Page 17 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Plurilingual skills: prospects and actions

plurilingual practices in the context of language exchanges and do not take into account
the learners’ plurilingual repertoire. The article relates the experience of a Czech/French
(L4) tandem between a Canadian student learning Czech as an L4 (Charles University) and
a Czech student learning French (Masaryk University) and presents the results of a detailed
qualitative analysis conducted through the language background of each of the two partic-
ipants, their respective learning diaries, and recordings of their interviews. The subjacent
research questions are multiple and concern the sources of motivation that inspire multi-
lingual learners, the different ways of perceiving the interactions between the languages
learned, and the plurilingual strategies adopted. Experience has shown that the perception
of interactions between the languages learnt can be positive or negative, that learners who
recognise positive interactions between the languages they have learnt are more motivated
than those who do not, and that the plurilingual strategies used by learners can inspire
plurilingual teaching strategies. The role of the teacher is to perceive the interactions be-
tween the languages learnt by the learners in order to increase motivation to learn. The
main interest of this article lies in the analysis of motivational factors (primarily external)
such as the in luence of teachers, parents, and the linguistic contacts the learners have had
during their lives and language learning.
Projects set up during Covid-19 highlight the in luence of technology on language learn-
ing and, consequently, on the tandem system. The article Dal tandem all’e-tandem: di-
mensioni plurilingui (Jonathan-Olivier Merlo, Rodolphe Pauvert, Elena Tea) reports on
a Franco-Italian e-tandem experiment carried out during the pandemic by three universities
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(Universita per Stranieri di Siena, Universite de Poitiers and Universite Grenoble Alpes). In
the irst part of their contribution, the authors explain, in broad terms, how the tandem ex-
change works. They discuss theories on learning a foreign language, personal development
in learning, multiple learning strategies, and the in luence of teaching scenarios and tech-
nological aids. In addition, they show that the tandem is one of the new teaching practices
which promote the learning of a living language (sociolinguistic variations of the language)
by going beyond the simple cognitive aspect of learning, enabling the student to become
responsible for and the protagonist of his/her learning and the teacher to leave his/her tra-
ditional position and become a learning facilitator. As a result, the dual role assumed by
the students (learner/expert) enables them to be more tolerant in accepting their partner’s
production, to increase their motivation, to work independently, and to feel more at ease
in oral exchanges. An analysis of the questionnaires distributed to the students at the end
of the year showed that, despite the instruction to use only the two languages of the ex-
change, as in a traditional face-to-face tandem, the exchange ended up being multilingual
– using other common languages, but also varying the methods (use of juvenile language
in writing and orally, synchronous and asynchronous sessions, use of WhatsApp and Insta-
gram applications). The article shows how, with the Covid experience (which forced the
introduction of distance or hybrid teaching methods) the very concept of plurilingualism
has evolved: the plurilingual stance, as the authors show, is above all understood by the
participants in the project as a means of playing with language, of testing hybrid forms of
language that distance themselves from book-based knowledge. Looking at the different
formats available to the partners (emails, voice recordings, online or telephone chats, In-
stagram accounts, etc.) the authors can attest to the fact that the project participants were

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