Page 66 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

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S. Prevratilova: Plurilingual Students in Tandem Language Exchange...
trated by Aneta’s experience with insuf icient PPLI while learning French after English at
school, caused by the French teacher’s monolingual approach to teaching French as an ad-
ditional language. This underscores the potential imperative for educators to actively foster
students’ awareness and involvement in language interaction.

Nonetheless, the monolingual approach remains rooted in language teaching (Woll, 2020),
including the recommendations on tandem language learnings organization, as Vassallo &
Telles (2011, p. 87) summarized. The indings presented here underscore the necessity to
challenge the conventional monolingual approach, advocating instead for a shift towards
promoting and prioritizing plurilingualism within tandem language learning experiences.
Unfortunately, a notable gap currently exists within Czech higher education teacher training
programs, as formal training in plurilingual teaching approaches remains largely absent.
This underscores the urgency of prioritizing plurilingual didactics and fostering increased
attention, research, and discourse in this domain to pave the way for effective multilingual
classrooms (Council of Europe, 2007).
Revising the research design for future investigations has the potential to yield more robust
data. One line for exploration involves capitalizing on the potential of re lective writing
(Bassot, 2020), where the tandem supervisor should prompt the participants. Addition-
ally, in-depth examination of tandem session interactions, such as utilizing conversation
analysis (Ahn, 2016), is necessary to gain a more profound comprehension of plurilingual
practices (Grasz, 2021). These adaptations to the research design offer promising ways to
gather more detailed data on plurilingual approaches in language exchange courses in fu-
ture studies.
Moreover, as demonstrated, the participants were not provided with explicit guidance, in-
structions, recommendations, or exemplars of plurilingual practices, yet these practices
naturally emerged. Looking ahead, a study that measures the impact of such explicit instruc-
tion, assessing whether such interventions enhance learners’ utilization of and engagement
with plurilingual strategies should be carried out. Additionally, an investigation into learn-
ers’ responses to suggested plurilingual practices would offer valuable insights into their
adaptability to the plurilingual approach.

Conclusion

The study validated the research among plurilingual students as a promising research direc-
tion. In addition to the portrait of two plurilingual learners in the tandem course, the study
highlights the potential bene its of challenging the monolingual principle in language edu-
cation and emphasizes the role of teachers in adopting plurilingual approach, as learners
often lack guidance on incorporating their linguistic repertoire into the learning process.
Despite inherent limitations, the study contributes to the ongoing discourse on the moti-
vation to learn languages other than English, the learning and teaching of L3+, and multi-
lingualism/plurilingualism. Its implications extend beyond the context of European higher
education.

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