Le Jour des Franco-Ontariens et des Franco-Ontariennes (Franco-Ontarian Day) – thus officially named since 2010 – is the perfect opportunity to celebrate Ontario's Francophone community, its culture and its rich history. At the heart of Ontario's Francophonie is a shared love of the French language and the desire to have it discovered. OLBI shares this sentiment and encourages all students to explore the Francophonie. We are proud to celebrate this very special day and invite you to take part in the many virtual activities offered by the Carrefour francophone. Don't miss, among others, the launch of the new ILOBify application. Happy celebrations!

In response to the current distance-learning challenge students and professors face, the Julien Couture Resource Centre (JCRC) team has developed an online app to serve as a companion in the virtual learning of French as a second language. The application dubbed ILOBify offers a plethora of resources to help improve, maintain and perfect users’ language skills. Check out engaging short videos, view feature films that will take you on virtual journeys, listen to current affaires podcasts, from Indigenous voices to discussions about Covid-19, discover platforms with books or articles in free access, and find advice to make your essays clearer and more organized. All in the palm of your hand! Learn more about ILOBify

Note: An ESL version is currently under development. 

Starting October 15, the Language Management Interdisciplinary Research Group (GRIGL) will launch the first event of its brand-new GRIGL Thursdays series. The 2020 edition will feature six forums pertaining to language policies in linguistic minority and socio-cultural environments. This year, the live forums, hosted by distinguished professors, will be preceded by virtual masterclasses. As an introduction to the topic and to fuel the discussions, the masterclasses will be posted on the OLBI Youtube channel  one week prior to the live forums which will take place via Zoom from 12– 12:30 p.m. on the day of the event.

Join us on October 15 at 12:00 as Lorena Fontaine, associate-professor, University of Winnipeg, opens this year’s GRIGL Thursdays series with a look on Indigenous Language Rights in Canada. Check out the full GRIGL Thursdays schedule and be sure to mark your calendars! 

Professor Marie-Josée Hamel is amongst recipients of a 2020 SSHRC research grant for her newest research project on corrective feedback. Professor Hamel’s research program aims to adapt for pedagogical purposes and test with French Second Language (FSL) teachers a digital tool for written corrective feedback. It will allow the annotation of errors in the written texts of FSL learners and will bring together statistical methods and linguistic analysis resources from automatic language processing to produce sophisticated analyses of linguistic performance. This tool will be made available to teachers and researchers at the end of the project.