College Nordique sees increased demand
Adult language-learning centre adds classrooms, meeting space and kitchen area
Jessica Davey-Quantick
Northern News Services
Tuesday, September 26, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
College Nordique is having a Field of Dreams moment.
After moving to a bigger space recently, the school's directrice generale Josee Clermont says the fall session classes have become the biggest yet.
They built it, and the students came.
"We tripled in size," she said of both the demand and the new space.
The school offers courses in French, English and Tilcho, as well as professional development, community workshops and distance-education sessions. Clermont said the school will also be offering courses for territorial employees during afternoon sessions, but the evening courses fill up with everyone and anyone.
"We have all kinds of people taking courses," she said.
College Nordique has moved to the second floor of the NWT Commerce Place, and now has a number of additional classrooms as well as smaller rooms for one-on-one lessons and language assessments, a meeting space and a kitchen area.
"This fall we have a lot of demand," said Clermont.
For example, she said they had "three times" the amount of course requests from just one client alone. The school works with the federal government and national defense to offer language courses to their staff, as well as offering courses to the general public. Firm numbers weren't available, but she said she knows they're much busier than previous years "just by the way the phone is ringing and e-mails coming in."
Previously, the school would have about 200 part-time students, but Clermont said with their new larger space, that number is growing.
"After we moved into a bigger place, that has to do with it," she said. "We needed the space, just to better serve the community really. And we could see that demand was growing."
The NWT recognizes English, French, Inuktitut, Gwich'in, North Slavey, South Slavey, Inuinnaqtun, Cree, Chipewyan, Tlicho and Inuvialuktun as official languages. However, official census data shows the most spoken language in the territory is English, according to visual census data from Statistics Canada in 2011. The last time such data was available, 90.3 per cent of the population of the NWT only spoke English, with only 9.1 per cent speaking both English and French. Those who only speak French hovered at just 0.1 per cent. These statistics match numbers from 2009 from the NWT Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force and Community Surveys, which found 98.5 per cent of the population over age 15 in the Yellowknife area could converse in English, while 15.3 per cent could hold a conversation in French.
As for indigenous languages, in 2009, the NWT Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force and Community Surveys found that 3.2 per cent of the population surveyed could converse in Tlicho. Tlicho is the most spoken non-official-language mother tongue in the Northwest Territories, according to Stats Canada census data from 2011, followed by Slavey and Tagalog.
This diversity is why Clermont says learning another language is so important.
"We live in a territory that has 11 official languages," she said, adding many people are interested in learning another language, especially French
"Either for their career or for pleasure, or just to learn for life."
College Nordique also offers opportunities to interact in another language, something studies have shown is crucial to develop and retain a language. That's why Clermont says the college offers activities like Northern lights photography workshops in French as well as post-secondary accredited training courses in French.
"We're trying to offer opportunities for people to live in French, not just take courses, but live. So we also promote any activity that's going on in the community in French. We kind of want to be the go-to place," she said.
