Acquisition of Variation in the Use of alors, donc, fait que by Advanced French-as-a-Second-Language Learners in Ontario, Canada

This study examines the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation in the use of French connectors alors/donc/fait que ‘so’ by two groups of advanced French-as-a-second language (FL2) learners in Ontario: (i) high school French Immersion (FI) students and (ii) university students. It considers two types of functions fulfilled by these connectors: (i) the grammatical function of expressing consequence between two clauses and (ii) a range of discursive functions, a dual focus not present in previous research, which considered only one or the other of these two types of functions. Our study shows that: (i) although these two FL2 groups’ use of the connectors is distant from the norms of FL1 speech, the university students achieve a more advanced level of acquisition of this case of variation than do the FI students, reflecting the positive effect of continued learning of French at the postsecondary level; (ii) ‘level of opportunities to interact in French with native speakers’ has a greater positive impact on the acquisition of alors/donc/fait que than ‘time spent learning French’; and (iii) both groups of students evidence incomplete acquisition of the linguistic constraints of connector choice.