French immersion teachers' attitudes toward Louisiana varieties of French and the integration of such varieties in their classroom: A quantitative and qualitative analysis.

摘要

This mixed-method study examined French immersion teachers' attitudes toward French-related varieties of Louisiana (i.e., Cajun French and Louisiana Creole) and the extent these local varieties are integrated into their classrooms. Participants were employed as French immersion teachers during the 2008-2009 academic school year. In the past, Louisiana schools played a large role in the decline of Louisiana French and the fostering of negative attitudes toward these varieties. In fact, a slogan of the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL) is L'ecole a detruit le francais, l'ecole doit le restaurer (School destroyed French, school must restore it).;Research was collected in three distinct phases. During the first quantitative phase, ninety-two teachers completed a subjective reaction Matched Guise test by listening to and evaluating five different varieties of French (Cajun French, Louisiana Creole, Quebecois French, Acadian French of New Brunswick, and International French). During the second quantitative phase, ninety-one participants completed a background, attitudes, and integration questionnaire. Finally during the qualitative phase, twelve participants completed one-on-one interviews.;The main findings suggest that participants in general have neutral attitudes toward Louisiana French and are open to integration and the Louisianification of the immersion curriculum but lack the content knowledge in order to teach these varieties to create the desired balance of International French and Louisiana French. Furthermore, participants felt that more efforts need to be made to hire local French immersion teachers to create more of a balance with teachers hired from abroad (i.e foreign associate teachers). Eleven main problems concerning the immersion program as did suggestions on how to make the profession more manageable emerged from the qualitative data. This study concludes that Louisiana French language and culture are minimally present in the immersion classroom. However, further efforts need to be made by teachers, administrators, grass-root organizations, and local community members if the immersion schools can be considered true supporters of language maintenance.