Page 15 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Introduction

Plurilingual skills: prospects and actions
The aim of this volume is to highlight the re lections of teachers and researchers from
a wide variety of backgrounds on their teaching practices that promote the development
of plurilingual skills (whether these stem from speci ic contexts or are part of larger-scale
interuniversity projects). Plurilingualism, intercomprehension, awareness of other lan-
guages, pedagogical innovation, the role of teachers and learners, autonomy and motiva-
tion are the key concepts that emerge from their contributions and which form the common
thread running through the volume.
The contributions fall within the scope of the approach to plurilingualism de ined by Enrica
Piccardo, A. Germain-Rutheford and G. Lawrence, who emphasise its personal, transitory
and vague nature:
Plurilingualism is thus complex, dynamic, lexible notion (Beacco & Byram, 2007; Piccardo 2018; Piccardo &
Puozzo, 2015; Stratilaki, 2005). Plurilinguals have ’one plural repertoire of linguistic and cultural resources’
(Beacco et al, 2016, p. 20) acquired through their personal trajectory. This is seen as being unbalanced, partial,
incomplete – dependent on each individual trajectory. It is seen as a changing or transitory competence, in which
capacities in one language or variety may be very different in nature to those in another. It is embedded in an
equally developing pluricultural competence. And every person’s plurilingual repertoire is unique since it re lects
both their background and their subsequent trajectory, interests, and experiences. (...) The plurilingual repertoire
of an individual develops in a never-ending process of cycles of emergence. (E. Piccardo, A. Germain-Rutherford
& G. Lawrence. (Eds.), 2022)
The experiences presented and collected in this book all show a great openness towards
plurilingualism and demonstrate a desire for research and innovation in this ield. Hugues
Sheeren, in his article entitled L’intercompréhension entre langues non apparentées:
une utopie? Le projet romano-germanique “Well-BeIntercomprehension”, presents
the Well-BeIntercomprehension project, of which he is co-author. This is a website for learn-
ing 12 languages, and its mission is to make learners aware of the links between languages
and to develop their plurilingual repertoire. Hugues Shereen revisits the notion of intercom-
prehension, the permeability of unrelated languages within the Indo-European family being
greater than we think. By taking stock of the languages in Europe (80% of Europeans speak
either a Romance or a Germanic language), he sees a major challenge in developing inter-
comprehension between these two language families, where certain languages could play
the role of bridge languages, opening up access to the idioms of the other group. English, for
example, because of its ’contamination’ by French, is in some ways halfway between these
two groups. While the concept of intercomprehension is now consolidated to applications
within the same linguistic family, the originality of this project lies precisely in the fact that
it transcends borders.

To pave the way for multilingualism and encourage the use and development of students’
linguistic repertoires, a number of teachers have set up tandem programmes within their
courses and in collaboration with other institutions, in their own country or abroad: a lan-
guage exchange between two people or in a group, enabling students to practise the lan-
guage or languages they are studying. A number of common features emerge from the ex-
periences reported: on the one hand, the active role played by learners in their own learning

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