Our Programs : Professional Development for Language Teachers

LEAD Program

Program Overview

The LEAD (Language Education Advancement and Development) Program is an initiative that includes:

• Professional development opportunities for teachers qualified in language education (program under construction)
• Research undertaken jointly by the University of Calgary’s Language Research Centre and CFIS
• Adult Language education courses
• Remedial programs

Opportunity
Increasing globalization drove the Government of Alberta to review Alberta’s international competitiveness and to develop a strategy for success in this rapidly changing environment. As part of this review, Alberta Learning developed “Alberta’s International Education Strategy”, in which an increased focus has been placed on language education as a means to allow Albertans to successfully compete in important sectors of the economy.

The government also set a goal of establishing broad-band infrastructure, called the SuperNet, linking schools and other institutions in over 400 communities in the province. This initiative has created an opportunity for collaborative projects across disparate regions of the province. Already connected to the SuperNet, CFIS is now one of a small handful of schools in North America that is able to work effectively with schools throughout the province to create learning opportunities for both students and teachers.

CFIS’s unique combination of knowledge, experience, facilities, technology, partners and perspective provides us with an opportunity to become a leader in the professional development of teachers qualified in language education and in the research on language learning.

Specifically, the program has these ambitious primary objectives:

1. Become a leading centre for the professional development of French and Spanish language educators regionally and provincially.
2. Establish and maintain an International Library Resource Centre for students, educators and parents.
3. Develop leading edge knowledge regarding language education and language learning through directed, ongoing research conducted at the School.
4. Provide exceptional professional development opportunities for language teachers regionally and provincially through practicum training workshops/seminars and by providing quality resources and materials.
5. Facilitate enrichment opportunities through adult evening language classes, children's weekend programs and cultural experiences and exchanges.

Research

We have sponsored research with a Linguistics PHd student to determine best practices in language learning, delivery mechanisms and market research.

The LEAD Program partnered with the Language Research Centre (LRC) for a research project investigating the pronunciation of students at the School. Studies have shown that accurate pronunciation is more important than grammatical accuracy when native speakers judge native-likeness, and yet we know that most students come out of immersion programs without native-like pronunciation.

The goals of the research project were to determine how it is that these students differ from native speakers of French in their French pronunciation and to establish why it is that some students perform better than others. From this researchers hope to create and implement pedagogical interventions to assist students in this very important area of French performance.

Ninety-five (95) students and nearly all teachers at CFIS took part in the study and the project has also received nation-wide support with research extended to include 25 students from the same grades at a Quebec French school for comparison purposes. In October 2004, researcher Mary Grantham O’Brien, Assistant Professor of German at the University of Calgary co-presented the study with Josée Turmaine-King, then a CFIS teacher, at an international conference.