern twenty-four in Roman numerals since it was also my twenty-fourth birthday just a couple of weeks ago. It has been such an amazingly delightful year that I felt I needed something personal and permanent to remember the good time. The graduate courses at McGill are absolutely enlightening; the friends I have met, mostly teacher-turned scholars, are both intelligent and inspiring; the multicultural social events happening every day are fascinating; the friendly neighbourhood makes it so easy to settle down and build a new nest for myself. This year, I live as an international student pursuing a master degree, which has been the core of my life; however, equally significantly, I live as an Asian gay man in a bilingual city.

Oh là là! Responding to the Globe and Mail’s criticisms of French immersion (by Stephen Davis)

I have come to know French immersion deeply over the years as a student, teacher, and researcher in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Throughout my life, this instructional program has been a source of tremendous enrichment, as it has been for millions of Canadians before me since its beginnings in 1965. Moreover, the benefits of French immersion have been documented extensively in peer-reviewed research, which include strong French proficiency, positive cultural identity, and social closeness to native French speakers. Nevertheless, writers for the Globe and Mail have repeatedly cast French immersion in an uncharitable light. I would like to respond to two relatively recent and especially erroneous articles: French immersion could do with a dose of reality (Gee, 2016) and There’s just one problem with French immersion… well, several, actually (Wente, 2016).

Diversity and the Universal Language of the Heart (by Patricia Houde)

The world is changing rapidly. We hear this all the time, always have and always will. When you realize how much things have changed, from black and white to colour televisions and from mega computers to smartphones, let alone modes of transportation, it is evident that the world is expanding fast. You can now fly from Montreal to Paris in 6 hours 45 minutes. You get immediate news when a major world event hits anywhere on the planet. How different it was when our ancestors arrived at the “Nouveau Monde” by boat.

Celebrating Indigenous Literature at the Six Nations of the Grand River (by Heather Phipps)

Be strong, O paddle! be brave, canoe!
The reckless waves you must plunge into.
Reel, reel,
On your trembling keel,
But never a fear my craft will feel

– E. Pauline Johnson, The Song My Paddle Sings

Montréal: A Mélange of Peoples, Selves, and “–Phones” (by Mehdi Babaei)

Educator and well-known author Stephen R. Covey once said, “strength lies in differences, not in similarities.” As a newcomer, my life in Montréal has been full of experiences of learning about differences. These experiences ranged from learning about Montréal’s ethnic and cultural communities (peoples), to the issues related to their identities (selves) and their languages (-phones). I was intrigued by all these experiences as an Allophone – a term often used in Québec to describe someone whose mother tongue is neither English nor French (a linguistic category not even mentioned in the Anglophone/Francophone dominant conversations in the previous posts!). My experiences have made it clear to me that “Anglophone” and “Francophone” are not what Montréal is all about, as the terms may seem to erase all other languages by not naming them and lumping them all in with “Allophone.” Montréal is an exemplar of peaceful symbiosis of richly varied communities, having multiple layers of languages, ethnicities, and religions (with more than 120 cultural communities and 150 different languages spoken). Therefore, diversity and multiculturalism may no longer be the best terms to describe the ever-changing nature of the city. This is, notably, of vital importance to policy makers, who still consider these communities through their own traditional lens.