Page 62 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

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S. Prevratilova: Plurilingual Students in Tandem Language Exchange...
French-speaking part of Canada and her previous background in French: her grandparents
immigrated to Canada from Czechoslovakia in the 1950s. Ella’s mother was born in Canada
and grew up speaking Czech at home and French and English outside. Her mother and
grandmother would speak Czech to each other sometimes, and Ella would naturally pick
up some Czech vocabulary. Her mother and grandmother also spoke German and some-
times used it as a “secret language” when they discovered that Ella could understand some
Czech. That motivated Ella to learn German. After graduating from high school, she at-
tempted to learn Czech and enrolled in the English-speaking program at Charles University.
Before studying in Prague, she practiced Czech with Duolingo.

Tab. 2. Ella’s language background

Language Length of formal instruction Level achieved
French 5 years B1
Spanish 1 year A1/A2
Czech 3 or 4 years B1
German 6 months (self-learning) –
Aneta’s language background was more modest than Ella’s and followed a standard pattern
similar to a typical Czech student, as shown in Table 3. Aneta came from a Czech town in
eastern Bohemia, where she attended primary school for ive years, followed by an eight-
year high school (osmileté gymnázium in Czech). Her mother tongue was Czech, and sim-
ilarly to many Czech pupils, Aneta started learning English at a young age (7) in her sec-
ond year of school attendance as a compulsory subject. She remarked that the school was
a language-progressive one because most schools in the country started with English a year
later, in the third grade. In the second year of high school (aged 11), Aneta started learn-
ing French, in addition to English, and continued until her inal year, graduating in French.
Later, at university, she added a two-semester Spanish course.
Tab. 3. Aneta’s language background

Language Length of formal instruction Level achieved
English 11 years B2
French 7 years B1
Spanish 1 year A1
Regarding tandem course organization, they said they tried to meet two times a week and
separate the languages in the sessions. Each time they planned to focus on one (they irst
had the tandem in Czech/English, and later in the semester, they changed the tandem lan-
guages to Czech/French and only used English as the mediatory language). Sometimes they
would switch languages, and English helped them explain ideas or vocabulary. Aneta wrote
in her re lection that such organization of work in the language tandem increased her abil-
ity to shift between languages naturally and ef iciently due to their constant translations of
stories and fairy tales in Czech and French.

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