Foreign languages

Cooperative learning and language course

Cooperative language: a tool intended to language courses (5th and 6th year of primary education). Research in education (FWB school network). 2005-2006.

According to the core skills, oral communication must be the priority in the language courses. But the most common organization of these courses, where the activities involve a teacher facing a class-group, leave very little place to individual student’s oral expression and communication. It was assumed that cooperative learning, the efficiency of which was largely shown in various contexts, may help solving these problems. According to Gaudet (1998), cooperation in education “is a form of learning organization which helps small heterogeneous groups of students to reach some common learning objectives, relying on a positive interdependency which involves a full participation of each one in the task”.

During the collaboration between language teachers and researchers, an instrument was developed to give a frame for the exchanges between students divided into small heterogeneous small groups. This tool must help the teachers to take over the approach and its implementation: the instrument aims at increasing the list of their educational strategies, facilitating their first attempts thanks to well-elaborated situations, as well as supplying them with instruments helping them to create or adapt knowingly their own activities.

The quantitative analysis of the students’ activities produces very positive outcomes. Except for a few details, all the starting hypotheses are confirmed: provided that the teacher understood correctly the cooperation dimensions as described and illustrated in the booklet, that he/she respects the particularities of the presented procedures and that he/she implements some actions to help the students to collaborate, these activities end up in a rather equitable distribution of speeches, enable each member of a group to speak the target language and incite the students to interact autonomously whereas still centered on their task.

More info

Instrument : 

Crépin, F., Mattar, C., & Blondin, C. (2008). Apprentissage coopératif. Un outil au service des cours de langues en 5e et 6e années primaires. Outil méthodologique à l’usage des enseignants (annexes : allemand, anglais & néerlandais). Bruxelles : Ministère de la Communauté française, Service général des affaires pédagogiques et du pilotage du réseau d’enseignement organisé par la Communauté française (Collection Recherche en pédagogie). Pour commander l'outil sur le site du CTPE, rechercher (recherche personnalisée) « apprentissage coopératif ».

Papers : 

Crépin, F., Mattar, C., & Blondin, C. (sous presse). L’apprentissage coopératif dans le cadre des cours de langue : un outil efficace ! Bulletin d’informations pédagogiques.

Crépin, F., Mattar, C., & Blondin, C. (2008). L’apprentissage coopératif dans le cadre des cours de langue. Les Cahiers des sciences de l’éducation, 25-26, pp. 41-62. Liège : Unité d’analyse des systèmes et des pratiques d’enseignement de l’Université.
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/7564

Crépin, F., Mattar, C., & Blondin, C. (2006). L’apprentissage coopératif : un outil au service des cours de langue en 5e et 6e années primaires. Bulletin d’informations pédagogiques, 59, 35-46.
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/8866

Blondin, C., Crépin, F., & Mattar, C. (2005). Pour apprendre ensemble : tirer parti de l’apprentissage coopératif dans le cadre des cours de langue. Bulletin d’informations pédagogiques, 57, 27-36.
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/8867

Developing students’ skills in languages: an instrument intended to teachers of primary education

General Department of Education Monitoring and Research in FWB.

Activities aiming at language skill development put the students in contact with audio and visual materials from a variety of languages with different status (instruction language, languages taught at school, regional languages, migrant languages, other European or abroad languages). Students are invited to discover these materials, to explore and compare them, as soon as the 3d year of kindergarten.

The main point is to increase their interest for linguistic and cultural diversity, to strengthen their motivation to learn languages and develop different metalinguistic aptitudes which might facilitate this learning. Many language development activities help also to take up other objectives of the curriculum.

The Wallonia-Brussels Federation made the choice to adapt to its own context some activities created and developed by an international team of researchers. Instead of creating a new instrument, Eole instruments intended to student activities for all years of fundamental education (from the 1st year of Swiss kindergarten, which matches more or less the 2d year of kindergarten in Belgium, to the 6th year of primary education), which were very carefully finalized and published, were adapted to the context of FWB, and mainly to the languages being present in this context. The Eole supports were complemented by some Evlang instruments (which are intended only to 3d-5th years of primary education), which are valued a lot, and by some new activities. The adaptation of the activities was supported by a collaborative work of researchers and teachers. The assessment based on the opinion of the teachers involved into the activity development and of the concerned students emphasized the potentiality and interest of skill language development activities into the student school career.

More info

Booklet :

The leaflet (see "Collectif 2008" here below) including all the information necessary for primary teachers with no particular training in foreign language teaching, and the CD supplying audio materials, has been sent to all pre-primary and/or primary schools of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.

More info

Report :

Collectif (2008). Vingt activités d’éveil aux langues pour l’enseignement fondamental adaptées à la Communauté française de Belgique. Bruxelles : Ministère de la Communauté française, Service du pilotage inter-réseaux. Pour se procurer le document, s’adresser au Service du pilotage inter-réseaux.

Papers :

Blondin, C., & Mattar, C. (2004). Cinq équipes éducatives s’engagent dans l’éveil aux langues. Un projet pilote dan l’enseignement fondamental en Communauté française. Université de Liège : Service de Pédagogie expérimentale.
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/92412

Blondin, C., & Mattar, C. (2008). Vers une implantation de l’éveil aux langues en Communauté française de Belgique. Les Cahiers des sciences de l’éducation, 25-26, 5-27.
http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/7565