Utah is America in a western version. Vast expanses of desert, large national parks, pick-up trucks speeding along ten-lane highways, the Rocky Mountain range as a backdrop. In this decor of wide open spaces, an unexpected curiosity: a thousand young Americans here speak French on a daily basis.
“For me, it was a shock”remembers Claire Tocaven, a Frenchwoman living in Salt Lake City, the state capital, for five years. “I had just arrived, I was chatting with a neighbor, and she said to me: “My son speaks French!” The 7 year old child arrives, he starts the conversation with me, with a good accent. »
The mystery was quickly solved. Since 2008, Utah has been developing “dual-language immersion” classes in its public schools and colleges. The method is radical: from CP, students follow half their day in a foreign language (Spanish, Chinese, French, Portuguese) – in most cases with a native language teacher – and the other half in English, with a second teacher.
Not a word in English
“The result is extraordinary”, judge Sophie Clairet, school teacher who arrived in Utah in 2021. Students acquire comprehension skills and oral fluency from an early age. Teaching focuses on participation, the use of French between children, repetition, games, manipulation of objects, rewards and songs.
“Monolingualism is the illiteracy of the 21ste century” – Gregg Roberts, former executive of the Utah State Board of Education
That morning at West Jordan Public School in the residential suburb of Salt Lake City, students from third grade (CE2) begin a science lesson. “And why did those little drops of water evaporate? », asks Elyse Brunet, their mistress, a thirty-year-old who left Grenoble to settle in Utah in 2021. The answers burst out. Not a word in English, all 8 year olds play the game. “My students always think I don’t understand a word of Englishbreathes Elyse Brunet. The other day, there was one who had an annoyance, he came to see me crying, he was crying in French! »
In the United States, the model of “immersion in two languages” began to develop in the 1980s in California with Spanish, to meet the demand of an immigrant population, and in Louisiana, with French. . Since the 2010s, the movement has been accelerating, thanks in particular to Utah, which has multiplied the openings of classes and formalized the teaching methods adopted elsewhere, becoming a reference. In this state, nearly 65,000 young people from very diverse social backgrounds follow their education in immersion in two languages, including 9,000 in French.
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