French immersion program celebrating 50 years in Calgary [Video]

The Calgary Board of Education (CBE) is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the French Immersion Program.

Cindy Chin, the CBE’s French learning leader, says the French Immersion Program is offered to all Calgarians with or without any knowledge of the French language.

“French immersion is for those that maybe have a little bit of French,” she said. “Those that already speak two languages or three languages at home, we welcome everybody into our programs.”

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Chin says the CBE also hosts Spanish-bilingual, Mandarin-bilingual and German classes, but it all started with French immersion in the fall of 1973.

McDougall School in central Calgary was the first with its two Grade 1 classes. Back then, they spent half their time in French and the other half in English, whereas today 100 per cent of Grade 1 instruction …