"Knowing and knowing" in the oral language course

The Centre de Recherches Europes-Eurasie-CREE (Inalco) is pleased to invite you to the Study Day: ""Knowing and knowing"
in the oral language course".
Dessin de 4 personnages vert, rouge, bleu et noir
Dessin © Nikos Graikos‎

Argument of the scientific event

If oral production in language is defined as a skill in a social situation that has an informative and communicative aim, the situation in a language course corresponds, on the contrary, to an exchange between teachers and learners (and between learners themselves) with a didactic aim. It's a transitional type of exchange, where the aim is not the exchange of information itself, but the exchange as a "pretext" for learning. The teacher is there to ensure that exchange situations are created, mostly simulated, but as close as possible to an authentic situation.

In the oral practice course the student is invited to mobilize linguistic, discursive, sociolinguistic and interactional resources. This is a collaborative and contextual skill, insofar as it calls on a set of resources to be implemented in a defined situation and which are not identically transferable to any context.

According to the Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales the verb connaître signifierait, inter alia, "to know something most often in a particular field, by means of systematic study and/or practice, experience". The emphasis is on the content of the knowledge e.g. knowing the alphabet, knowing a language, a scientific discipline, knowing (one's) trade, knowing plants, etc. As for the verb savoir, the proposed meaning would concern the fact of "being able to perform a sustained activity, thanks to the acquisition, through study, through application, of theoretical and practical knowledge, and as a result of an intellectual operation; being able to."

While knowledge is organized around vocabulary, grammar and spelling, skills for their part are organized into reading, writing and expressing oneself orally. To

"speak" a language, therefore, it's not just a matter of acquiring vocabulary and grammar rules, but more a matter of understanding the organization of a language action, or more generally of a practical activity, knowing how to interpret the various markers that punctuate the exchange and sometimes modify its meaning, and identifying the various lexical or syntactic features of the language spoken.

Teachers are ill-equipped to discern what in discourse work belongs to knowledge and what to knowledge (highlighting knowledge). They note students' ease and difficulty with such and such other discursive tasks, and are then led to propose oral practice situations that promote the appropriation and updating of knowledge through the learning of new knowledge.

In teaching that is based solely on the statement of knowledge, students will not have the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice in situations conducive to learning. On the contrary, in teaching that emphasizes adaptation to situations, students are led to accomplish tasks, one after the other, without them being linked to concrete knowledge or related to a single type of know-how. Thus, the question arises of the relevance of teaching organized into distinct parts: knowledge whose default instance of formulation and validation is the teacher, and knowledge whose main actor is the student.

In order to overcome this typified role dichotomy, couldn't teaching be apprehended as a constant back-and-forth between knowledge and know-how updated and contextualized by the student as actor and validator in situations created jointly with another student or the teacher in a language course?

Proposed working themes

  • What knowledge and skills to teach and prioritize in student groups marked by heterogeneity?
  • The working group in the oral language practice course as an engine for learning knowledge.
  • How to reconcile the breadth of personal knowledge and the limits of students' communicative language skills?
  • How can shared knowledge in language be put to the benefit of individual knowledge to be acquired?
  • Highlighting and investing students' general skills (knowledge, know-how, interpersonal skills, learning skills) in order to develop their communicative language skills.

This first study day is part of CREE's "Teaching languages: innovative approaches" project.

The day takes place at Inalco, Paris in face-to-face sessions and with the possibility of online connection.

Scientific event program

10am-1:05pm - Amphi 7 (2nd floor)

10am - 10:15am:

  • Georges Kostakiotis, Inalco and Snejana Gadjeva, Inalco : "Knowing and knowing" in the oral language practice course

 

10:15 - 11:35 :

  • Madeleine Voga, Université de Montpelier-Paul Valery and Anna Anastassiadis-Syméonidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: Interlanguage transfers in the bi-plurilingual mental lexicon. (online communication)
  • Magali Cécile Bertrand, University of Lausanne: Enquêter en contexte homoglotte: deux pratiques d'enseignement du FLE. (online communication)
  • Ildikó Lőrinszky, Inalco : Enseigner-apprendre l'expression orale en hongrois : un art du compromis ?

 

11:45am - 1:05pm :

  • Xiang Zhang, Inalco: Translation and foreign language teaching: what place for translation competence in the acquisition of linguistic and communicative skills? (online paper)
  • Despoina Stefanou, Université de Montpelier Paul Valery : Working on oral production in foreign language learning: the case of hybridization in LANSAD.
  • Jing Guo, Inalco :A new organization for the oral expression course: the case of Chinese at Inalco. (online communication)

 

1:05 pm - 2 pm: Lunch Break

 

2 pm - 6:30 pm - Amphi 5 (2nd floor)

2 pm - 3 pm:

  • Claire Margolinas, Université Clermont Auvergne and Marceline Laparra, Université de Lorraine : Questions about the knowledge and knowledges of oral practice

 

15:10 - 16:30 :

  • Sonia Berbinski, University of Bucharest: Thereading of signs and meanings - a bridge between the written and the oral. Practices of writing and speaking among Romanian speakers: from word to speech.
  • Sofia Iakovidou, Democritus University of Thrace: The challenge of self-narration. (online paper)
  • Chan-yueh Liu, Inalco : Appropriating, creating and communicating: the strategy of performative interpretation in the Taiwanese course.

 

16:30-16:50: Coffee Break

 

16:50 - 18:10 :

  • Fabiana Florescu, University of Bucharest :A necessary articulation between knowing and knowing in the face of the challenges of oral comprehension and expression in the FLE classroom. (online communication)
  • Isabel Zins, University of Vienna : "Extensive Listening" - an authentic method for developing individual language skillss.
  • Maria Papadopoulou, Aristotle University of Thessalonikiand Eleni Gana, University of Thessaly : Communicating through and beyond language. (online communication)

 

Conclusions / perspectives

18:10 - 18:30 :

  • Snejana Gadjeva, Inalco and Georges Kostakiotis, Inalco

 

Organization
Contacts

snejana.gadjeva@inalco.fr and georges.kostakiotis@inalco.fr