Page 18 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Introduction (English)

able to play with language in a variety of ways. The authors also indicate that the type of
language corresponding to these different frameworks is obviously not the same. Learners
have therefore had to develop new strategies for communicating. One of the merits of this
article is therefore that it raises the question of the role of language teachers in the age of
digital exchanges.
The articles in this volume also show that questions of identity and culture are crucial in any
language exchange. In particular, Athena Alchazidu, author of Building Presentation and
Communication Skills in a Tandem-Taught Course with Plurilingual and Pluricultural
Approaches, highlights how plurilingual and pluricultural competence can be a tool for in-
clusionandintegration. Theauthordescribesandre lectsontheexperienceofaCLILcourse
delivered to war refugees in Ukraine (a pre-university audience) and arranged outside the
framework of standard university courses at Masaryk University. The aims of the course
were to develop cognitive study skills (to prepare participants for study at Masaryk Univer-
sity), respond to special needs (war trauma), and develop communication skills in multilin-
gual and multicultural contexts. The course languages were English, Czech and Ukrainian.
The teaching was done alternately by a language teacher and a psychologist. The results
show that the students have a greater awareness of plurilingual competence and a grad-
ual openness to and understanding of pluricultural challenges. From a methodological and
didactic point of view, it appears that the multilingual and multicultural approach consid-
erably facilitated the inclusion and adaptation of the participants to the Czech university
environment. A small survey using questionnaires at the beginning and end of the course
shows that the participants’ perception of their plurilingualism changed over the course of
the training experience. At the end of the course, the participants valued languages that
were less well mastered, or less socially valued, and that had not been mentioned initially.
This article shows, in detail, how important universities are in the process of welcoming
refugees so that the training of the intellectual elites of a country at war is not disrupted.
In this context, the article also illustrates in detail how teaching teams can change their
approach and reinvent themselves so that teaching methodologies are adapted to human
resources rather than the other way round.
The study of plurilingual competence in children is another highly topical area of research,
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as highlighted in Plurilingual Competence in a Child: A Case Study (Linda Krahula Dolezı́,
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Katerina Mullerova). This article relates the experience of a four-year-old child living in
a plurilingual family context. The authors refer to theories on children’s language acqui-
sition, focusing on the linguistic system and its dynamics. This linguistic system, which is
linked to the child’s own individual trajectory, can be in equilibrium but can also be under-
mined by a linguistic event. It is not static but linked to the age and cognitive characteristics
of the individual. Interestingly, the reported experiment shows that interaction between
ive languages does not necessarily lead to incomprehension in communication. Rather, ex-
amples of codic alternation can be considered as indicators of multi-skilling and can have
positive long-term effects on the well-being of multilingual users. The question arises: how
can we help maintain all the child’s languages if the linguistic situation in which the child
lives changes? The answer given by the authors is that the child’s preferences must be re-
spected, and a balance sought between the parents’ linguistic wishes and the child’s ten-
dency to prefer to express him/herself in his/her strongest language.

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