TULP Poitiers March 2018

1. Contexts of
second/foreign
language teaching
& learning at
French
universities:
Proposals for a
disciplinary solution
SHONA WHYTE
Université Côte d’Azur
CNRS, BCL
Nice, France
Journée d’étude : Transférer les politiques linguistiques universitaires
EA 3816 FoReLL Université de Poitiers Vendredi 16 mars 2018 1

2. Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, BCL
Shona Whyte
• MCF-HDR anglais, Scottish-born,
PhD Linguistics Indiana University
• Département des langues, section
études anglophones,
Université Nice Sophia Antipolis
• EFL, TEFL, CALL, ESP
• UMR 7320 Bases, Corpus, Langage
ECRIN Second Language Studies
whyte@unice.fr
@whyshona
efl.unice.fr
2Journée TULP, Poitiers 16/03/2018 https://wp.me/p28EmH-17g

3. CONTEXTS OF SECOND/FOREIGN
LANGUAGE TEACHING & LEARNING
AT FRENCH UNIVERSITIES
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Proposals for a disciplinary solution

4. DISCIPLINARY SOLUTIONS
L2 TEACHING & LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
1. languages in higher
education
2. applied linguistics and
linguistique appliquée
3. second language
studies
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5. LANGUAGES
IN HIGHER
EDUCATION
1
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6. COMMON EUROPEAN REFERENCE FRAMEWORK FOR
LANGUAGES (CER)
LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
• ambitions
• “a plan for foreign-language education with truly humanistic
goals” (Hulstijn 2014)
• “the functional equivalent to the formalist concept of
interlanguage” (Widdowson 2017)
• interpretations
• B2 level and the dream of a common standard (Deygers, Van Gorp &
Demeester 2018)
• The English Grammar Profile (O’Keefe & Mark 2017)
• communicative competence?
• focus on language accuracy among applied linguists (language
testers)
• indigenous assessment criteria used by professional/occupational
experts
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7. CRITICAL PRACTICE
NEW CULTURES OF LEARNING
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• the ‘social turn’ in L2 education and use
• “The “discrete and institutionalized field” of SLA “conceives of the
FL speaker as a deficient communicator struggling to overcome an
underdeveloped L2 competence, striving to reach the ‘target’
competence of an idealised NS (Firth & Wagner 1997/2007 295-6).
• intercultural competence
• guide for plurilingual and intercultural education (Beacco et al
2010)
• telecollaboration or online intercultural exchange for learners
(O’Dowd & Lewis 2016)
• technology-mediated and critical L2 practices (OER/OEP)
• open educational resources (Blyth 2017)
• open practices in L2 teaching/learning (OL2TL, Reinhardt 2016)

8. ENGLISH MEDIUM INSTRUCTION
LANGUAGES FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES
• English as international language
• of research: English for Academic/Research Purposes
• of teaching: English Medium Instruction
• English as a lingua franca
• French higher education context
• IDEX initiatives: Bordeaux, Grenoble, Nice, Paris-Saclay
• attract international faculty and students
• Teacher education in higher education (HE) institutes
• Teaching academic content through English (TACTE, Bordeaux)
• 3 day immersion course for HE content teachers
• components of EMI instruction/language skills/pedagogical
issues
• scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and ‘parity of esteem’
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9. CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES
• disciplinarisation (Kramsch 2000)
• “The social science tradition of SLA research and the psychological bent
of FL education do not fit in well with the historical tradition of literary
studies and the sociological bias of critical theory”
• “it seems more appropriate to view the general field of Applied
Linguistics as the overarching construct that is most relevant to FL
departments”
• institutionalisation
• from lone innovators to institutional integration in OIE, OER
• English Medium Instruction in internationalisation of French HE
• resistance?
• “Into the fray come OL2TL supporters, whose well-meaning response to
the growing corporate-capitalist educational leviathan is for teachers to
take back some of their agency by sharing their practices with others in a
space free from exploitation (Reinhardt 2016)
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10. APPLIED
LINGUISTICS &
LINGUISTIQUE
APPLIQUÉE
2
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11. the “just applied” problem
11
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png CC BY-NC 2.5
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12. (APPLIED) LINGUISTICS (APPLIED)
EPISTEMOLOGY
• “the theoretical and empirical investigaton of real-world problems in which
language is a central issue” (Brumfit 1995)
• in the case of linguistics applied the assumption is that the problem can be
reformulated by the direct and unilateral application of concepts and terms
deriving from linguistic enquiry itself. That is to say, language problems are
amenable to linguistic solutions. In the case of applied linguistics, intervention is
crucially a matter of mediation (Widdowson 2000)
• “in applied linguistics we need to reverse the dependency order of this
relationship and analyse the problems first […] What disciplinary constructs and
findings are of use can only be determined by analysing the problem
first” (Widdowson 2017)
• “il paraît de moins en moins possible de séparer linguistique et linguistique
appliquée” (Condamines et Narcy-Combes 2015)
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13. 13
APPLIED LINGUISTICS LINGUISTIQUE APPLIQUEE
US UK France
Language Learning: a
quarterly journal of
applied linguis5cs
1948
School of Applied
Linguis@cs
J Ca%ord, Edinburgh
1957
Centre de linguis@que appliquée
B Quémada, Besançon
Center for Applied
Linguis@cs
C Ferguson, Michigan
Conference on University
training and research in
EFL/ESL, BriCsh Council,
London
1959-
1960
ATALA, B Quémada, Besançon
BEL (FLE), G Capelle
1962
Etudes de linguis5que appliquée
B Quémada, Besançon
1963
Séminaire de linguis5que formelle
A Culioli, ENS, Paris
AILA (Association
internationale de
linguistique appliquée)
1964
Associa(on interna(onale de
linguis(que appliquée à l'enseignement
des langues vivantes
A Culioli & B PoLer
Nancy, 1964

14. 14
APPLIED LINGUISTICS LINGUISTIQUE APPLIQUEE
US UK France
1965
Associa5on française de
linguis5que appliquée
1st AILA congress, Besançon
BriCsh AssociaCon
of Applied
LinguisCcs (BAAL)
1967
American AssociaCon
for Applied LinguisCcs
(AAAL)
1977
Studies in Second
Language Acquisi5on
journal
1978
1979
Encrages journal => AcquisiCon et
interacCon en langue étrangère
(AILE)
Applied Linguis5cs journal 1980

15. 15
APPLIED LINGUISTICS LINGUISTIQUE APPLIQUEE
US UK France
Language Learning: a
quarterly journal of
applied linguis5cs
1948
School of Applied
Linguis@cs
J Ca%ord, Edinburgh
1957
Centre de linguis@que appliquée
B Quémada, Besançon
Center for Applied
Linguis@cs
C Ferguson, Michigan
Conference on University
training and research in
EFL/ESL, BriCsh Council,
London
1959-
1960
ATALA, B Quémada, Besançon
BEL (FLE), G Capelle
1962
Etudes de linguis5que appliquée
B Quémada, Besançon
1963
Séminaire de linguis5que formelle
A Culioli, ENS, Paris
AILA (Association
internationale de
linguistique appliquée)
1964
Associa(on interna(onale de
linguis(que appliquée à l'enseignement
des langues vivantes
A Culioli & B PoLer
Nancy, 1964

16. 16
APPLIED LINGUISTICS LINGUISTIQUE APPLIQUEE
US UK France
1965
Associa5on française de
linguis5que appliquée
1st AILA congress, Besançon
BriCsh AssociaCon
of Applied
LinguisCcs (BAAL)
1967
American AssociaCon
for Applied LinguisCcs
(AAAL)
1977
Studies in Second
Language Acquisi5on
journal
1978
1979
Encrages journal => AcquisiCon et
interacCon en langue étrangère
(AILE) => LIA
Applied Linguis5cs journal 1980

17. 17
APPLIED LINGUISTICS LINGUISTIQUE APPLIQUEE
US UK France
Language Learning: a
quarterly journal of
applied linguis5cs
1948
School of Applied
Linguis@cs
J Ca%ord, Edinburgh
1957
Centre de linguis@que appliquée
B Quémada, Besançon
Center for Applied
Linguis@cs
C Ferguson, Michigan
Conference on University
training and research in
EFL/ESL, BriCsh Council,
London
1959-
1960
ATALA, B Quémada, Besançon
BEL (FLE), G Capelle
1962
Etudes de linguis5que appliquée
B Quémada, Besançon
1963
Séminaire de linguis5que formelle
A Culioli, ENS, Paris
AILA (Association
internationale de
linguistique appliquée)
1964
Associa(on interna(onale de
linguis(que appliquée à l'enseignement
des langues vivantes
A Culioli & B PoLer
Nancy, 1964

18. the French exception
๏ less than ten years after the foundation of AILA in Nancy, few
linguists in France were still working in applied linguistics
(Berthet, 2011: 93)
๏ we cannot but be struck by the late emergence of applied linguistics
and by the brief duration of its ascendancy in language teaching. In
France this discipline would last scarcely more than a decade
(Véronique, 2009: 50)
๏ in France, institutional research policy over that last fifty years has had the
effect of splitting up the concept of “applied linguistics” into various
specialised fields, including language learning and acquisition, bi-
and multilingualism, language teaching, lexicography, corpus linguistics,
terminology, translation studies, automatic language processing, language
variation, and so on (CRELA, 2013)
18

19. A BRIEF HISTORY
AFLA
• acquisition/teaching divide
• “a litmus test for applied linguistics in the English-speaking
world as opposed to French language didactics in the French
tradition is the inclusion of foreign language acquisition/
learning” (Véronique 2009)
• creation of AFLA/AILA
• mid 20th century in France: language teachers were not
academics, and key linguists (Quémada, Culioli) did not work on
L2 teaching and learning
• subsequent rejection of all forms of ‘applicationism’ (Galisson)
• recent calls for interdisciplinary collaboration
• CRELA 2013
• AFLA to host AILA 2023 in Lyon
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20. TERMS AND CONCEPTS IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH
CROSSLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVES ON
SECOND LANGUAGE STUDIES
• AILA Research Network: 21 members from 5 countries (Canada, France,
Ireland, Switzerland, United States) Shona Whyte & Henry Tyne (2018-20)
• conceptual and terminological correspondence in L2 teaching and
learning research, particularly with respect to French-speaking and
English-speaking scholarly communities
• identify domains of broad agreement and difficulty (database of French
and English terms) in second language studies/didactique des langues
• epistemological, theoretical, and methodological issues related to
second language studies/didactique des langues, including
• corpus linguistics, translation studies, intercultural approaches,
• language for specific purposes, CALL research, praxeological concerns
• contribute to long-running debate in AILA on definitions and directions
for the field of applied linguistics
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21. SECOND
LANGUAGE
STUDIES
3
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22. SYNERGIES WITH L2 TEACHING
SECOND LANGUAGE STUDIES
• Instructed Second Language Acquisition (Long 2017)
• task-based language teaching (TBLT)
• “unintrusive” input enhancement
• ESP research
• language didactics (Sarré & Whyte 2016)
• indigenous assessment criteria (Elder et al 2017)
• L2 research:
• Réseau de recherche en acquisition des langues secondes
(ReAL2)
• L2 methodology conference (Montpellier, May/June 2018)
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23. CONCLUSIONS
• cautious redefinition of applied
linguistics in relation to
(theoretical) linguistics and
(second/foreign) language
education
• beyond linguistics applied
• beyond language proficiency
• beyond language education
• necessary work towards
crosslinguistic and
interdisciplinary
rapprochement is under way
• “second language studies” may
help integrate L2 acquisition,
learning and teaching
dimensions
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24. Contexts of second/foreign language teaching &
learning at French universities:
Proposals for a disciplinary solution
Shona Whyte
Université Côte d’Azur
CNRS, BCL
https://wp.me/p28EmH-17g
whyte@unice.fr
@whyshona
efl.unice.fr
24Journée TULP, Poitiers 16/03/2018 https://wp.me/p28EmH-17g