Articles written by Anne-Marie Bezzina

Volume 10-Issue 2: December 2016

Teachers’ Understanding of the Use of Language as a Medium of Instruction in ‘French as a Foreign Language’ Lessons

For their communicative needs, bilinguals access their language repertoire, in which languages are not discrete and separate, but form an integrated system. This has led to pedagogical practices which consider bilingualism as a strategic asset rather than a source of interference of the L1 upon the target language (TL). Competence does not consist of the total mastery of each language. Rather, bilinguals need to build proficiency by developing abilities in the different functions served by different languages. This new understanding clashes with the pedagogical tradition that theorizes competence in terms of monolingual norms, advocating exclusive use of the TL in the Foreign Language (FL) classroom. Given that it has been shown that FL teachers do frequently use the L1, and that the L1 can support the learning of French as a FL, this study investigates Maltese teachers’ attitudes and classroom practices in relation to translanguaging in the French classroom. A questionnaire for teachers allows a better understanding of the functions for which the L1 is put to use, whether teachers received training in language use and whether there are consensus viewpoints about when L1 use may prove more beneficial.

Volume 11-Issue 1: June 2017

Translanguaging Practices in the Teaching of French as a Foreign Language in Malta

This study reviews beliefs related to translanguaging activities in the French as a Foreign Language (FFL) classroom and suggests cultural reasons why some condemn the concomitant use of previously learnt languages with the target language in FFL learning contexts. A corpus analysis of two Maltese FFL teachers’ recorded lessons attempts a structural categorisation of translanguaging instances according to the classification of classroom translanguaging in Causa (1998). It sheds light on the functions that translanguaging is made to fulfil in the Maltese FFL classroom, in comparison to those proposed mainly in Maarfia (2008). The results are compared to Maltese FFL teachers’ statements about their views on translanguaging in a recently administered questionnaire (Bezzina, 2016). Basic statistics reveal that the target language is often far from being the dominant language in the FFL classroom, and that learner talk is hardly encouraged in any language. Observations are interpreted in the light of possible practical factors of influence on translanguaging in the FFL classroom, as proposed in Molander (2004).

Volume 15-Issue 2: December 2021

Spoken Interaction in the French as a Foreign Language classroom in Malta: Learner responses elicited by teachers’ questioning patterns

This study investigates the state of health of the spoken component in the teaching and learning of French as a Foreign Language (FFL) in Malta, positing that this may throw some light on the nature of foreign language (FL) pedagogical methods employed locally. A review of research conducted on the practice of the spoken skill by Maltese learners of French is supported by a study of questioning techniques employed by FFL teachers and their effect on the quality of learners’ spoken participation in class. Modern language pedagogy values practice of the spoken skill by L2 learners. The language teacher as interaction facilitator needs to master strategies based on asking direct, specific, open-ended questions which may trigger replies that go beyond single-word answers. Using Bloom’s taxonomy ensures that through their questioning, teachers engage learners in different cognitive processes. The analysis is based on a corpus of 16 transcribed FFL lessons delivered in two Maltese secondary schools, studied by means of Natural Language Processing (NLP), with a focus on questions, classified according to the types of responses they generate. The corpus is tagged with a tokenizer for French and another one for Maltese. The platform used for collocation searches and statistical calculations in the multilingual corpus is the Sketch Engine corpus management toolkit. Identification of grammatical categories mostly used by learners is carried out. Results confirm a rather traditional tendency in these classes, with the teacher as dominant figure, and a significant imbalance in the distribution of teacher and learner talk. Teachers frequently ask closed questions about word/phrase meaning and meta-language. Classroom verbal exchanges tend to involve lower order cognitive processes. Grammatical categories used in learner talk are predominantly heads of phrases, with very limited expansion. An improvement in the quality of classroom exchanges is warranted. Teacher training should go beyond theoretical knowledge of Bloom’s taxonomy, to include practice of efficient questioning strategies that may help learners produce longer stretches of L2 talk and develop their thinking skills. Not much progress seems to have been achieved in recent years regarding the practice of speaking in the FFL classroom; a culture change in the FL teaching scenario seems to be necessary to allow for advancement.