THE EDUCATION OF THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: BETWEEN OLD PRESSURES AND NEW CHALLENGES

Abstract

This paper aims to reflect on the current training of foreign language teachers and their ability to face the pressures and challenges that teaching practice imposes today. Since globalization has been present in the quotidian life at the end of the twentieth century, we see increasing mobilities, exchanges and interactions between peoples and cultures. The learning of a foreign language has become a growing demand and the “linguistic marketplace”, according to Bourdieu (1982) and Calvet (2002), exposes its characteristics and rules. Language courses, proficiency certification tests and didactic material proliferate all the time; new approaches in language teaching are discussed; new specific objectives emerge. How to prepare the students of Letters to face the pressures of the market and the new challenges of the teaching practice? It is up to the faculties of Letters to rethink the professional and intellectual education of the future foreign language teachers, not forgetting the demands of the market, but being mainly concerned with the development of their autonomy and the critical reflection on their practices.

Keywords

• Foreign language teachers training
• Foreign language learning and teaching
• Reflective teaching practice