n. — Education
a program in schools to teach French as a second language with fewer contact hours than French immersion.
Type: 1. Origin — This is a program that is offered by most Canadian school boards in regions where English is the primary medium of instruction. The goals of the program are to acquire basic communication skills in French as well as cultural knowledge. In Canada's bilingual set-up, the program has at times been exposed to political interference at the height of English-French tensions (see the 1986 quotation). The learning outcomes, given the considerable number of contact hours, have not always been as expected (see the 1978 and 2007 quotations).
Core French is usually started in grade 4.
See also COD-2, s.v. "core French", which is marked "Cdn".