Recently arrived English as a second language (ESL) students were compared to their unilingual and multilingual Canadian-born peers on measures of French proficiency. All of the participants were enrolled in secondary core French (CF)--the ESL students were studying introductory French, whereas the Canadian-born students were in Grade 9 CF, their sixth year of French study. French proficiency was measured using a multi-skills test consisting of a multiple choice listening test, three reading tasks, two writing tasks, a dictation and three oral tasks. The ESL group outperformed the other groups in both the reading and listening test components and in one of the writing tasks. They also outperformed the unilingual group on one section of the speaking test and the multilingual group on another section of the speaking component. There were no significant differences found among the groups for the other test components: the dictation, the second writing section or the final speaking component. (Contains 10 tables and 2 notes.)