Page 16 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Introduction (English)

(the question of which languages to learn and how to learn them), the perception of interac-
tion between the languages learned and the development of plurilingual strategies. On the
other hand, the authors set out the challenges facing the teacher in relation to this new role
of the learner, who is becoming increasingly autonomous in his or her learning and tends
to prefer collaborative learning to more traditional frontal teaching.
The article Entwicklung vielsprachiger Identitäten durch interkulturelle Begegnun-
gen: Deutsch-Französische und Französisch-Französische Sprachtandems im Ver-
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gleich, by Sebastian Doderlein and Juliane Bertrand, describes several types of language
tandems: in situ unilingual tandems facilitating the integration of migrants in Quebec (in-
tercultural twinning), the Franco-German summer seminar in Germany, and bilingual e-
tandems. The article highlights the fundamental role of the choice of themes in stimulat-
ing student motivation and shows how, thanks to the tandems – whether interlanguage or
intralanguage – these same students become mediators between cultures by developing
plurilingual and pluricultural identities.
Despite courageous and creative attempts by teachers to value and develop students’
plurilingual skills, one thing is clear. First of all, in language teaching and learning, the gen-
eral tendency is still to take one language at a time into account, ignoring the in luence of
languages already known on the learning of new ones, the interaction between languages
and the learner’s perception of the interaction between the languages he/she knows or is
learning. Nevertheless, we now know that we do not learn an L2 in the same way as an
L3 and that the motivation to learn new languages is in luenced by the way in which the
plurilingual individual perceives the interaction between his/her languages.
The article Motivation, autonomous learning, plurilingualism: students as YouTubers

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(Veronika De Azevedo Camacho, Marie Cervenkova, Monika Seveckova) highlights students’
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uncertainty about learning additional languages not in a traditional course, probably due to
the in luence of the teaching system, which does not encourage openness towards learn-
ing languages more autonomously. The didactic experiment set up by these teachers and
carried out in the context of three language courses (French, Spanish and Russian for busi-
ness) has led them to re lect on teaching and assessment strategies that can enhance and
stimulate students’ plurilingualism. Using the example of YouTubers, linguistic and cultural
mediators, the students worked in tandem. The aim of the project was to learn a new for-
eign language and practise their multilingual skills by producing videos and subtitling them.
The question arises: does the relationship between the world of young people (knowledge
of YouTubers) and the world of academia increase motivation to learn or at least in luence
learning? Even though the feedback from the students on motivation is not unanimous,
this experiment has highlighted points for re lection on the students’ perception of the dif-
ferences between the languages studied and the in luence of a known language on the lan-
guages to be learned. The authors noted the fundamental role of the choice of topics to work
on in activating student motivation.
There is currently a trend at some universities in the Czech Republic to promote tandem
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language learning. Silvie Prevratilova, author of the article Plurilingual Students in Tan-
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dem Language Exchange: Motivation, Perceived Positive Language Interaction, and
Plurilingual Approach, points out that studies on this type of learning generally focus on
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