La poésie à l’école secondaire québécoise (1963-2016) - Une histoire à travers les textes

Afin de comprendre et d’expliquer le malaise actuel vis-à-vis de l’enseignement de la poésie au secondaire, la thèse remonte à la publication du Rapport Parent (1963-1966), document fondateur de l’école québécoise moderne, et à la création du ministère de l’Éducation du Québec (1964) pour suivre, à travers les documents, l’histoire de l’enseignement de la poésie au secondaire au cours des 50 dernières années. Cette période se divise en trois grandes étapes : une révolution en éducation marquée par la publication du Rapport Parent et de deux programmes; le retour aux sources amorcé par L’école québécoise qui verra deux programmes et deux séries de manuels scolaires; la réforme articulée autour de L’école, tout un programme dont les programmes et les manuels sont actuellement en vigueur. C’est à travers ces trois types de documents (documents d’orientation, programmes d’enseignement et manuels scolaires) que je retracerai le parcours de l’enseignement de la poésie à l’école secondaire avec comme toile de fond les grands courants qui ont marqué l’éducation et l’enseignement du français au Québec depuis les années 1960. L’enseignement de la poésie ne peut se détacher du contexte dans lequel il se fait. Ce contexte comprend diverses facettes qui lui sont internes et d’autres qui lui sont externes. Les facettes externes dans ce travail sont la vision de la culture et de l’enseignement ainsi que la place faite à la littérature et à la poésie. L’idée de culture a beaucoup évolué depuis 50 ans. Le Rapport Parent abandonne la vision traditionnelle de la culture au profit d’une vision plus large qui englobe l’ensemble des activités humaines. Nuancée et actualisée, cette vision large de la culture restera la référence. La littérature qui détenait une place importante dans la culture traditionnelle perd ainsi de l’influence. Sa place et son importance, malgré les discours qui la valorisent, vont diminuer jusqu’à ne devenir qu’un adjuvant à l’enseignement de la technique de la langue et des types de textes. L’évolution de l’enseignement transformera la classe traditionnelle bien ordonnée sous l’autorité du maitre en lieu qui doit permettre à l’élève de construire ses connaissances. Les éléments reliés directement à l’enseignement de la poésie comprennent les programmes, les manuels, l’enseignement de la lecture et de l’écriture et le travail du professeur et de l’élève. Les programmes subiront d’importantes modifications. Le programme-cadre de 1969 marque la fin des programmes à visées littéraires. Le seul vrai but des programmes depuis, c’est de parfaire l’apprentissage technique de la langue. Le programme de 1980 marque l’abandon des genres littéraires comme base de l’enseignement des textes au profit de la notion de discours. Comme le discours poétique n’y apparait pas, la poésie peine à se trouver une place. Les programmes de 1995 et de la réforme optent pour les types de textes plutôt que les discours, mais la poésie n’entre pas dans cette typologie. La place de la poésie en lecture et en écriture est variable selon les époques. Sur un même pied que les autres types de textes dans le programme-cadre, elle apparait seulement en lecture dans le programme de 1980. Les programmes subséquents lui redonneront une place en écriture. Depuis 1980, elle reste un genre marginal qui souvent ne sert qu’à illustrer des notions utiles aux discours ou types de textes utilisés par le programme. La relation professeur/élève s’est considérablement modifiée au cours de cette période. De maitre, le professeur est devenu guide et médiateur. L’élève évolue en sens inverse : de passif récepteur de la connaissance, il devient responsable de construire ses connaissances. Le professeur, compte tenu du peu de place qu’occupe la poésie dans les programmes et du fait qu’elle ne fait pas partie de la typologie des textes adoptée par ceux-ci, ne peut compter que sur ses connaissances pour en assurer un enseignement valable. Les manuels accompagnent les programmes sauf pour le programme-cadre. Depuis 1980, les manuels de français ont une visée autoéducative parce qu’ils s’adressent directement à l’étudiant. Ils se présentent comme des préparations de cours que l’élève n’a qu’à suivre pour acquérir les connaissances au programme. La place de la poésie en lecture et en écriture y est variable selon les époques et les manuels.

Représentations des langues et des identités : le cas de la diaspora serbe au sud de la France

Nous proposons d’interroger, dans cette contribution, les représentations sociolinguistiques des immigrés issus de la diaspora ex-yougoslave, installés au sud de la France, qui vivent au quotidien le contact entre la langue maternelle (langue de la maison ou de l’environnement familial) et le français (langue de l’environnement social). Les réflexions que nous proposons ici s’insèrent dans le projet « Représentations des langues et des identités en Méditerranée en contexte plurilingue » (EA739 Dipralang). Notre étude de cas permet d’explorer les frontières de ce projet (langues de migration plutôt que langues minoritaires d’implantation historique) et le rôle des représentations sociolinguistiques dans la structuration des identités de leurs locuteurs.

Les Turcs turcophones de France : langues, identités et enjeux culturels

Dans le cadre du projet «Représentations des langues et des identités en Méditerranée en contexte plurilingue» (EA 739 Dipralang), nous avons interrogé les représentations sociolinguistiques de la communauté turque du sud de la France (travailleurs et étudiants), communauté qui continue de pratiquer sa langue maternelle en contexte migratoire. Nous avons plus particulièrement cherché à cerner le rapport à la langue maternelle minorée (le turc) et celui à la langue dominante du pays d’accueil (le français) pour mettre en lumière les liens entre l’attachement à la langue/aux langues et le sentiment d’appartenance au(x) groupe(s). Afin de mieux comprendre la construction des altérités culturelles, nous avons également tenté d’identifier les implications que les représentations sociolinguistiques peuvent avoir sur les plans linguistique et identitaire.

French-greek machine translation of imperative sentences: issues in aspect and mood from a controlled language perspective

The present dissertation examines how grammatical aspect and mood are handled by machine translation (MT) systems within the scope of imperative sentences (orders, recommendations) when dealing with the language pair French-Greek (unidirectional, towards Greek). As the grammatical category of aspect is not expressed in the same way in both languages, choosing the correct aspect value when translating a verb from French to Greek can pose problems. We are interested in describing the types of errors that occur and their frequency in a corpus taken from texts pertaining to the security domain and from technical manuals, where imperative sentences are very common. In order to further delimit our research, our sample consists of sentences that comply with the general principles of simplicity and readability provided by several controlled language guidelines and aimed at higher translatability when having MT in mind. In a second phase, this study aims at discovering how modifying some of the control rules would help (or not) the MT systems better decide upon the translation of aspect and mood.

The French Constitutional Council as the Rottweiler of the Republican Ideal in the Language Field: Does Jurisprudence Really Reflect Reality? EDAP 03/2012, 2012

France is known for being a champion of individual rights as well as for its overt hostility to any form of group rights. Linguistic pluralism in the public sphere is rejected for fear of babelization and Balkanization of the country. Over recent decades the Conseil Constitutionnel (CC) has, together with the Conseil d’État, remained arguably the strongest defender of this Jacobin ideal in France. In this article, I will discuss the role of France’s restrictive language policy through the prism of the CC’s jurisprudence. Overall, I will argue that the CC made reference to the (Jacobin) state-nation concept, a concept that is discussed in the first part of the paper, in order to fight the revival of regional languages in France over recent decades. The clause making French the official language in 1992 was functional to this policy. The intriguing aspect is that in France the CC managed to standardise France’s policy vis-à-vis regional and minority languages through its jurisprudence; an issue discussed in the second part of the paper. But in those regions with a stronger tradition of identity, particularly in the French overseas territories, the third part of the paper argues, normative reality has increasingly become under pressure. Therefore, a discrepancy between the ‘law in courts’ and the compliance with these decisions (‘law in action’) has been emerging over recent years. Amid some signs of opening of France to minorities, this contradiction delineates a trend that might well continue in future.

Language dominance and lexical diversity: how bilinguals and L2 learners differ in their knowledge and use of French lexical and functional items

This chapter compares lexical diversity of French words used by Dutch-French bilinguals, English-French bilinguals and Flemish L2 learners of French.

Measuring lexical diversity among L2 learners of French: an exploration of the validity of D, MTLD and HD-D as measures of language ability

In this study two new measures of lexical diversity are tested for the first time on French. The usefulness of these measures, MTLD (McCarthy and Jarvis (2010 and this volume) ) and HD-D (McCarthy and Jarvis 2007), in predicting different aspects of language proficiency is assessed and compared with D (Malvern and Richards 1997; Malvern, Richards, Chipere and Durán 2004) and Maas (1972) in analyses of stories told by two groups of learners (n=41) of two different proficiency levels and one group of native speakers of French (n=23). The importance of careful lemmatization in studies of lexical diversity which involve highly inflected languages is also demonstrated. The paper shows that the measures of lexical diversity under study are valid proxies for language ability in that they explain up to 62 percent of the variance in French C-test scores, and up to 33 percent of the variance in a measure of complexity. The paper also provides evidence that dependence on segment size continues to be a problem for the measures of lexical diversity discussed in this paper. The paper concludes that limiting the range of text lengths or even keeping text length constant is the safest option in analysing lexical diversity.

The role of transfer in language variation and change: Evidence from contact varieties of French

In this Special Issue, the focus is on contact-induced language variation and change in situations of societal bilingualism that involve long-term contact between French and another language. As is well known, when two or more languages are spoken by groups of speakers in the same geographical area, over time, features from one language can be transferred to the other language, especially when the languages in question are unequal in terms of prestige, institutional support and demographic factors. The process that leads to the adoption of such features in the contact languages is generally known as INTERFERENCE or TRANSFER, and these terms are also used to describe the features in question (i.e. the end product of the process of transfer). In this issue we prefer to use the term TRANSFER over the use of the notion INTERFERENCE, as the former has fewer negative connotations than the latter.

Writing in French in secondary schools in England and Germany: are the British really 'bad language learners’?

It is widely assumed that the British are poorer modern foreign language (MFL) learners than their fellow Europeans. Motivation has often been seen as the main cause of this perceived disparity in language learning success. However, there have also been suggestions that curricular and pedagogical factors may play a part. This article reports a research project investigating how German and English 14- to 16-year-old learners of French as a first foreign language compare to one another in their vocabulary knowledge and in the lexical diversity, accuracy and syntactic complexity of their writing. Students from comparable schools in Germany and England were set two writing tasks which were marked by three French native speakers using standardised criteria aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEF). Receptive vocabulary size and lexical diversity were established by the X_lex test and a verb types measure respectively. Syntactic complexity and formal accuracy were respectively assessed using the mean length of T-units (MLTU) and words/error metrics. Students' and teachers' questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to provide information and participants' views on classroom practices, while typical textbooks and feedback samples were analysed to establish differences in materials-related input and feedback in the two countries. The German groups were found to be superior in vocabulary size, and in the accuracy, lexical diversity and overall quality – but not the syntactic complexity – of their writing. The differences in performance outcomes are analysed and discussed with regard to variables related to the educational contexts (e.g. curriculum design and methodology).

Individual differences in early language learning: a study of English learners of French

The present longitudinal study examines the interaction of learner variables (gender, motivation, self-efficacy and first language literacy) and their influence on second language learning outcomes. The study follows English learners of French from Year 5 in primary school (aged 9-10) to the first year in secondary school (Year 7 aged 11-12). Language outcomes were measured by two oral production tasks; a sentence repetition task and a photo description task both of which were administered at three time points. Longitudinal data on learner attitudes and motivation were collected via questionnaires. Teacher assessment data for general first language literacy attainment were also provided. The results show a great deal of variation in learner attitudes and outcomes and that there is a complex relationship between first language literacy, self-efficacy, gender and attainment. For example, in general, girls held more positive attitudes to boys and were more successful. However, the inclusion of first language ability, which explained 30-40% of variation, shows that gender differences in attitudes and outcomes are likely mediated by first language literacy and prior learning experience.

Russian language maintenance through bedtime story reading?: Linguistic strategies and language negotiation in Russian-French speaking families in Switzerland

This article proposes an interactional approach to the question of Russian language maintenance through the activity of bedtime story-reading in Russian-French bilingual families in French speaking Switzerland. Reading stories appears to be a language maintenance strategy commonly employed by the Russian speaking parent. The ritual and recreational moment of story-reading therefore becomes an opportunity for language learning. Drawing upon a language socialization perspective, this paper proposes an interactional analysis of the language use in the activity of story-reading. It shows how the language choice of the participants may be requested, negotiated and challenged during the interaction. The analysis further informs us about the language choice pattern and the bilingual competences in these families. We will gain insight into (Russian) language maintenance as a daily social and linguistic practice.