Approaching French cultures in the FSL classroom: The salade niçoise recipe

Abstract

The most meaningful and profound elements of cultures are often hidden below the surface. This exploratory case study investigates how a sample of Ontario non-native French-speaking educators approached Frenchspeaking cultures in the Grade 9 Core French classroom. Confident participants were often frequent travellers to francophone communities, regularly studied French to improve their linguistic and cultural proficiencies, and redesigned cultural activities with current material. The educators also experienced difficulties including lack of information and communications technology, teacher-training and experiential learning for students. The findings raise several possibilities for profound cultural exploration, such as (a) perceiving culture through a pluricultural perspective, (b) refining teacher-training initiatives, (c) following the neurolinguistic approach for oral fluency, and (d) prioritizing travel-based activities so that students can better explore francophone communities and their cultures.