Page 52 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

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V. De Azevedo Camacho, M. Cervenkova, M. Seveckova: Motivation, ...
Didactic project conclusions and implications
Knowing that effective vocabulary learning and acquisition increases students’ motivation
and self-con idence (Edwards, E, Roger, P. S., 2015, Isakovna, T. N., Kosimov, A., 2023), and
being aware that our students do not study linguistics or didactics, but economics, we in-
tended to promote student autonomy and make the learning process more attractive for
them by involving the Language Teaching Assistants and giving the students an authentic
assignment (transfer to practice). While the students positively evaluated the experience
of working with audio and visual elements and subtitles as a more effective way of learning
a foreign language, some of them also expressed doubt that the project had any relevance
for improving their language level and that they had spent too much time on the technical
processing of the video (editing and subtitling). We believe that this partially negative atti-
tude is due to the fact that some of the students expect that the language course will merely
help them master certain material for the inal test, and are not aware that project teach-
ing develops not only their language skills, but also targets soft skills (collaboration, time
management, providing feedback, etc.). Our didactic goal is to gradually include more small
project tasks in the teaching, to link them to the students’ ield of study and to build the
students’ awareness of the need to develop comprehensively in all respects.
Although social interaction was not one of the main didactic objectives of the project, this
aspect was one of the most highly rated in the students’ inal re lections (new friendships,
meeting students of another language, having fun, losing fear of speaking, communicating
with a colleague). Nevertheless, 44% of students had some negative feelings due to their
insecurity with speaking in a foreign language and being ilmed, their individual person-
ality features (shyness/introversion, dislike of working with an unknown colleague) and
teamwork dif iculties (not being able to meet in person, failing to communicate well with
a colleague, poor division of labour). This inding was rather surprising, as the pro ile of
a successful economics graduate typically emphasizes teamwork and interaction. In this
regard, we plan to conduct a survey among the students of our courses as to what extent
they work in a team in their economics subjects, speak in public and present the results of
their work publicly. Based on the results of this survey and in cooperation with the depart-
ments of the faculty, it will then be possible to incorporate more activities of this type into
the curriculum so that students can better adapt and gain self-con idence.
From our didactic point of view, the two areas of autonomy and motivation were the most in-
teresting, as these areas showed the most discrepancies and contradictions in the answers.
The majority of students did not think that this project in luenced their autonomy or did
not understand the question. It is clear from the student answers that they are not very
used to evaluating their own learning. Perceiving it as a continuous process, they are not
familiar with terms such as autonomous learning, and often answered that they do not ac-
tually know what it means (that an autonomous learner will set their own learning goals,
choose their own tasks and exercises, and seek out opportunities to apply their knowledge
outside the classroom). Therefore, in our next project, we would dedicate more time to ex-
plaining what learner autonomy is and how to promote it, i.e. asking learners what they
want to learn, providing multiple options for learners, supplying a wide range of resources,

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