Translanguaging, recours aux langues et aux cultures de la classe autour de la littérature de jeunesse pour des publics allophones d’Ottawa (Canada) et de Montpellier (France) : opportunités et défis pour la classe

Abstract

Although their sociolinguistic contexts are quite different, Canada’s Ontario and France’s Languedoc–Roussillon share many similarities (defence of the French language, necessity to acknowledge school diversity) useful for a reflection on the education of migrant students, whose number keeps rising on both sides of the Atlantic, and on translanguaging.
The lack of training regarding the students’ plurilingual repertoire, pluralistic approaches and translanguaging activities in French acquisition led us to choose children’s books with intercultural aspects in order to encourage our teachers on both sites to use them. After offering teachers training on implementing an intercultural approach using children’s books in class, we concluded that teachers have contradicting discourses and attitudes. While books let teachers allow the students’ languages and cultures during the sessions, most of the suggested activities on translanguaging consist in talking about the languages and cultures (but without always including the students’) instead of using them as a resource at any time in class. These results lead us to suggest a redefinition of the implementation of pluralistic approaches and translanguaging practices that would be “translatable” in future teacher training.

Keywords: allophone population, intercultural approaches, pedagogical translanguaging practices, children’s literature