Teachers in France working with (emergent) bilingual pupils often not only feel ill-equipped to provide the specific support these learners require, but also find it difficult to accept that languages other than French have a right and role as learning resources in the classroom. Challenging such monolingual mindsets whilst helping teachers to…

Although well-documented in assorted research areas, early-years stereotyping has not garnered comparable attention. Under the assumption that stereotyping can be prejudicial to the development of children's critical thinking abilities, this paper reports on a study that examined how the pedagogical intervention of awakening to languages may…

This paper examines the resulting qualitative transformation of two students' metapragmatic awareness following a semester abroad in southern France--one of whom had access to a concept-based pragmatics instruction programme (expert-mediation), while the other followed a standard semester programme. The larger study from which these cases are…

In France, most teachers still receive scant training in how to support plurilingual children in their learning of and through the language of instruction. In the absence of relevant, in-depth knowledge about language, we believe that many teachers are practising language policies based on beliefs rooted in ideologies unsupported by research…

As part of the attempts to revitalise Corsican, a regional language of France, and to reverse the language shift to French, language activists and academics have sought to apply the model of a polynomic language to what is considered as one language, but what is, in fact, a number of different Corsicans, each with varying levels of mutual…

Investigates the linguistic and metalinguistic transfers that arise when French students learn comprehension and production in English. Analyzes how part of the metalinguistic knowledge they have of French is transferred into their metalinguistic knowledge of English, especially concerning simple preterite vs preterite + "be" +…

This article discusses the growing awareness of "language awareness" by secondary-level French teachers. Specific focus is on the extent to which the concept of language awareness can help solve some of the current problems of foreign language policy in Europe. (20 references) (JL)

The paper presents the language policies being implemented in French primary schools under the present educational reform and considers how they tackle the question of sociocultural and linguistic pluralism. It questions the choice of teaching one foreign language from a very early age at kindergarten rather than opting for a model of language…