L’autobiographie langagière en classe : trajectoire d’appropriation vers la réflexivité et la conscientisation du capital plurilingue des élèves

Abstract

This article’s focus is the notion of language biography and its outcomes for both learners and teachers in language education. A survey was disseminated in order to reveal the presence of this text genre in student books and curricula, as well as the important contribution of language biographies to the conscientisation and reflexivity of the linguistic capital of pupils. A corpus of written language biographies by pupils of junior high school formed the basis of the study. Through this record of personal, language-learning history we identify information on linguistic, cultural and learning experiences gained in and outside formal education contexts. The pupils’ response was positive and led them and us to the deconstruction and reconstruction of their presentations and attitudes toward languages and cultures. They evaluate their learning strategies and goals on language learning and cultural experience and also proceed to assess their language competencies. Language autobiography constitutes a challenge for every educator wishing to enrich their strategies to plurilingual students’ needs and to achieve fruitful didactic outcomes by becoming aware of the language mosaic in the class.

Keywords

• appropriation, autobiographie langagière, conscientisation, identités plurilingues, réflexivité.