Quebec raising [out-of-province] tuition for [not just] English-speaking universities

Parents Forum
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Good for your son jumping in and make the most of it! Research on bilingualism in Quebec shows that the biggest predictors of achieving fluency are working in a French environment or having a francophone partner, and not the type of French education you had (i.e. French-immersion in school vs. courses). Nowadays though, it’s hard to get a job without B2 French, so becoming fluent requires moving to a francophone neighbourhood, finding a francophone partner, or joining groups off-campus that are mainly francophone. However, one of the elements of the English universities’ proposal was creating internships and co-ops in French work environments for anglophones.

Re: the B2 standard, you are right, the coverage of the initial proposal specifies that 40% of non-French speakers from outside the province would graduate with B2 French. (They do not define non-French speakers in the article; not sure if that means people with a non-French native tongue or students arriving without B2 level French). Assuming the latter definition, the only way that would be possible, I think, is if admission criteria for non-Quebecers were to include 4 years of French in high-school and a high degree of motivation to learn French. Unfortunately that would eliminate many top students with a STEM focus.

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Yes, you’re right, the proposal (considered too modest by the government) would attempt to have 40% of non-French speaking (to be defined) out-of-province Canadians and internationals achieve a B2 level by graduation. Unfortunately, this is a bridge too far unless there is a radical change in the profile of admitted students.

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By “AP level”, do you mean AP 5 or AP 3 level?

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AP (Foreign/World Language) exam - AP Spanish, AP French, AP German etc. (AP Chinese and AP Korean are rated differently on the scale since they’re so much harder, and AP Latin also functions differently).
If you mean score and not pre-req HS classes: you have B1-, B1, B1+ which would likely be scores of 3, 4, and 5.

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AP Japanese, not Korean. And if by “harder,” you mean that completion of AP in those Asian languages would be a lower level of proficiency, you’d be correct

As an example, the AP Japanese exam tests about 400 kanji, which is what one would learn after 3 semesters of college Japanese.

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Yes, sorry :face_with_head_bandage: … reaching any level of proficiency in a non-European language is much harder for a European language native speaker (and Italian<->French<-> Portuguese<-> Spanish are the easiest combinations native/learning). I don’t remember the DoD chart now but it was something like 3 times longer to reach a Level 1 on their scale for Asian languages.

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Here is the language learning difficulty classification chart you may be referring to:

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