CCERBAL Research Forum: March 3 2020

Language immersion programs have shown themselves to be viable options for minority languages in different contexts. In Canada, French Immersion has been available for over a generation at the primary and secondary levels. At the University of Ottawa, our Immersion program offers students the opportunity to continue developing their French language skills in a variety of disciplines at the post-secondary level. I believe that the model that we have developed here at the University of Ottawa, Canada's only bilingual university, could be applied to other countries where an official minority language is offered in an immersion context at the primary and secondary level, but not yet at the tertiary level. Universities should be exploring together the possibility of offering this type of program to students who are keen to continue developing their language skills so as to become future bilingual employees in their respective fields. In my presentation, I describe initial steps towards making this a viable option for Irish Gaelic, a minority language which would benefit from developing a professional workforce with greater fluency in the Irish language.