RANACLES Convention > Keynote speakers

Peggy Candas

Université de Strasbourg

Interactions are central to successful learning trajectories

We are "Born to learn" (Garabédian & Trocmé-Fabre, 1993) and learner autonomy is quite widely accepted as a "psychological necessity" (Little, 1991, pp. 14) to be able to learn, whatever the situation. In the literature on learner autonomy, "learning to learn" is considered a fundamental issue - which may seem paradoxical given our abilities in this area from our earliest years. In addition, much of the scientific literature focuses on the organizational dimension of the learning process (Tremblay & Eneau, 2006), placing considerable pressure on the learner, who must plan, organize, choose rationally and evaluate his or her own results to succeed (Holec, 1979). However, research on (so-called) self-taught people offers scope for alternative hypotheses. Self-taught people, defined as people who have become experts in a field and have learnt what they know mainly outside school and other educational establishments, are at one end of the autonomy continuum, on the "more autonomous" side, and can therefore be considered a model for the autonomous learner. Several studies (Spear & Mocker, 1984; Danis & Tremblay, 1985) show that their learning trajectories are far from linear and carefully elaborated. They are the result of a general intention on the part of the learner, leading to actions in different directions, the project being refined as it progresses. Interestingly, chance and encounters also contribute to shaping learning trajectories. In our talk, we will focus on what research and our collective experience tell us about how successful learning trajectories take form. We will see that this leads us to play down the importance of organizational skills in favour of other skills and attitudes (Tremblay, 2003) that we would do well to value. We will discuss the consequences on the way language centres function and argue in favour of a change of focus from individuals to groups and collective projects and of secure and enabling environments, in which learners can use their talents and interact creatively.

Tim Lewis

The Open University

How Languages are learnt in Tandem Exchanges

Tandem language learning draws on a long tradition of peer learning and teaching which has its origins in the late C18th.  Its key principles are autonomy and reciprocity (Little & Brammerts 1996; Brammerts & Kleppin, 2001; Lewis & Walker 2003).  It has been adapted to a wide range of contexts, including online environments, where it is known as e-Tandem, or Teletandem.  It continues to evolve in ways that repeatedly enable new kinds of learners to benefit from working in partnership.

The key principles of Tandem learning include 50/50 dual language use, as well as error correction and metalinguistic feedback by native-speaker partners.  Over the years, accounts of how these practices lead to second language learning have been primarily syntactic.  Informed variously by the Interaction Hypothesis, the Pushed Output Hypothesis and Focus on Form, scrutiny has been directed to the negotiation of meaning, the identification of language-related episodes, or the uptake of explicit feedback (Lewis & Walker, 2003).  Overall, however, the results of such attention have been meagre.

In fact over the years, evidence has accumulated that the feedback is primarily lexical in nature (Sotillo 2005; Akiyama, 2017), focuses on intended meanings and consists largely of reformulations of learners’ utterances which make them socially acceptable to their L2 interlocutors.  In other words, it seems likely that rather that helping learners to develop grammatical accuracy, the primary role of corrective feedback is to extend their lexical and phraseological repertoire, developing their pragmatic competence (Kasper & Rose,2002; Kecskes, 2014) and helping to socialize  them into the second language culture (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984, 1995, 2012; Duff, 2007).

Mathilde Anquétil

Università di Macerata

Language centres in interaction with educational language policies, review of some ongoing issues

The conference will attempt to explore the overall theme of the interaction between language (resource) centres (LC) and language education policies, by proceeding, for the questions raised in the call for papers, by succinctly presenting exemplary situations of current issues between language policies, societal projects, linguistic ideologies and the scope of action of LCs. Since teaching and certification are the two essential missions of the LCs, our observation will focus on the definition of the object to be taught and on the certification procedures.
We will proceed by combining meta-disciplinary discussion on the field of language didactics as a discipline of intervention (Galisson, 1986; Porcher, 1986) and reflections inspired by discourse analysis, in particular with regard to the social (Charaudeau, 2001) and institutional roots of the actors involved in language education policy discourses, around three central themes:
- language centres as instruments or actors of language education policies: application and innovative approaches
- the agency of language centres and the issues of the status of these organisations and of their teachers
- what is at stake in the confrontation between international certifications and university certifications.
Face with the growing influence of political authorities and dominant ideologies in the field of language teaching at universities, an attempt will be made to identify places and strategies to strengthen the field of action of the LC.