Language transfers: interfering with learning?

From the negation of the mother tongue...

In France in the 1890s, the Revue pédagogique reported on the problem of alloglot regions where "French people live whose language is not yet French", as geographer Onésime Reclus, the inventor of the word "francophonie", wrote in 1888.

Since the French Revolution, the state has advocated monolingualism in France. Some pedagogues, fervent advocates of the direct method, recommended banning the use of the learner's mother tongue. Conceived by Irénée Carré, Inspector General of Primary Education, this method, also known as the "mother-tongue method", was aimed at alloglots in France and the colonies, while at the same time a trend was emerging in favor of transitional bilingualism and a contrastive approach to languages, initiated by linguist Michel Bréal. But it wasn't until the late 1970s that the role of the mother tongue in learning a new language was recognized.

... to recognition

After the creation in France, as early as 1965, of specific classes designed to provide French as a foreign language training for the children of migrant workers, it was not until the late 1970s that the importance for children of maintaining contact with their native language and cultural environment was recognized. In 1977, a Council of Europe directive was promulgated, in which member states undertook to organize "accelerated learning of the language of the host country and to facilitate, if possible within the framework of the school in liaison with the country of origin, teaching of the mother tongue and culture": an intercultural approach in which "the child can construct his or her own identity in relation to his or her mother tongue and culture", writes Nathalie Auger, a teacher-researcher in Language Sciences who is leading a reflection on the comparison of languages.

Between 1973 and 1982, language and culture of origin (LCO) courses were set up in France, in partnership with migrant families' countries of origin, for the eight largest immigrant groups in France at the time. A 1978 circular states that

"experience has shown that maintaining foreign children's knowledge of their language and culture can be a positive factor in their adaptation to French schools", thus encouraging the development of bilingualism.

thus encouraging the development of bilingualism and interculturality.

However, Nathalie Auger observes that "this system has not really established the relationship between the various languages and cultures that exist side by side", just as a memo from 1983 officially recognized the inadequate integration of LCO teaching into the French school system.

The 2002 circular on the organization of schooling for newly-arrived pupils in France, which calls for an assessment of the academic skills acquired in the previous language, reinforces this recognition of the existence of bi/plurilingualism among new arrivals, at a time when plurilingualism is at the heart of European language policies. Languages are recognized as equivalent in dignity, and belong to the rights of individuals.

A document published by the French Ministry of Education in 2012 presents and develops ten preconceived ideas about learning the French language. It states that

"the fact of being able to compare reading codes and procedures in two languages allows us to distance ourselves from what we are learning, and actually facilitates learning by setting up metalinguistic categories.

This perspective is part of a plurilingual vision of language learning, as opposed to a monolingual approach. The creation of dual-language classes is part of this evolution in teaching practices: learning two languages at the same time is more effective, provided that the didactic approach, based on contrastive approaches, is well integrated and not successive, and that the different skills are worked on in synergy, without redundancy (...)

Far from being negative, transfers are a sign that learning is underway: learners build their interlanguage by copying processes from one language to the other".

"Let's compare languages

Against this backdrop, and in response to the needs of teachers dealing with allophone pupils and their demand for suitable tools, a team of teachers led by Nathalie Auger developed a video in 2005 (in collaboration with Casnav, CDDP du Gard and FASILD - Fonds d'Action et de Soutien pour l'Intégration et la Lutte contre les Discriminations) that presents an approach based on a contrastive approach to languages. Comparons nos langues " ("Let's compare our languages ") presents sequences filmed in reception classes for allophone pupils, focusing on activities comparing the different languages of young pupils.

The "framework of proposed activities is deliberately broad, so that teachers can appropriate it according to their own working conditions", and the designers encourage teachers to draw on their specific working environment, suggesting that they "start from the pupils' questions to trigger the reflective approach".

The child is then recognized as an "expert in his or her mother tongue", providing the "information necessary for the teacher to organize knowledge". It's a real exchange, an interaction between all the "players" involved: children and adults, pupils and teachers, who are themselves "at the heart of an intercultural process, enriching their knowledge of their pupils and their languages".

Mother tongue as support

Far from interfering with the learning of the target language, the mother tongue serves as a support. Indeed, when learning a new language, the learner naturally refers to the automatisms acquired in his or her mother tongue, and the new language studied is scrutinized by the mother tongue.

Although this can lead to errors and misunderstandings, as the linguist Troubetzkoy writes in his Principles of Phonology ( 1939), this process is inevitable. In the course of learning, these interference phenomena, also known as negative transfer, are described by linguists such as Weinreich in Languages in contact (1953).

Weinreich was the first to categorize the interference that occurs when two languages come into contact: "in speech, interference is like sand carried by a stream; in language, it is the sedimented sand deposited on the bottom of a lake".

Through unconscious phonological, lexical, syntactic and even semantic "borrowings", this inevitable process contributes to the construction of an interlanguage, which is constantly evolving as the learner continues to learn the target language, which he or she will also gradually approach to achieve mastery of a so-called "standard" language.

As Nathalie Auger points out in her presentation of the DVD, all language learning "is based, consciously or unconsciously, on a comparison between the pre-existing language system(s) and the language to be learned". She also adds that "learning another language always means modelling the system to be achieved on the original system, whatever the linguistic level (sound, syntax, lexicon, etc.)". Psycho-linguist Gilbert Dalgalian writes that "it is with his own speech that the bilingual builds his second language, his other self". The learner builds on what he already knows to discover what he doesn't yet know.

Comparing different languages then serves to demonstrate the "singular universals" as defined by language didactician Robert Galisson. All languages share universals: phonology, syntax, writing systems, etc., but each actualizes them differently.

Errors at the heart of the learning process

Recourse to the mother tongue (as to other languages known to the speaker) will enable us to understand and correct the errors that arise in the learning process.

The very status of error takes on a new, constructive twist: perceived in a positive light, error is recognized as a participant in the learning process itself. Through language comparison, where both teachers and students "are experts in their own language", and where each "discovers the other's system in a genuine relationship of empathy", errors are put into perspective.

This intercultural approach is based on the observation of commonalities and differences in communication systems, and Nathalie Auger insists that "it's just as important to show children what they can use from their native script to speak French as the new elements they'll have to acquire".

Valuing and motivating

A sensitive, rewarding and reassuring approach, where empathy and benevolence reign.

The approach here makes children more active in their learning, developing their powers of observation, analysis and relationship-building, while fostering strong motivation through the pleasure of sharing knowledge, a real guarantee of progress.

It's also an approach that often leads to laughter, as the teacher strives to repeat to a sometimes demanding audience the sounds of a language he's discovering through his young pupils.

In her analysis of Nathalie Auger's approach in Alsic magazine(Apprentissage des langues et systèmes d'information et de communication), Dalie Chrifi Alaoui quotes didactician Louis Porcher, who stresses the importance of "establishing connections, relationships, articulations, passages and exchanges between these cultures. It's not just a question of managing the juxtaposition of different cultures as best we can, but of bringing them into reciprocal dynamism, enhancing their value through contact".

Even if the difficulty of an explanatory undertaking is very real, when it's a question of "revealing the mechanisms specific to a community when they may be ignored by its members" (as Geneviève Zarate wrote in 1986), the approach here finds all its value and interest. For "linguistic comparison is like another way (in addition to the other approaches: deductive, inductive, text grammar...) of creating cognitive clarity and linguistic awareness for learners", whose aim is not to turn them into linguists.

But it is about helping them to value their contact with the target language through their mother tongue. "The notion of the student-expert, developed by Nathalie Auger in the DVD, is absolutely essential to the role that the mother tongue can play in what is known as motivation ", adds the author of the analysis. In a context where traditional classroom roles are overturned by exchanges that make learners truly active.

"Maîtresse, tu erpes", Andréï points out to me, when I write on the board, under dictation, nu pluă instead of nu plouă, as we compare the construction of negation.

And how many times today have I had to repeat this word casă (which seemed so simple to me) before Alexandru, laughing, finally congratulates me with a thunderous "very good"? ...

Illustration: Riza Nugraha, Flickr, CC License

References

Du français langue étrangère au français langue seconde et de scolarisation : de l'émergence d'une problématique à l'institutionnalisation d'une approche didactique, Claude Cortier, in le français comme langue de scolarisation, edited by Catherine Klein, CNDP, 2012
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00984861v1

Comparons nos langues, DVD - Video by Nathalie Auger, 2005
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZlBiAoMTBo

Enseignement des langues d'origine et apprentissage du français : vers une pédagogie de l'inclusion, Nathalie Auger, le français aujourd'hui, magazine published in 2007, n°158
http://www.cairn.info/revue-le-francais-aujourd-hui-2007-3-page-76.html

Les langues du monde au quotidien, CRDP de Bretagne publication, 2012:
https://www.reseau-canope.fr/notice/les-langues-du-monde-au-quotidien-cycle-2.html

Dix idées reçues sur l'apprentissage de la langue française par les EANA (idées 3 et 5) et les dix considérations préliminaires sur l'enseignement du français et en français comme langue seconde (idées 4 et 8), éduscol, 2012
https://eduscol.education.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/document/eanaflsco10ideesrecues359988pdf-81198.pdf

Analysis of Comparons nos langues by Dalie Chrifi Alaoui in Alsic magazine, 2007
https://journals.openedition.org/alsic/681