Statistics Canada today reported the results of a recent national wide literacy study examining literacy levels in individual's mother tongues (anglophone or francophone). The main result of interest was that non-Quebec francophones displayed significantly weaker literacy levels compared to their English speaking peers. The result is not really all that surprising to me since language minorities are at a clear disadvantage in that they have notably less exposure to environmental based aspects of language (magazines, signs, etc). What was interesting was that while there was a significant improvement in minority-francophone literacy this seemed to be an artifact of improvements in Ontario only. New Brunswick saw no increase in literacy levels despite having cities that are clearly more francophone influenced then you will find in most areas of Ontario.
The discrepancy in Literacy between minority and majority francophone populations would seem to suggest that when utilizing standardized measures of literacy and reading achievement with francophones outside of Quebec measures like the WIAT-II French which was normed on Ontario francophones would be the most appropriate in the absence of the validation of Quebec/France normed measures within this group. In the absence of such studies we cannot be certain that these tests do not underestimate literacy skills compared to their regional French speaking peers.
The article is certainly worth a read and can be found by CLICKING HERE.
