Este trabalho discute a importância do texto literário (TL) no âmbito do ensino de línguas estrangeiras e, em particular, do francês língua estrangeira (FLE). Na primeira parte, elaborou-se uma síntese histórica sobre a evolução desse ensino através dos tempos, bem como uma análise da presença do TL em manuais de FLE. Percebeu-se que, tradicionalmente, do mesmo modo que a aprendizagem da língua francesa esteve associada às elites intelectuais, a da literatura sempre foi reservada aos alunos com um maior nível de conhecimento lingüístico, sendo algo inacessível a principiantes. Para verificar a hipótese de que essa prática se reproduz em sala de aula, foi realizada uma sondagem entre alunos e professores de FLE em Universidades Federais do Nordeste do Brasil sobre a abordagem do TL em aula de língua / literatura francesa, apontando para a realidade distante do tratamento unificado entre a língua e a literatura. Esse perfil é ponto inicial para o aprofundamento da fundamentação teórica, feita na segunda parte, de maneira a elaborar uma proposta de abordagem do TL em FLE para iniciantes, ou seja, sem sacralização nem banalização desse tipo de narrativa. Foram evidenciadas correntes da crítica literária, favorecendo outras possibilidades de leitura. Destacaram-se, ainda, noções de isotopia e intertextualidade, e situou-se a cena enunciativa no contexto literário para uma melhor compreensão desse texto. Na terceira parte desta tese, apresentou-se um exemplo de TL trabalhado em uma situação real de ensino de língua francesa no Brasil. Experiências didáticas foram realizadas com quatro grupos de alunos iniciantes em FLE do curso de extensão e um da graduação de Letras / Francês da Universidade Federal de Campina Grande. O corpus é constituído de contos, narrativas curtas integrais. Para essas experiências didáticas, foram elaborados dossiês com: um quadro de compreensão geral; exercícios sobre as competências de compreensão, expressão e intercultural; informações necessárias para melhor entendimento de cada conto, além de questões sobre a relação entre língua e literatura. Observou-se que a abordagem do TL em aula de FLE para iniciantes é um trabalho possível e necessário não somente para dinamizar a aprendizagem de outro idioma, mas, sobretudo, para contribuir para a apreensão / construção dos sentidos, conduzindo o leitor aprendiz ao prazer do texto. / This work discusses the importance of the literary text in the scope of foreign language teaching and, in particular, French as a foreign language (FFL). First, we prepared a historical summary on the evolution of FFL throughout the years plus an analysis of the literary text in FFL textbooks. We perceived that, traditionally, in the same way as the French language learning has been associated with the intellectual elite, literature has always been reserved to learners who have a higher linguistic level, making it something inaccessible to beginners. Aiming at verifying the hypothesis that such practice reproduces itself in the classroom, we conducted a survey among learners and teachers of FFL at Federal Universities in the northeast of Brazil regarding the approach to the literary text (LT) in the French language/literature class. We were able to notice, as a whole, that the classroom reality is still far from a unified treatment between language and literature. As we visualize this profile, we deepen the theoretical background so as to put forward a proposal for an ideal approach to the LT in the FFL classroom for beginners, without enshrining or vulgarizing this kind of narrative. In this second part, too, we highlight notes about literary critique currents which can leave room for other readings. As a sequence for the theoretical background, we present notions about isotopy and intertextuality, and we even place the enunciative scene in the literary context, something which is of great value for a better understanding of such text. In the third and last part of this thesis, we present an example of how the LT can be tackled in a real situation of French language teaching in Brazil. We performed didactic experiments with four groups of beginners in the four-skill course and one group in the graduation course of Letters (French language) at the Federal University of Campina Grande. Our corpus is composed of short-stories, because they enable the contact with the whole work. To serve as tools used in these didactic experiments, we prepared files which contained: an overall comprehension chart; exercises on comprehension, expression and intercultural competencies; necessary information for a better understanding of each short-story, as well as some questions about the relationship between language and literature. After these didactic experiments, it is possible to state that working with the LT in the FFL classroom with beginners it is possible and necessary, not only to make FL learning dynamic but above all contribute to the apprehension / construction of the senses and to get the pleasure of the text.

The dissertation called the Method of Integration of Valency Syntax into the Czech Language Teaching within Lower Secondary Education deals with the issue of valency syntax in relation to syntax teaching within lower secondary education. The main goal of the dissertation is to describe, specify and define the principles, which serve as the basis for the integration of the valency theory into the Czech language teaching within lower secondary education with regard to pupils' concepts of the structure of a Czech sentence. In its three main parts, the dissertation informs the reader about the development of the perception of the valency syntax as a scientific discipline in the Czech and foreign environment, as the didactic transformation of the curriculum must be always based on scientific theories and comply with them; the second part of the thesis analyses the didactically transformed curriculum of valency syntax in teaching materials intended for lower secondary education. On the basis of a practical quality research, the third part defines pupils' preconcepts related to the formal and semantic structure of a sentence. Among other things, the submitted dissertation points out to the necessity of monitoring the pupils' preconcepts in the Czech language teaching in order to ensure that the teaching is not...

Pinyin, the romanization system of Standard Chinese released in 1958 in China, is used to transcribe Chinese orthography, to facilitate reading comprehension and is used as a tool in general Chinese language education. Both in and outside of China and for both Chinese and foreign students, pinyin has also been used as an aid in Chinese language education for teaching Standard Chinese pronunciation and annotating Chinese texts in Chinese characters. While the related research mostly concerns the effects of pinyin on students’ abilities, research on the beliefs and practices of pinyin by Chinese language teachers in Swedish schools is scarce. The present study aims to explore Chinese language teachers’ perceptions about the importance of pinyin, and to investigate the teachers’ practice with pinyin in teaching. While the didactics of the teachers is coherent with parts in the literature describing teachers’ communicative focus, findings in the study entail that the teachers employ a method of presenting new characters involving showing the combination of a Chinese character, pinyin, and translation all at once. The balance between pinyin and Chinese character reading comprehension, a theme identified in the analysis, is a fact that the study’s respondents find hard to balance. The respondents also report positive mental effects of pinyin, such as increased confidence and an increased desire for learning Chinese in general. Lastly, the respondents emphasized the importance of pinyin in an expanding, digitalized era.

(in English): This diploma thesis focuses on how spelling is taught as a part of Czech language lessons at primary schools. The thesis aims to describe the level of spelling knowledge in students attending first and lower secondary schools, and it also attempts to compare their performance. Attention is first paid to the essential theoretical framework of the Czech language, its spelling, and teaching in Czech. The possibilities of evaluating spelling knowledge in Czech language lessons are highlighted. For the practical part, a survey was performed at a primary school in Kolín, and a total of 84 pupils attending grades four to eight were selected. The participants were presented with several spelling exercises in three different formats: dictation, gap fills, and error correction. The collected data were analysed and compared. The findings suggest that the pupils' spelling knowledge reaches only an average level, and it is, therefore, necessary to pay more attention to spelling practice. With specific phenomena, better results were recorded in the 7th and 8th grades than with younger pupils.

Multilingualism is currently a much discussed topic, especially abroad. The objective of this thesis is to examine whether and eventually how multilingualism affects the process of learning Czech as a second language within Erasmus+ language courses. The language skills of both the lecturers and the students of these courses meet the EU language policy requirement to master at least two foreign languages. In the theoretical framework of the thesis, the terms multilingualism and bilingualism are explained, citing mainly foreign scholarly literature. The focus is then shifted to the EU language policy and the current state of research into multilingualism in language teaching. In the last part of the theoretical framework, multilingualism didactics and the communicative approach are introduced. The chief data source for the following empirical research are audio recordings of Czech language courses for Erasmus+ students of the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. The data gathered from the classes are then analyzed and interpreted, with a focus on the manifestations of multilingualism. The thesis first deals with English, other foreign languages used in the courses follow. In the closing part, several teaching situations in which the multilingualism didactics is present are introduced, as...

The goal for this essay is to research the action of “I don’t know” as a problem solving strategy with antilearning consequences, and as an action, with help from Dewey’s pragmatism and Krashen’s theory about affective filters (Krashen, 1987). The data is gathered from a group of nine-graders learning German as a third language, and the language skill in focus is oral production. The main questions are: ”How does an awareness raising about affective filters affect the pupils use of the action ’I don’t know’” and ”How does teaching about strategies affect the pupils use of the action ’I don’t know’”. As I interpreted the pupils use of “I don’t know” as a bad kind of problem solving action I wanted to give them better solutions, by teaching three language learning strategies. From the results of the data collection it is clear, that affective filters at first is an abstract theme for the pupils to understand and discuss, and that a more concrete work around the effects of “I don’t” is easier to handle. The result shows that both awareness raising and teaching strategies help the students to avoid the action “I don’t know” and in the last recording of the oral exams the action is not heard at all.

The following essay presents a case study based on participant observation of a group of Swedish secondary school students’ interaction in English. The study focused on what is commonly referred to as communicative competence, or more specifically strategic competence, which represents how language speakers overcome linguistic breakdowns or gaps in their communicative skill. The aim of the study was to better understand how students use linguistic fillers in different situations. By observing students in two different situations, one stressful and one regular conversational situation, it was found that when in a stressful situation, students are more likely to use linguistic fillers in general and also that some students rely on their first language, Swedish, when using linguistic fillers. In this case study, it was found that some students experience difficulties in using English linguistic fillers. Based on these findings, there is a need for teachers to address this problem if students are to develop confidence and skill in using them. For this reason, there is a need for further research on developing and testing different teaching methods on the use of linguistic fillers.   Keywords: communicative competence, EFL, language didactics, linguistic fillers, participant observation, secondary school students, strategic competence.

La recherche propose d’explorer une démarche alternative à l’évaluation certificative par standards dans le monde de la formation et de la qualification des enseignants. La question qui parcourt la thèse est la suivante : une démarche de projet réflexive, enrichie par les outils du web 2.0 et de l’évaluation qualitative peut-elle accompagner le développement des compétences professionnelles nécessaires aux futurs enseignants de langues en formation universitaire initiale (master) ? La recherche inductive qui a été mise en place s’intéresse à trois promotions d’étudiants. Le construit théorique et l’opérationnalisation de la question de recherche ont ainsi émergé au fur et à mesure du déroulement de la recherche. Le corpus collecté est varié (journaux de bord, écrits professionnels, blogues communautaires, monographies, entretien collectif). L’analyse qualitative doublée d’une analyse de discours assistée par ordinateur permet d’apporter des éléments marqués qui montrent l’intérêt de l’approche retenue. / The research aims at exploring an alternative approach to a standard-based certification assessment used in teacher training and qualification. The underpinning question of the thesis is the following: can a reflective project approach enhanced by web 2.0 tools and qualitative assessment help develop the professional skills needed by future language teachers when still at university? The empirical research has been conducted with three student classes. The theoretical basis and the operationalisation of the research question have thus emerged as the research was being developed. The gathered corpus is varied (logbooks, professional writings, community blogs, collective interviews). Both the qualitative analysis and computer-aided discourse analysis bring to light marked elements pointing to the relevance of the chosen approach.

The development of plurilingual competence has been increasingly seen as an important aspect of foreign language teaching. Since textbooks usually play a central role in language classrooms, they are supposed to contribute to the development of plurilingual teaching. This paper focuses on three textbooks for German as a foreign language used in the Swedish upper-secondary school with the purpose of finding out the extent to which they include components that encourage the pupils' development of both language awareness and language learning awareness in order to enhance the acquisition of German as a third language in accordance with the concept of plurilingualism didactics. The analysis of the results shows that the basic guidelines of the didactics of plurilingualism are taken into consideration only to a very limited extent in the Swedish textbooks.

TITLE: Didactic use of knowledge, competence, learning strategies and habits acquired when learning English (L2) in teaching French (L3) AUTHOR: PhDr. Radek Vít DEPARTMENT: Department of French language and literature SUPERVISOR: doc. PhDr. Marie Fenclová, CSc ABSTRACT: In the Czech Republic, French is most often taught as a second foreign language after English. Factors influencing cross-linguistic transfer (English - French) are analyzed. Its areas are delimited. By means of a questionnaire and an experiment, it is examined whether learners of French can make use of knowledge, competence, learning strategies and habits acquired when learning English to facilitate learning French and make it more efficient. The questionnaire revealed that 87% grammar school teachers highlighted similarities between English and French in subject matter in French lessons, 70% claim that their learners make use of learning strategies, metalinguistic competence and learning habits acquired previously in English lessons and 90% state that their learners make mistakes probably due to interference of English. After the experiment at grammar schools, the posttests showed that making use of activities based on similarities between the subject matter in English and French when presenting new grammar in French lessons does not...