A pan-university open online course approach to EOL academic literacy for tertiary students

Abstract

Canada and the academic world have changed dramatically since the Bilingualism and Biculturalism Reports and the implementation of French immersion programs in Canada a half century ago. From the original theme of bilingualism, equality and the balancing of French and English in Canada, globalization and immigration have produced a different model of bilingualism in a multilingual and multicultural Canada situated in a global English dominant academic network. This paper addresses the academic world dominance of English and the necessity of the majority of the world’s English speakers, who are not native speakers of English but speak English as an “other” language (EOL), as well as the minority of English speakers for whom English is their dominant language, to attain higher levels of academic literacy for the globalized world of academia. All of the approaches for EOL online immersion instruction proposed here can also be exploited to raise the French academic literacy of French immersion students and faculty for tertiary education.