Languages have never been my strong suit.
An assumption many Canadians have run into abroad, myself included, is that most people in our country are bilingual. I’ve found that many non-Canadians believe this in spite of knowing that exactly one province in our federation is majority francophone.
“But isn’t it taught in all the schools?” they ask.
It is — poorly. At least, I felt it was taught poorly to me. I can’t pin all of the blame for my monolingualism on Ontario’s public school system: my dad actively discouraged my French language education. But I feel as though a pretty important element that nine year-olds should know before they’re taught a second language was conspicuously absent from my first French class in fourth grade.
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