my daughter is looking to spend 6 months in Canada next school year, she will be 15. Specifically we are looking at French speaking Canada, Moncton.
(Not looking for someone to tell me we should choose different )
Question is, any chance someone is from there or knows it? I would like to get some advice to better prepare her on the transition.
Thank you
K
As mentioned, in Moncton there will be both EN and FR. But, she might end up getting more EN than FR. If she goes to Quebec (outside of Montréal Island where most young people would speak both but parts of the city are FR and others EN so the location/family would count) she will have 100 % FR (especially as one goes into the Eastern Townships, Lac St. Jean and Quebec City etc.)
Is she looking for FR specifically, or more an exchange in a FR region? Ok with EN as well?
A bit more detail might help with people's suggestions.
We are looking at the schools that teach only in French and as I understand it, Moncton is bilingual but we want a french speaking family - sort of doing a full immersion thing.
No programs available in Quebec etc.
Thanks for the update about the choice being NB (New Brunswick) rather than QC.
Here is the website for the DSFS (Le District scolaire francophone Sud). It covers the whole southern part of the province (NB).
https://francophonesud.nbed.nb.ca/ (landing page).
Details for international students. The EN does not seem to work.
https://francophonesud.nbed.nb.ca/in…internationaux
Other link for international students. https://pacnb.org/fr/services/programme-international
Students are boarded with FR speaking families so that guarantees a level of FR.
From the French aspect, is a different place in NBS better? (Again NBS only option - no programs in other French speaking Canada regions).
I would do it if the idea is to gain independance, spend time in Canada and enjoy the exchange. If the aim is, however, to improve French then I would look at France or Belgium.
France and Belgium not an option - too close. Main objective is she wants the experience. Given it coat a bomb we asked her to at least go somewhere where there is also some language improvement benefit. That is how we landed on the French speaking area of Canada.
The metro area has a population of 180k, not huge but not small either.
I am from the maritime provinces and also had the experience of our family hosting an exchange student through EF when I was in high school. I have specific comments about the language, the city of Moncton, and the exchange student experience in Canada.
French language
Moncton is a bilingual city with a majority anglophone population. Pretty much every francophone will speak English, so even though the dialect is very strong, assuming your daughter speaks English, she would rarely be in a situation where she wouldn’t be able to communicate with someone. The schooling would be in standard French, but the local francophones speak " Chiac ", which is a very specially accented dialect that borrows heavily from English. This is a joke (they didn’t re-do the whole movie) but this fake trailer for the movie Toy Story in Acadien/Chiac is one of the funniest things on the internet.
Moncton
Moncton is the largest city in New Brunswick, but it is significantly smaller than Zurich and has fewer services. If your daughter does manage to snag a placement with a francophone family it is highly probably she will not be living downtown but rather in Dieppe or somewhere further east. Public transportation might not be an option, your daughter could depend on her host family to go anywhere after school or on the weekends, which could become very limiting. This would be generally true of almost anywhere she would go in Canada. Outside of city centres it’s very much a car culture. Also, Canada is very sparsely populated, so if your daughter’s idea of fun is travelling every weekend she will unfortunately not have many destinations within a few hundred kms. I am from Nova Scotia, and every time I go back I am staggered by how little people travel. Apart from going away on holiday people seem to spend the majority of their lives just driving their typical commute/shopping/social activity routes. Going away to a new place just for tourism as a day trip or weekend isn’t really a thing. Not that it’s a bad thing, just different. Compared to the bustle of Europe your daughter will find most places in Canada quiet and perhaps on the boring side. How does she normally spend her spare time?
The exchange student experience
When I was in my last year of high school in the late 90’s my mom decided we should get an exchange student. She’d already shipped two kids off to university and had two still at home, so was used to having lots of kids around and figured it would be easy to accommodate one more person in her household. We contacted EF and after we were vetted as a family we received a very large stack of applicants for us to sift through. A few of the applicants specified they’d prefer a specific location, but I think you and your daughter need to be aware of the fact that for all exchange programs there is a shortage of host families, and if you want to limit your search to one specific place you might not be successful in finding a placement. The girl we picked (who was from Aargau) had even specified she’d like to be near the rocky mountains if possible, but we decided to offer to host her as she seemed like the best fit for our family, even though we live thousands of kilometres east of the Rockies. She accepted as we were the only family that offered to host her. Two years later her brother applied for an exchange in Canada and also wanted to be near the big mountains, but he ended up with a family in rural Saskatchewan. Your idea of aiming for Moncton sounds nice, but being rigid about where she will go could greatly reduce the likelihood of her going abroad.
Honestly, I think you need to consider which is more important, the experience of living abroad or the language thing. If learning French really is the goal I’d recommend a true French immersion somewhere: Moncton is a very anglo place, since all the francophones speak English your daughter will certainly not get the same learning benefit as she would from going to France or Belgium (as you said Quebec isn’t an option). If she wants the experience of living abroad I’d recommend to lower your criteria to maximize the chances of her finding a place. She could of course express preference for a French speaking city, but mention that she is fluent in English and would also consider doing her exchange with an English-speaking family.
Another thing to consider is that based on my observations, host families tend to be larger families, which I guess makes sense. It takes a certain type of family to think it’s not a big deal to have one extra kid around the house. Would your daughter be okay with sharing a room? Does she need a lot of personal space and alone time? Would she be okay living in a rural area?
Regarding Canada, there are many great things about the country (the people really are super friendly) but for the most part it is very remote. The distances between cities is enormous and it is highly likely that your daughter would have relatively few opportunities to travel. Rural Canada is a particularly isolating place. My family is super sporty and also musical, so our exchange student was able to capitalize on this to meet people, and to also take up a new hobby to keep herself busy on the very long winter nights. She joined me in playing soccer with the school team, and she took up the piano as my brother was also taking lessons. She didn’t feel as though she was imposing on our family, as my parents were already were doing soccer and piano taxi service for their own kids.
In contrast, in the next village there was another exchange student hosted by a family with 4 rambunctious kids. The exchange student had a much more negative experience. She had to share a room in a cramped and noisy house, and was not able to escape easily. She ended up playing soccer with us just to have some time away from the host family and meet friends. But on the whole she found the year very challenging. The boy I mentioned who spent a year in Sackatchewan also found it tough. He was with a farming family with 4 kids in a very rural setting, there was very little to do and the siblings fought all the time. He stayed sane by getting super into running. (Of course these days there is the internet, so boredom is more likely to translate into spending way too much time online.)
Overall I think doing an exchange and of course learning languages are great things. However, more than language I think the consideration should be how your daughter will spend her spare time while abroad. You say she’s not sporty, but this could mean she prefers malls and makeup to skiing, it could mean she’s more into music and drama, or she could be someone who spends most of her time online.
My opinion: If living in a city will be important to her I’d recommend forgetting the French thing as Moncton is pretty much the only option, and even then I don’t think it’s a great one simply because English is the dominant language. There will be many more potential host families if the search criteria is opened to any city in Canada, and more again if rural is okay.
I have no connection to EF but will say that we had a very good experience, and our exchange student did as well. She spent her first two weeks in Canada in Toronto meeting something like 100 other incoming exchange students and they did lots of sightseeing but also having seminars about the exchange student experience and how to manage expectations. Our regional coordinators were excellent, and served as mentors to all the students in their region, often having them over for dinner, and offering them a place to sleep if they wanted to have a short break from their host families. We are still in contact with them to this day.
Anyways, this is getting a bit rambly so I’ll stop here. I’d be more than happy to chat about Canada and doing an exchange there if your daughter would be interested. I wish her good luck!
EF does not offer French speaking Canada - at least not on the website.
We do need to go via the associations approved by the school but we have a big choice. Just NBS is the only are most of these offer if you want a French speaking school, which is what we want. Some of them offer bespoke program in Quebec on paper but when you start inquiring it's pretty clear they do not have as much experience and ties to it as for NBS.
We will consider all that has been shared for the next steps.
Hello all!
Just thought I would update
We have finalized the exchange and my daughter will spend 6 months in Edmunston, which is a small town/city East of Quebec city. She was attracted to try something different and we are all very excited.
In case of future users of this thread - there is very few associations who offer exchange in French speaking Canada and mostly will be NBW. This is due to the demand here which is mostly for English speaking Canada. It is rare to find Quebec but possible but if you do not want to lose a school year, has to be as association recognized by the school here. So a bit complicated and probably easier to go to France for french
We chose to work with a company called Into ( https://into-schueleraustausch.ch/ ) which is a small business and we liked the personal approach (vs the process oriented, bounced from one person to another of some of the big ones).
And now onto getting used to the idea that my baby will be so far from me for 5 months…
Thank you all for all the food for thought you provided.