L’alphabet latin comme moyen de mobilisation du plurilinguisme chez les étudiants thaïlandais en langues étrangères

Abstract

In 2018, the Thai government launched a policy focusing on the communication skills of its citizens in English and a third language. Since its inception, educational institutions at both school and university levels have had the freedom to diversify their foreign language programs. Thai learners were given the liberty to choose the languages they wanted to learn within their schools or universities. English held a privileged status as a compulsory language for all learners, spanning from primary to university levels. Additionally, students had the option to study one or two foreign languages as major or elective courses. French has now become the third foreign language in the country, following English and Mandarin Chinese (French Embassy in Thailand, 2021).As a university French teacher, I have been interested for several years in the multilingualism of Thai language students, and more particularly in the role played by their "previous experience" – in the sense that Bono (2008) and Markey (2009) give to this term – of one or more foreign languages in their learning of a new foreign language. In fact, this article is a part of my research entitled “Use of English in French learning among French students at Naresuan University”. The main objective of this research is to shed light on the way in which Thai students mobilize their multilingual resources in learning French as a foreign language. It’s important for us to discover the "modalities of appropriation inscribed in a plural logic" in order to help learners, as Castellotti and Moore put it very well, " to learn in plurality" (2011: 250) .We notice that the Latin alphabet is used very often by our students. What uses of the Latin alphabet are employed? And what roles do these uses play in the learning of new foreign languages.To obtain the information necessary for our work, we favored a qualitative and interpretative approach. We first analyzed the written productions of level B1 of second-year French students in the French Reading and Writing II course. We also carried out oral interviews in order to better understand their perceptions and their way of mobilizing their multilingualism, especially English, during their language learning at university.Data analysis shows that the Latin alphabet plays a very important role and is widely used. It is primarily used for pronunciation of the new language, then resolving lexical issues, gaining cultural knowledge, and ultimately as a remedy for linguistic insecurity. This mode of appropriation of a new foreign language confirms the fact that the plural linguistic skills of students are, as Candelier and Castellotti underline, "a cognitive principle which allows them to learn, construct other concepts, and build them differently” (2013 : 204).

Keywords

• uses of the Latin alphabet
• role of English
• French learning
• French students
• Thai university