Page 83 - Compétences plurilingues : perspectives et actions / Plurilingual competencies: perspectives and actions

Content Implementation

ing on the circumstances, and 50% of students would prefer to avoid such situations (see
Fig. 3).
What is your attitude towards language code-switching within one communication situation?
17 answers

Figure 3: Question regarding students’ attitudes towards code-switching. Semester Start. Source:
the author, 2023
The lesson plans were structured in a way that permitted working with the basic concepts,
which were presented through various microactivities arranged in a predetermined order.
Several microactivities were then linked together, allowing the relevant topic to be viewed
in a holistic way, and from different perspectives. This gave the student a complete picture
of the reality in question, which could be perceived in relevant real-life contexts. Thus, the
alternation of languages, which was based on thoughtful code-switching, was not motivated
only by a mere intention to provide reasonable opportunities for language practice.
At the end of the semester, students were given an identical set of questions they had al-
ready answered in the opening seminar of the course. Some of the answers yielded quite
intriguing results. In particular, the students’ answers to the question regarding the num-
ber of spoken languages differed from those received at the beginning of the semester. On
this second occasion students reported an increased number of languages they were able
to speak or understand (see Fig. 4).
In how many languages are you able to communicate, i.e. understand the information being
transmitted, and respond, even if it is only in a very simple way?
17 answers

Figure 4: Question regarding students’ linguistic repertoires. Semester End. Source: the author, 2023
In the follow-up discussion, they clari ied that in the irst questionnaire they did not include
in their repertoires those languages they considered knowing to a lesser extent (see Fig. 1).

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