Lessons learned from immersion in Western Canada ’ s multilingual and multicultural post-secondary context across the disciplines : A case study in Business

The current educational context in post-secondary institutions world-wide is characterized by a widening participation agenda, and is greatly impacted by trends in globalization and internationalization. Given Canada’s increasing involvement in offering programs predominantly in English to international students, it is important to examine the lessons learned from Canada’s history with French immersion, and consider the implications for the post-secondary context. To that end, it may be timely to reconsider language education policies and models, redesign curriculum and instruction, as well as understand how students’ bi/plurilingualism can serve as an additional resource for learning across the disciplines. This article focuses on a case study within the context of a new Centre for English Language Learning, Teaching, and Research (CELLTR) at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, which is responsible for English as an Additional Language (EAL) student support as well as educational and faculty development. This study aimed to understand the impact of explicit instruction in language and discipline-specific discourse (i.e., business) in an environment where EAL students were mainstreamed with non-EAL students. It also aimed at exploring how a model of support that integrates language and content through faculty collaboration can support professional learning.


Introduction
As Canada has recently celebrated its 150th year, it is important to examine the unique educational, cultural, and linguistic context of Western Canada and the role that universities play in supporting its increasingly diverse student population.When planning for and implementing innovative language and disciplinary programming to meet the needs of linguistically diverse students, a number of elements come into play.These include current reality and the complex influences of official multiculturalism and bilingualism policy, immigration trends, British Columbia's geographical proximity to Asia, university trends in internationalization, as well as indigenous language and culture revitalization and sustainability issues.
In Western Canada, these influences are encouraging some faculties to rethink their curriculum design, as well as participate in innovative instructional delivery in order to better engage students and help them meet their academic and professional goals (Arkoudis, Baik, & Richardson, 2012;Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2005).For example, many British Columbia (B.C.) post-secondary institutions have recognized Canada's linguistic diversity and have decided to invest resources into supporting these students not only in becoming educated Canadian citizens, but also global citizens.As with the university French immersion initiative and other disciplinary English language support initiatives at the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute (OLBI) at the University of Ottawa, resources are often insufficient to meet the demand of hyper-diversity (Murray 2016, pp. 169-173), but they are still a first step towards supporting innovation, equity, and diversity goals in higher education.
With over 35,000 students, Simon Fraser faculty recognized the need to address issues of linguistic and cultural diversity across campus; the Faculty of Education was charged with leading the change, and in 2014, opened the Centre for English Language Learning, Teaching, and Research (CELLTR).Through collaborative partnership projects across faculties, liaison and professional learning activities, needs and impact assessment research, and developmental evaluation, the Centre has taken its first steps in coordinating, designing and implementing pedagogical innovations to address this linguistic and cultural diversity across the university.
In designing and implementing various models of support to meet the unique needs of students and faculty across the disciplines, it was important to consider the literature and various research traditions in both first-and second-language education.Since Simon Fraser University (SFU) predominantly uses English for instruction, the literature and research informing its approaches was highly influenced by the ESL/TESOL traditions from the UK, the US, and Canada, especially given the increasing numbers of international students who are seeking a post-secondary education in anglo-dominant contexts (Carey, 2010).However, members of the faculty also felt it important to examine Canada's own rich tradition and scholarship with second language learning in Canada's other official language -French.The key principles and methods for learning an additional language should not vary widely from language to language, but the differences in context, motivations, history, and student population needed to be taken into consideration when designing interventions and innovations.Given this context, the impact of a support model that integrates content and language learning within a business course was examined, in which EAL students with varying degrees of proficiency were mainstreamed alongside Anglophone students.The EAL students' perceptions were compared with non-EAL students in order to better understand how an explicit focus on business language and discourse could benefit all students in a content course.Finally, how this integrated support model -involving co-design and co-instruction -facilitated faculty professional learning was analysed, to shape future practices in content classes whose students exhibit significant linguistic diversity and varying levels of proficiency in the language of instruction -English.

Literature review
This analysis on language support models in an institutionally anglo-dominant context within a highly multilingual student body is based on an examination of what has been learned from French immersion education in British Columbia, as well as over 40 years of immersion in the Canadian context, and most recently from the university immersion models in a limited number of Canadian universities.It is hoped that those experiences might inform Western Canada's essentially submersive learning of content across the disciplines at the postsecondary levels by EAL learners.
The reports, articles, and other works related to French as a Second Language published over the last ten years in Canada highlight two challenges in particular: a. a limited number of qualified teachers with questionable preparation (Burt, 2014;Lockhart, 2012;Sabatier, 2011;Wernicke-Heinrichs, 2013) b. a problem of retention of students schooled in French (Core French, Intensive French, or Immersion) (Bournot-Trites, 2008/ Carr, 2013).
In an article that synthesizes a retrospective view of immersion research during the last ten years, Cammarata, Cavanagh, Blain, and Sabatier (2018) highlight these challenges in relation to both the development of a pedagogy adapted to an educational context that is increasingly diverse, linguistically and culturally, and to teacher preparation and development.
In some disciplinary programs such as Business, over 50% of students have English as an additional language.It is evident that, while professors and teaching assistants (TAs) are qualified in their discipline, they most likely have not received formal training on how to teach the content to classes where English is not the home language of nearly half the students.When we contrast this submersive model used in anglophone universities with the French immersion model in K-12 or, more recently, at the university level, the comparison reveals inconsistencies, inequities, and complexities.The history of French immersion in Canada has involved the separation or sheltered instruction of students who are learning in a second language into separate schools or program cohorts so that their unique needs are met.However, in the western post-secondary context (which has only one small French cohort program at the post-secondary level), international EAL students are mainstreamed alongside their non-EAL peers in content courses, where disciplinary faculty and TAs have the dual responsibility of meeting the unique needs of both EAL and non-EAL students.It is important to note that disciplinary faculty are not necessarily trained as educators, but as experts and researchers in their specific fields -some have little interest, motivation, or training in teaching to accommodate linguistic diversity in their classes.
The literature on the issue of student retention in French immersion (Obadia & Theriault, 1997;Makropoulos, 2010) presents similar issues and discourses from disciplinary faculty: the problematic ESL learner who needs 'remedial English language proficiency and experiences challenges in program completion and success, especially in academic writing-intensive courses.Although some of these students manage to persist to graduation, a significant number still experience challenges obtaining co-op positions, internships, and employment as a result of not having received additional, targeted, and discipline-specific language and literacy support throughout their undergraduate program.These struggling EAL learners are not always able to meet the linguistic demands of cognitively sophisticated material in an academic program despite having met the minimum language requirements before admission.They continue to experience difficulties using their second language in academic and social contexts.
To respond to the traditional challenges of K-12 French immersion, researchers in both French as a second language (Lapkin, MacFarlane, & Vandergrift, 2006) and ESL (Barkhuizen, 2017;Duff, 2017;Gee, 2001;Higgins and Ponte, 2017) first recommend enhancing the status of second language educators at all levels of education by reminding the academic community, as well as society as a whole, of the importance of bilingualism/multilingualism in Canada's sociocultural fabric.Secondly, to improve participation and retention of students learning content in the other language, those researchers who share a developmental view of language learning recommend explicit teaching of discipline-specific language and academic literacies using all four skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) at the university level (Arkoudis, et al., 2012;Camarrata, 2016;Knoerr, Weinberg, & Gohard-Radenkovic, 2016;Murray, 2016).For example, recent research in post-secondary French immersion (Knoerr, et al., 2016) encourages sheltered language instruction models as well as adjunct models of language learning through disciplinary-specific learning.
Furthermore, research in both K-12 and university French immersion, as well as in English Medium of Instruction (EMI) programs and anglo-dominant schools and universities call for ongoing professional training of both language and content faculty/teachers -redesigning curricula and instruction to meet the needs of their multilingual students, who are expected to be articulate in their disciplines, using a second or third language (Arkoudis, 2012;Murray, 2016).
The increasing diversity and complexity involved in these issues also raises questions regarding policy and resources.Within the Canadian context, Mady and Turnbull (2010) and Dagenais (2013) highlighted the disconnections and Proofs contradictions between policy and practice, as well as the impact of immigration and internationalization on Canadian schools.They noted that recent immigrants, international students, as well as the aboriginal population within Canada itself, have neither English nor French as a first language: "The vast majority of today's Allophones, close to 90% (Canadian School Boards Association, 2006;Ontario Public School Boards, 2005), come from countries where neither French nor English is the first language" (Mady & Turnbull, 2010, p. 1).
While Canada has two official languages, language status and policy differ at the provincial level.1This raises the question of language of instruction and opportunities to learn in a second language -English or French -given that education is a provincial rather than a federal responsibility.In British Columbia, although certain international students may be aware of Canada's official bilingualism at the federal level, their priority is to learn in English, not in French, and to pursue studies in English-language universities.While enrollment in K-12 French immersion programs has been on the rise in recent decades, the vast majority of programs in B.C. universities are still delivered in English.For example, there are no or very few international students studying in the French cohort program (History, Political Science, and French) within SFU.The majority of these students are Anglophone Canadians or recent immigrants who have graduated from the province's French immersion programs, the Conseil Scolaire Francophone, or from Core French programs (Knoerr, et al., 2016).
In addition to such linguistic complexities and inconsistencies, both policy analysts and language education researchers put forth the question of the future of the Canadian identity and what it means for non-official-language-speaking students (both international and recent immigrant) to have equal access to English as well as to French: Given that French and English are part of what it means to be Canadian as defined by the federal government and that being proficient in both official languages comes with certain social and economic advantages, Canadian leaders, federally and provincially, have a moral and ethical responsibility to ensure that ALL Canadians have equitable access to learning both of Canada's official languages.(Mady & Turnbull, 2010, p. 17) If the two official languages are part of the Canadian identity, reinforced by what Cardinal and Léger (2017) view as the heart of the Canadian social con-tract, then some scholars and policy analysts believe that the two official languages are assumed to be at the centre of this country's profound diversity.
Within the B.C. context, however, there is much rhetoric around the importance of linguistic and cultural diversity and inclusion in both the K-12 and university vision documents (i.e., British Columbia's New Curriculum, 2014; the UBC Student Diversity Initiative, 2012; and the SFU Strategic Vision, 2017), yet there are no second or additional language requirements for high school graduation (not even of French), and no additional language requirements to graduate from most university programs, either undergraduate or graduate.Individual plurilingualism in the student demographic is rapidly increasing, but the K-12 and post-secondary educational systems mostly offer monolingual English instruction across the disciplines.Once the grade 12 English requirement is met, or a certain IELTS or TOEFL2 score is achieved upon admission, the emphasis is on the mastery of disciplinary content through English.
Even though recent research in Canada and Europe supports the implementation of plurilingual pedagogies and more inclusive pedagogical practices to help students recognize the role that their first language plays as a resource for learning the discipline, such practices are frequently absent in disciplinary content courses at the university level.The largely monolingual educational practices present in B.C. universities are in stark contrast to the Council of Europe's Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for Languages (Language Policy Programme) and the work of Beacco (2005), Beacco and Byram (2007), Byram (2006), or of Cavalli, Coste, Crişan, and van de Ven (2009).These framework authors underscore the need to compile what is known about the languages spoken by students, in order to develop educational programming that accounts for this plurilingualism.According to these authors, language education policies must, from this point on, address societal diversity and take into account the body of linguistic resources that make up students' verbal repertoire and apply it to their academic success.
The changes that are required of university level educational programs at a time of globalization and internationalization of higher education reinforces the need for educational stakeholders affected by students' linguistic diversity to work together to meet students' language and academic needs.The following case study and brief description of a pilot project initiated by the Centre for English Language Learning Teaching and Research demonstrates the SFU attempt to support its students despite the complexities in policy and practice.
Although European, American, Australian, and Canadian EFL/ESL language education research was largely consulted to help inform the design of various interventions, this case study aimed to support the language and academic literacy needs of students using recent Canadian university-based French immersion programs as a comparative analytical lens.

Educational context
One of the fastest growing faculties in which there are an increasing number of multilingual learners is the Faculty of Business at SFU; both undergraduate and graduate business programs are amongst the most highly enrolled programs in recent years (Colby, Ehrlich, Sullivan, & Dolle, 2011).The undergraduate business program that collaborated with CELLTR in this case study has approximately 3000 students, with an annual enrolment of roughly 600-700 students.About half of the students are direct entry from high school catchment areas, and the remaining students have transferred from a first-year university pathway program uniquely for international students, as well as from other colleges and universities, or from high school and post-secondary contexts outside of Canada.
One of the issues that has arisen in this and other programs across campus is that students are often not required to take a discipline-specific, writingintensive course until the third or fourth year of their program.The result is that students are not explicitly trained to write in their discipline until close to the end of the program.Furthermore, students do not have many opportunities to scaffold discipline-specific language learning and writing as many of the content-based assessments in the first two years are short-answer or multiple choice, or involve quantitative problem-solving.As such, CELLTR faculty worked closely with the undergraduate program director and business communications faculty member, as well as the educational consultant from the university's centralized teaching and learning support unit, to pilot the design and delivery of a new second-year writing-intensive course, entitled "Critical thinking in Business".The goal was three-fold: a. first, to support students earlier on in the program with the articulation of critical thought through business language and writing conventions b. second, to help identify the language and academic literacy needs of all students, with a focus on multilingual students c. third, to identify struggling learners in the area of language and writing earlier on in the program so as to provide them with additional support.

Pedagogical design and delivery
It is important to note that this course was in some ways similar to but different from the university immersion model at the University of Ottawa and other universities in Canada with increasingly large numbers of linguistically and culturally diverse learners.According to Weinberg and Burger (2016), university immersion has the concomitant goals of teaching the discipline, as well as language; any language or academic literacies-based curriculum is determined by the linguistic demands of the disciplinary course (p.105).Given that this course was designated as a "writing intensive" course, explicit instruction was provided for about 30% of the course in the area of business discourse and language, and writing in the various genres of business communication.There was an additional focus on the relationship between language and critical thinking, using business content and concepts.This integration of language, writing, and advanced thinking is consistent with Camarrata's claim (2016) that immersion or content-based instruction should be able to stimulate learners' intellectual curiosity and tap their critical thinking ability rather than being primarily grammar-driven (pp.3-4).
Much like the University of Ottawa's early sheltered model of university French immersion (Knoerr, et al., 2016, p. 109), at least 20 minutes (and up to one hour of a three-hour lecture) of each class focused on business language and discourse by the language faculty member, and the remaining time focused on the knowledge and application of critical thinking skills to business concepts (i.e., shareholder vs. stakeholders).Just over 50% of the assignments were written and assessed using detailed rubrics.Detailed feedback on students' language and writing was provided, as well as feedback on the quality of critical analysis in business-related concepts.
An important difference between the sheltered and adjunct French immersion program is that the EAL students in this case were mainstreamed into courses alongside their non-EAL peers.Unlike immersion, not all the students in the class were learning content and writing in a second language; EAL students were never separated out or streamed into a sheltered course, nor in an adjunct language course or tutorial.Those who were learning in a second or third language had been admitted based on a standardized language assessment (i.e., IELTS), a certain percentage of their grade 12 mark, or an equivalent language or academic literacies course from another institution.The traditional assumption at the university by both students and faculty was that once that language requirement had been met, the student would be linguistically prepared and would not require further language support.What we know from immersion studies, however, is the importance of a more developmental perspective towards content-specific academic language and literacies learning that an entry or exit standardized exam cannot measure.
We also know that it can take up four to seven years to develop Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (Cummins, 1998), and that learning through immersion needs to focus on language and writing more explicitly, rather than assuming that ongoing language learning will happen incidentally.To that end, this course was different from other content courses in the business program in that there was an additional explicit focus on business language/discourse, and additional instructional support available to help students with language issues from a language faculty member in the classroom and a language TA.
As with the University of Ottawa's French immersion program, the curriculum and instructional design emphasized activities that helped students practice all four language-learning skills (not just listening skills in lectures, which is typical of most content courses).Although explicit instruction in language was primarily the responsibility of the language faculty member, the content faculty also highlighted business language and communication issues in an effort to stress the interconnectedness between language, thinking, and content to students.In addition, there were criterion-referenced rubrics for three written assignments and exams, as well as moderated marking activities where instructional team members used and interpreted the rubrics.Both firstand second-language errors and issues were identified and addressed in class, and EAL students could be further supported by the language TA, who attended all the classes and was perceived as an important part of the instructional team.
As previously mentioned, unlike other university immersion programs, the students learning in a second language were never separated into a sheltered course or adjunct language class.There was great variety in the level of English language, unlike the more homogenous levels of language in sheltered classes, where students were streamed based on a language assessment.What was similar, however, was the explicit, contextualized language and writing instruction that was directly related to the content, as well as significant assessment of language and writing.What was also similar was the learning curve of the language faculty member, who had to learn disciplinary concepts, understand the kinds of errors that multilingual students were making in that particular context, and develop material that was based on the content of the course and would help students expand their language skills.

Research design
Given this unique, innovative pedagogical design in an anglo-dominant university within a content course, the research study focused on the impact of implementing a content-and language-integrated model of business language and discourse development.The research was also designed to compare how the perceptions of support in mainstreamed EAL students compared with those of non-EAL students.Finally, given that this model required collaboration be-tween business faculty and language faculty, we sought to understand how codesign and co-instruction could support faculty professional learning for future practice in significantly linguistically diverse contexts.
A questionnaire (Appendix A) was used to gather quantitative data on learners' perceptions of the impact and satisfaction of the innovative pedagogical design and delivery.Feedback was gathered from students in the area of perceptions of their improvement in knowledge, skills, and confidence levels in business language and discourse.Data was analyzed by comparing the ratings on a 5-point scale of EAL vs. non-EAL students, as well as by analyzing whether the constructs of "language", "business discourse", and "writing" made a statistically significant impact on student learning.Qualitative data based on practitioner-researcher observations were also reported from the perspective of the professional learning that occurred in the co-design and coinstruction model of support.

Findings
It is important to note that this was a case study of a pilot course, using a content and language co-teaching model of support.Although we were not able to generalize the findings to other cases, this study did provide us with important insights and additional questions into the potential effectiveness of the pedagogical design, how it might be scaled, and how it might better address the discipline-specific language and literacy needs of mainstreamed EAL students learning alongside their non-EAL peers at SFU.
All of the students (n = 43) -both EAL and non-EAL peers -perceived that they had improved on all 12 questionnaire items (Appendix A), when they compared their level of knowledge, ability, and confidence in communicating critical thinking in a business context before and after the course.Analysis for all questionnaire items revealed that there was a statistically significant improvement in students' perceptions of what they expected to learn at the beginning of the course as compared to what they actually felt they had learned by the end.By way of illustration, one of the most relevant items (Q.12)students' perceived confidence to "use language effectively to express critical thought in business contexts" -demonstrated a statistically significant difference before and after the course (pre-course: M = 2.20, SD = 1.1; postcourse: M = 3.04, SD = .78,t(42) = −6.11,p < .05).
In addition to statistical data for the whole class, there was also comparative data from students who self-identified as not having English as a first language (N = 17) compared with students whose first language was English (N = 26). 3Of interest was that the improvement margin for self-identified EAL students compared to their non-EAL peers was greater on average by 20%.That is, the EAL students found that explicit instruction, targeted feedback, and support in content-specific language, writing, and discourse-related matters was more beneficial than did their non-EAL peers.
The three areas where EAL students felt that they had improved the most were the following: a. knowledge of the business communication "triangle" (i.e., audience, purpose, writer).See Q. 3 in the questionnaire (Appendix A). b. ability to use business writing conventions (Q.8) c. confidence in using language effectively to express critical thought in business contexts (Q.12) The explicit focus on business discourse features through knowledge and application of the rhetorical triangle demonstrated the most dramatic and statistically significant improvement in EAL students' perceptions from pre-course (M = .722,SD = .66)to post-course (M = 3.16, SD = .78),t(17) = −8.64,p < .05(two-tailed).There was also a statistically significant improvement in EAL students' perceptions of their ability to write using business conventions (i.e., memo format, recommendation report) from pre-course (M = 1.44,SD = .78)to post-course (M = 2.77, SD = .73),t(42) = −5.49,p < .05(two-tailed).Finally, we can assume that EAL students perceived a higher level of confidence in using language effectively to express critical thought in business contexts compared to their non-EAL peers; EAL students scored an average of 1.3 points higher on this item than English first-language students (.57), when comparing their confidence level pre-and post-course.
Although the course was designated as being writing-intensive, there were many learning activities (both assessed and formative) that involved speaking and team-based interaction.The most marked difference between EAL students and their non-EAL peers was the confidence that the skills learned in class could "improve speaking and team-based interaction in business contexts" (Q.11).EAL students perceived that they had improved by an average of 1.16 points on a 4-point scale, whereas non-EAL students perceived an improvement of only .69.
In addition to the quantitative data on the perceived impact of the intervention on the students, from a professional learning perspective, the participantin at least one or two additional languages (i.e., French, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindi, Gujarati, Tagalog, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish), but self-identified as having English as their first or strongest language.Twenty-four (over half) of the students were plurilingual, but we can deduce that there may have been important differences in language ability in the class, depending on how students self-identified.researcher gathered qualitative observational data through field notes that highlighted the importance of the close, collaborative relationship between the business faculty member and language faculty members in this pilot.Over the course of over 100 hours of course design meetings, the language faculty members worked closely with content faculty to recommend certain curriculum and assessment adaptations to better support EAL learners; these recommendations were very well received and implemented.In turn, the content faculty members supported the language faculty in developing a stronger understanding of disciplinary concepts and genres and the standards of writing expected of all students admitted into the program.There were also numerous collaborative weekly preparatory and debriefing meetings amongst faculty during the delivery.Notes during those meetings highlighted the important role in working together with language TAs as an instructional team and ensuring everyone was in agreement with the content and language learning goals, assignment design, assessment, and opportunities for student support.One critical area was that of better guiding and understanding students who were suspected of plagiarism or "patchwriting".Specifically, rather than resorting to punitive measures, the language faculty member encouraged the student to use their home language to express concepts orally to a peer who spoke the same language, and then supervised the student in writing what they understood in their own words in English without looking at the source text.The content faculty member was more convinced that the student had in fact learned and internalized the key concepts in the course.As a result of the reflective discussions with the instructional team, there was a change in mindset about "punishing" the student for a perceived breach of academic integrity through heavy textual borrowing.Instead, the student was given a second chance to express their understanding by using their first language as a resource, and the instructional team better recognized the challenges that writing in the other language posed to the language learner.
Additional professional learning in the co-instruction model occurred in the areas of assessment.Since this was clearly a disciplinary course with a "writing-intensive" designation, the assessment aimed to integrate language, writing, and content -critical thinking in business -through a variety of methods.All assessment involved criterion-referenced rubrics that included the constructs of concision and word choice, coherence, cohesion, as well as grammar and mechanics.During the design and course delivery, there were questions and discussions about norm-referenced assessment policies, despite the use of more criterion-referenced assessment expected in a writing-intensive course.It was decided that criteria would also be allocated to the constructs related to business writing conventions (i.e., report, case analysis), as well as to the concepts of critical thinking in business contexts and cases (i.e., logos, pathos, Proofs ethos).As such, the assessment integrated business content and business writing, using clear criteria and performance levels, but the majority of the marks in an assignment were allotted to the content-based learning goals (roughly a 70/30 ratio).The assessment of writing and language issues was thus significant enough that students sought additional support during TA hours by the language TA and language faculty member.In this way, they were "nudged" into support as writing and language were perceived as an important aspect of learning in the content course; they could not be seen as separate.It is important to underscore that non-EAL students also visited the language faculty and language TA to receive additional support.They often noticed that there were gaps in their own language and literacy learning that they had neglected in their own education, even in schools with English as the language of instruction.Thus, both types of students viewed the additional members of the instructional team as a resource.
Although this pilot was effective in meeting both EAL and non-EAL students' needs by not separating EAL students out into sheltered or adjunct language classes, there are questions about the sustainability of this model and the resources that will be required in future to maintain this level of support.This course is now a required second-year writing course with 15 sections per year and an enrolment of approximately 650 students per year.The curriculum is designed to support the ongoing development of business language and discourse skills within the context of critical thinking in business, but the instructional model may be limited to a language TA, rather than a co-instruction model involving a language faculty member.Without the latter, there is a risk that the focus on language in curriculum and assessment may become lost.
Given that some disciplinary faculty members find co-instruction and explicit language and writing support in the content area intrusive, other pilot projects have involved more course-aligned models of language support whereby a language faculty member or graduate student facilitates assignmentspecific, in-class or out-of-class workshops, or where a "language education" graduate student familiar with a disciplinary course offers out-of class, oneon-one support to students on a drop-in basis.Like immersion, these interventions involve explicit instruction of academic or discipline-specific language and writing conventions, but mostly outside of class time on a self-access basis without students receiving additional credit; as a result, there is minimal uptake.Some of the workshops have also focused on intercultural issues and academic acculturation into a North American university culture.Although this type of support is not content-based, it aims to address the social and emotional needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners.The importance of the cultural dimensions of language and content learning is also highlighted in university immersion programs, yet is often viewed as secondary, particularly when students are trying to meet the immediate demands of assignments and assessment in their content courses.

Discussion
The lessons learned from this pilot, from a curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional learning perspective, helped to sow the seeds of inquiry and motivation for pedagogical innovation amongst some faculty members in other disciplines.Others, however, continue to hold more traditional views -that language and academic literacies support and development should not be the purview of universities (especially research-intensive universities) and that this kind of support should be sought in private language schools.Similar to some of the reluctant disciplinary faculty described in a university French immersion context (Knoerr, et al., 2016, p. 172), there is an inherent belief in the separation between language and content: that university-level students should arrive prepared with native-like linguistic proficiency and academic literacy skills, to focus solely on content.Although these views exist in both university French immersion and anglo-dominant contexts, there are still innovative faculty members who are interested and curious about how to address and support their linguistically and culturally diverse students.Simon Fraser University's CELLTR intends to continue to work and collaborate with these early adopters and spread innovation at the grassroots level with faculty who are willing to engage.
Content faculty perceptions are important to consider in designing language support models as they can influence curriculum design at the course and program levels.There are some important differences between the model of support represented by SFU and the university immersion model, as experienced at the University of Ottawa, for example.The biggest contrast is that there is no adjunct language course or tutorial that provides only EAL students with targeted language and academic literacies support, much like the sheltered or adjunct immersion model at the University of Ottawa.Students at Simon Fraser are mainstreamed with their non-EAL peers into courses and programs on the assumption that they have reached a certain degree of linguistic preparedness and do not need ongoing support.
The CELLTR faculty have assumed a more developmental view of language learning amongst these mainstreamed multilingual students, aiming to provide support and interventions to students throughout their degree, as they transition into university and then out into the workforce (Arkoudis, 2014).Currently, however, the multilingual learners at SFU are in what is, in fact, more of a submersion model of language development (Fazio & Lyster, 1998), where students are exposed to the language through content, but do not need to receive explicit instruction on language and academic literacies, as it is as-Proofs sumed that their language development will be incidental.Any additional support for writing and language is available through a centralized writing centre on campus, which uses a peer support model for reviewing writing assignments.These peer mentors are not trained as certified language educators, and may not know how to guide EAL students.
More work needs to be done to reach more of a university-based immersion model whereby students would be mainstreamed into programs, while receiving explicit language and academic literacies instruction in English in credit-bearing courses or tutorials.The question is whether EAL students should be provided with the resources for additional support.If they are, then, much like the university immersion model, native speakers would not be eligible to take those courses, just as native speakers of French in the French immersion program are not allowed to enter the program.In the SFU context, there is no recognition or attribution of credits for EAL students; this is very different from the anglophones or allophones in the adjunct model, who receive credit for the French adjunct language course offered alongside their disciplinary course.
These adjunct language courses or tutorials could be beneficial to EAL students aiming to achieve comprehensible input of content, as well as genrespecific output in a university setting.Instead, the phenomenon we see in a mainstreamed EAL model is private tutoring agencies offering adjunct course support in the student's mother tongue (i.e., Cantonese) to grasp key disciplinary concepts to prepare for an exam.It is questionable, however, if this approach will enable students to improve their language skills in English beyond the exam.It is also important to note that they are using the language to "do school" (writing the exam or essays, memorizing content), rather than to communicate their understanding of disciplinary concepts to the instructor or fellow students.This kind of surface learning has its limitations, and may not support the deep learning expected of university students, at the cognitive, conceptual level, nor at the linguistic level.That being said, it should be recognized as an attempt by EAL students to use their broad linguistic repertoire as a resource for understanding concepts, as well as an indication of how the institution is perhaps not fully meeting the needs of these students through a submersive, mainstreamed content delivery model.

Conclusion
What have we learned from French immersion education at the various levels, and particularly from the recent French immersion programs at the university level?Addressing linguistic and cultural diversity issues in BC is complex and multi-faceted, especially with federally-based policies on official bilingualism and multiculturalism that may not be enacted by this province in the postsecondary education.In addition to examining models of education for multi-lingual students in such Anglophone settings as the US, Britain, or Australia, Canadian scholars could take advantage of the legal recognition of Canada's official multiculturalism and bilingualism, a status which is absent in these and other anglo-dominant contexts.To that end, it is important to examine the innovative initiatives and models of support across Canada, while also aiming to understand what makes the most sense, not only financially and politically, but also pedagogically, for our unique western context in a globalized world.
Another contrast concerns the complexities of teaching to a linguistically diverse group of allophones, which are likely to be different from the Ontario student population.Due to socio-political trends in colonialism and postcolonialism, the language families of students coming from various Asian countries are vastly different from one another.For example, students from India who come to British Columbia to study in high school and university arrive with the added advantage of having received most of their K-12 schooling in English.These students have a different linguistic foundation and different language needs than those from China, who have not had English as the language of instruction, and who are then submersed into content courses taught in English that are linguistically demanding.
When reflecting on the case study results, it is also important to consider the institutional culture and discourse around support for EAL learners.Some universities hesitate to be associated with ESL, as it might decrease their profile, having students who are "remedial" ESL students, especially as institutions compete for research-intensive status and building their world-wide reputation.This discourse may be different in universities that offer French immersion; there may not be the same sense of shame either from the student or from the institution in aiming to improve language skills alongside disciplinary learning in French.French-English bilingualism has a different status -it is celebrated and additive, whereas the disciplinary university programs traditionally provided in BC for allophone students are submersive and do not recognize students' linguistic diversity.
The experimental case study in the business school context has demonstrated that there is potential for meaningful awareness and impact of language and literacies development alongside disciplinary learning, even when EAL learners are not separated out into sheltered or adjunct language courses.As the student self-perception data show, mainstreamed EAL students found a content and language integrated model of support beneficial overall, as did the non-EAL students because it encouraged them to have a greater awareness of how language plays a central role in disciplinary learning.However, content-based language instruction models do separate "second language" from "first language" students, and further research needs to be conducted as to the relevant effectiveness of content-based language support to mainstreamed EAL learn-Proofs ers as compared to more sheltered or adjunct language support models.If such support in content classrooms is developed to address the linguistic diversity and needs of students, then both content and language faculty will also need to adjust their attitudes and practices to work collaboratively, and institutional structures need to encourage this collaboration (Zappa-Hollman, forthcoming).
In this case study, content faculty engaged in professional learning by recognizing the importance of language-adapted curriculum and instruction (i.e., highlighting lexical and grammatical structures common in a discipline, integrating learning activities that involved the four language skills).Language faculty also engaged in professional learning as they had to become familiar with key concepts and ways of thinking in the discipline.Most importantly, an embedded model of content and language integrated support involving coinstruction encouraged all faculty to collaborate, despite disciplinary differences.Faculty professional learning in the area of linguistically and culturally responsive instruction through interdisciplinary collaboration should be strongly encouraged in all university programs, with established recognition and reward mechanisms for faculty who do make efforts to address the needs of their diverse students.
If western Canadian universities wish to open their classroom doors to the world, university administrators and faculty must commit to: a. recognizing the various languages and levels of language proficiency amongst their multilingual students b. aim to provide supports and interventions that can help them transition effectively into university programs c. access and engage with the curriculum throughout their degree d. transition out into workplace contexts Murray (2016, p. 36) argues that this new educational landscape is not only an issue of student learning and faculty development, but a social justice issue that goes beyond the "fee for service" model of the internationalized university, to provide multilingual students with the support they may need to succeed in academia and beyond.To that end, as Canada moves into the next 150 years, it is through a social justice lens that the future of Canada's language education policies and practices should be shaped, for the years to come.