Page 47 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Research results

language about their feelings concerning the role of YouTubers, about the relationship be-
tween the development of the project and their motivation, autonomy and teamwork, and
about the process and outcome of the project in relation to their foreign language learning.
Part of the questions dealt with the time and technical aspects of the project.

To stay in line with the main theme of the article, we only present here the results of the
questions dealing with motivation, autonomous learning and plurilingualism.
More than half of the students stated that they were not motivated by the project to study the
language more. Only 16% of the students were more motivated to study a foreign language,
and two students answered that they did not know.
One reason for this result is that some students at the Faculty of Economics and Administra-
tion ind the compulsory study of a second foreign language too demanding and are worried
that they will not be able to successfully complete their economics studies because of this
language subject. In addition, some students still believe that a good knowledge of English
will be suf icient for them in their professional and personal life. Another reason for this re-
sult may be the fact that the Czech and Slovak students of our courses pragmatically expect
the content of the course to be designed as targeted preparation for the inal exam (which
includes a written and an oral part), and do not realise that they are learning primarily to
be able to communicate in a foreign language in various practical situations in the future.
About 21% of students believed that the project had an impact on their autonomy. Some
comments they made about this:

“We had to learn something new on our own, so it was de initely positive.”
“For me, the project served more to test both autonomy and cooperation with a colleague,
which worked very well.”

It was necessary to agree on several steps during the project. The project thus gave students
practice in making decisions independently but also working together in a team; in creating
a certain concept for the video, but also agreeing on it with a teammate; in creating a com-
promise and a mutually satisfactory solution; and in bringing a speci ic task to an end. One
student said:
“Yes, I liked to be in charge of the project and to be able to use my creativity (it was a bit
limited by the other person) and in luence the result.”

However, almost a third of the students answered that they did not know if the project had
in luenced their autonomy or said that they did not understand the question (“I guess the
project didn’t affect my autonomy, but maybe I just don’t understand the question.” and
“I was pretty autonomous before.”). Therefore, in the future, the question will need to be
better formulated or the meaning of autonomy will need to be explained better to students.
About 57% of students said they believe that by watching YouTubers and their multilingual
channels, they can learn/practice several languages at the same time. Some of their com-
ments on this:
“I really think so. It’s great and I did it while learning English.”

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