Guilène Révauger

ABSTRACT

This paper will offer an introductory analysis of the representations of the concept of plurilingual competence and one of its fundamental principles. One of the core assumptions beneath the plurilingual competence such as defined by the Council of Europe is that some skills or subskills are transferable. The focus will here be put on L2 listening comprehension. Researchers have already shed light on the types of strategies, low-level and high-level listening processes (Vandergrift, 2003), strategy use (McDonough, 1999), cognitive processes (Sweller, 1994) or the conditions of fruitful training (Gaonac’h, 2003 ; Roussel, Gruson & Galan, 2017).

Yet, in-the-field language teaching rests on a variety of didactic traditions which do not grant transferable skills the same powers. In France, EFL teaching follows a rather monolingual tradition, and the focus has been traditionally put on the end product rather than the process.

The purport of this paper is to conduct an exploratory research on the ways EFL teachers address subskills and transferable strategies. Our context is set in secondary education in Reunion Island, a French overseas multilingual territory. Through an analysis of comments in an online forum, we will first examine the perceptions prospective teachers have of plurilingualism and strategies (N=36). We then offer to explore representations of listening strategies and the ways in which tangible and transferable strategies are taught. In order to do so we will resort to qualitative research through the analysis of classroom observation reports.

Keywords

Plurilingual competence; representations; listening; transferable strategies; Reunion Island

References

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5. Vandergrift, L. (2003). Orchestrating strategy use: Toward a model of the skilled second language listener. Language Learning, 53, 463– 496.