This qualitative study has investigated a month-long French-as-a-foreign-language summer program. Its goal was to compare teacher (n=4) and student (n=6) perspectives regarding learning objectives, challenges, and preferred teaching/learning approaches and methods, and to evaluate results against Whyte (2011), who argued that a schism in French university language teaching leads to the dominance of explicit (traditional teacher-fronted) instruction at the expense of more communicative teaching approaches. Data collection took place via classroom observations, pre-course interviews and surveys, a post-course teacher focus group, and weekly student reflective logs. A total of 2,211 references were coded to 276 thematic nodes. Results suggest that the teachers involved primarily embrace a traditional classroom dynamic but apply strategies associated with multiple methods, providing evidence for use of what has become known as the Eclectic Method. Some alignment was found between teachers and students concerning goals, challenges, and teaching approaches, and mixed support was obtained for Whyte’s claim regarding a deficit of communicative language teaching, in that both explicit and implicit teaching were observed. / Graduate

<p>This thesis investigates acquisition of negation and focus particles in oral L2 French. It concerns adverbs of addition (aussi, encore), restriction (seulement) and temporal contrast (déjà, encore). These items all lack independent referential value i.e. they depend on other constituents in an utterance for their interpretation, they are not structurally obligatory and they variably affect other constituents in an utterance. The learner has to capture the significance of each item, its syntactic position and its pragmatic function in a given context.</p><p>The study aims at describing the development in oral production of 24 Swedish learners, beginners to very advanced, and 6 native speakers, in all together 80 interviews, in order to postulate an acquisitional itinerary.</p><p>The analysis consists of two parts. The first one concerns negation types such as non in various functions, constituent negation (pas X), phrasal negation (ne…pas) and semi-negations (ne…aucun/jamais/personne/rien). The results show, inter alia, that non is used in different pragmatic functions at different levels of acquisition. At the initial stage, non is also used idiosyncratically as a constituent negation and as a preverbal phrasal negation. At the post-initial stage, where also the verbs are mainly finite, phrasal negation (ne) pas is post-verbal. Furthermore, the analysis showed that jamais and rien appear prior to the other semi-negations. In the second part, the use of focus particles is analyzed. The study revealed that the additive particle aussi appears first, in an initial or final position of an utterance, followed by additive encore and restrictive seulement at the post-initial stage and that the temporal adverbs encore and déjà are almost solely used by advanced learners. An acquisitional sequence was postulated, with idiosyncratic negation and additive focus particles appearing previous to post-verbal negation and restrictive particles. The temporal adverbs of contrast appear at the advanced stages.</p>

This thesis investigates acquisition of negation and focus particles in oral L2 French. It concerns adverbs of addition (aussi, encore), restriction (seulement) and temporal contrast (déjà, encore). These items all lack independent referential value i.e. they depend on other constituents in an utterance for their interpretation, they are not structurally obligatory and they variably affect other constituents in an utterance. The learner has to capture the significance of each item, its syntactic position and its pragmatic function in a given context. The study aims at describing the development in oral production of 24 Swedish learners, beginners to very advanced, and 6 native speakers, in all together 80 interviews, in order to postulate an acquisitional itinerary. The analysis consists of two parts. The first one concerns negation types such as non in various functions, constituent negation (pas X), phrasal negation (ne…pas) and semi-negations (ne…aucun/jamais/personne/rien). The results show, inter alia, that non is used in different pragmatic functions at different levels of acquisition. At the initial stage, non is also used idiosyncratically as a constituent negation and as a preverbal phrasal negation. At the post-initial stage, where also the verbs are mainly finite, phrasal negation (ne) pas is post-verbal. Furthermore, the analysis showed that jamais and rien appear prior to the other semi-negations. In the second part, the use of focus particles is analyzed. The study revealed that the additive particle aussi appears first, in an initial or final position of an utterance, followed by additive encore and restrictive seulement at the post-initial stage and that the temporal adverbs encore and déjà are almost solely used by advanced learners. An acquisitional sequence was postulated, with idiosyncratic negation and additive focus particles appearing previous to post-verbal negation and restrictive particles. The temporal adverbs of contrast appear at the advanced stages.

Cette thèse renseigne sur la structuration du discours d’écoliers haïtiens à des stades spécifiques de leur acquisition du français langue de scolarisation. A partir de tâche narrative de construction de récit, elle étudie d’une part leur capacité à mettre en mots des événements complexes, à produire un récit structuré et cohérent (analyse macro-structurelle) et, d’autres part, les moyens référentiels qu’ils mobilisent pour introduire, maintenir, réintroduire les protagonistes l’histoire à raconter (analyse micro-structurelle). Les récits ont été recueillis en créole haïtien L1 et en français L2 à partir de la planche narrative les Oisillons. Le corpus est constitué de 160 récits (80 en créole haïtien, 80 en français). Les enquêtés, d’âge et de niveau scolaire différents (9-10 ans/4ème année et de 11-12 ans/6ème année) viennent de 4 écoles différentes de la capitale haïtienne, positionnées différemment sur l’échelle des valeurs sociale et scolaire. L’âge, le niveau scolaire, le contexte d’appropriation du français ont été considérés pour les deux axes d’analyse. Les investigations portent essentiellement sur les récits produits en français L2, langue en cours d’acquisition mais certains éléments sont examinés au regard de la L1. Les résultats d’analyse révèlent principalement une variation importante dans le développement de la capacité narrative et linguistique des sujets en L2 entre les quatre groupes scolaires représentés. Ils montrent par la même occasion l’influence de l’école, lieu principal d’acquisition du français sur le développement des compétences linguistiques des écoliers haïtiens en L2, aspect qui est décrit dans cette présente étude. / This doctoral dissertation provides information on how Haitian pupils structure their written text at specific stages of the process of acquiring French as their academic language. Examining how narrative stories are constructed, on the one hand, the capacity of students to express complex events (macro-structural analysis) and, on the other hand, the referential means that are put to work: introducing, maintaining, and reintroducing the protagonists and the story to tell (micro-structural analysis). Stories have been gathered in Haitian Creole L1 and in French L2 from the story les Oisillons (Young birds). The corpus is made up of 160 stories (80 in Haitian Creole, 80 in French). The pupils surveyed whose age and school level are different (9-10 years old / 4th grade and 11-12 years old / 6th grade) come from 4 different schools of the Haitian capital. These schools occupy different positions on the scale of social and school values. Several factors including age, school level, and acquisition context of the French language have been considered for the two axes of analysis. The research focuses mainly on stories written in French L2, which is the language in the process of being acquired, but some elements of L1 are also examined. The results of the analysis reveal mainly an important variation in the development of the narrative and language capacity of the subjects in L2 between the 4 school groups that are represented. At the same time, it is shown how school which is the main place for the acquisition of French influences the development of language competence of Haitian pupils in L2. This is the point that is described in this study.