Maîtrise de la littératie académique en français chez de futurs enseignants de français langue étrangère.Étude comparative d'étudiants en formation initiale de professeurs à l’université de Grenade (Espagne) et à l'université de Gand (Belgique)

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Introduction In recent decades, the European Union has launched a series of initiatives, resolutions, projects, programs and publications to promote the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Europe. She stresses the importance for all European citizens to be able to speak at least two foreign languages in addition to their mother tongue. Thus, the improvement of the language skills of European citizens occupies a fundamental place. From this, it follows that the language teacher education can be considered as primordial in the improvement of the learning of foreign languages. This Doctoral Thesis aims mainly two objectives. The first objective is to describe the context of the European vision on plurilingualism and foreign language proficiency and to analyze how two European countries, bordering France, are trying to implement this vision at the level of education and more precisely that of the initial education of French as a foreign language (FFL) teachers. The second objective is to establish the state of art and to point out the difficulties, with regard to the mastery of writing skills, which encounter future non-native teachers enrolled in an initial training of teachers of FFL. By comparing the two contexts, we try to offer suggestions to improve these teacher education programs. This study is therefore aimed at the initial education of FFL teachers and the policy makers of the two countries that are the subject of this study. Methods Concerning the research method, this study is of descriptive and comparative nature, which also adopts a mixed approach, namely a quantitative and qualitative approach. In terms of data collection, a survey, the diagnostic language test ©DIALANG and the writing of an argumentative text allowed us to collect data to constitute our corpus. This study was carried out with two experimental populations. On the one hand, it was carried out with all future FFL teachers (n=45) enrolled in the initial education of foreign language teachers, called « Máster Universitario en Profesorado de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria y Bachillerato, Formación Profesional y Enseñanza de Idiomas » with a specialization in FFL during the academic years 2012-2013 and 2014-2015 at the University of Granada (Spain). On the other hand, it was also carried out with all future FFL teachers (n=40) enrolled in the initial education of foreign language teachers, called « Specifieke lerarenopleiding in de taal- en letterkunde » with a specialization in FFL during the academic years 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 at Ghent University (Belgium). Results We obtained the following results for the main objectives mentioned above. Thanks to the European profile for language teacher education: a frame of reference (2004), we were able to find interesting results on the current implementation of two of the four key elements of the European profile, referring to the importance of language skills of the foreign language teacher. These results allow us to propose some suggestions in order to incorporate these key elements and to improve the initial education of FFL teachers in Spain and Belgium. Secondly, the data obtained from the survey provided more details on the difficulties, related to FFL writing, encountered by students during their university studies. In addition, analysis of the results of the diagnostic language test ©DIALANG showed that 11.1% of future FFL teachers at the University of Granada and 37.5% of Ghent University have acquired a C1 level. The others are at lower levels. Then, the analysis of the argumentative texts made it possible to discover that the two experimental populations still commit written errors in their argumentative texts. On average, we found more errors in the texts of the students of the University of Granada (19.76 errors per text) than in those of Ghent University (4.08 errors per text). Among students of the University of Granada, the errors were mainly grammar (37.3%) and spelling (36.9%) errors while among students of Ghent University, the most frequent errors were lexical errors (41.1%). Concerning lexical richness, the students of the University of Granada wrote texts with slightly higher lexical richness (D=89.35) than those of Ghent University (D=87.65). Finally, these results allow us to have a better idea of the proficiency level of FFL of future FFL teachers and to highlight the gaps in writing in order to identify the needs of these future FFL teachers and to improve their proficiency continuously. Conclusions This doctoral thesis has allowed, on the one hand, to explore the European vision about teaching and foreign language proficiency, and to examine its implementation in two different FFL teacher education programs, in particular at the University of Granada (Spain) and at Ghent University (Belgium). On the other hand, we were able to evaluate the language skills, and more specifically those of writing of future FFL teachers, enrolled in these teacher education programs. The results suggest that it is necessary to design new didactic strategies, focusing on the improvement of the overall mastery of the target language and general language skills, especially writing skills. It would be useful to integrate language level tests at the beginning of the basic university studies and after each semester or academic year to assess student progress and encourage them to improve their language skills not only within the university. In addition, the FFL teacher education programs should also integrate language level tests at the beginning of the academic year. These conclusions can only reaffirm the relevance of starting to reflect on the real implementation of a language component in the initial FFL teacher education programs, and, to increase the possibilities for Erasmus stays and to stimulate students to participate in it, so that future non-native FFL teachers can further develop their language skills during this teacher education program to become better FFL teachers. Finally, the main research perspectives that emerge from this thesis concern the following points which deserve to be studied in more detail in future studies: to evaluate the oral skills in future FFL teachers; to analyze other types of writing, derived from academic literacy; to broaden the corpus of the experimental population by integrating other initial FFL teacher education programs; to expand the control corpus; to analyze whether the words used in the argumentative texts belong to a basic vocabulary or to a more academic vocabulary; to relate the results on language proficiency with the students’ mother tongue as well as their attitudes and motivation; in relation to written errors, further study of interference with the mother tongue and of the compensation strategies employed by students; and finally, to carry out statistical analyses to verify the possible influence of individual variables.