Texts in English

Section "Mes travaux"

 

- 2024k-en. ACAR Ahmet, PUREN Christian, The Social Action-Oriented Approach in Language Teaching: from Social Goals to Practices. Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK), 259 p. Editor's abstract: The action-oriented approach (renamed as the Social Action-Oriented Approach, SAOA, in this book) was first introduced by the Council of Europe  in its official document The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2001). This book aims to provide a detailed explanation of this approach in all its dimensions: its origins, how it has developed as a new methodology within its new didactic configuration, how to implement it in language textbooks and the classroom as well as the issue of designing social action-oriented curricula and programs. We believe this book will be a useful resource for curriculum developers, language textbook writers, researchers in the language teaching field, language teacher trainees, language teachers (K-12), and university students. Presentation, abstract and order of the paper edition on the publisher's website.

 

- 2024j-en. "Convergences between the Social Action-Oriented Approach and digital tools". Lecture presented at the 2024 Bilkent University English Language Conference, Ankara (Turkey), May 31, 2024), "Language Education 4.0: A Paradigm Shift towards Action-Oriented Approach, Artificial Intelligence Integration and Beyond". In this talk, I intend to show that the Social Action-Oriented Approach is closely linked, both in its emergence and in its implementation, to what are known, in very general terms, as "digital tools". For this relationship to be effective, however, it needs to be thought through in the light of what the history of the discipline, the didactics of cultural languages, teaches us about the different possible conceptions of the relationship between technological innovation and didactic innovation. These different conceptions are generated by the various corresponding paradigms: that of didactic determinism, that of technological determinism, that of social determinism and that of convergences-divergences. All these paradigms have their share of relevance, and in conclusion I propose "a strategy for sustainable transformation with intensive use of technological innovations" based on the successive use of each of these paradigms. Also available on ResearchGate at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383022265 (August 10, 2024).

 

- 2024i-en. An essay on a general theory of qualitative research in didactics of languages-cultures. This essay proposes a general theory of research in didactics of languages-cultures (DLC) in the form of an overall model of research processes in this discipline - valid for both university researchers and teachers - developed within the framework of systems theory, whose concepts are used here analogously in the field of DLC. It presents a synthesis of 50 years' research experience and 20 years' experience as a research supervisor (master's theses and doctoral dissertations) in this discipline. The overall system of DLC research proposed here comprises two sub-systems: the praxeological sub-system, with praxeological models; the theoretical sub-system, with theories and theoretical models, both of which share the processing of field data. These two subsystems each operate according to their own internal logic, but through the same recursive processes (conceptualization, modeling, mobilization), as well as several specific linear processes (theoretical, methodological and technological applications, didactic transposition, theoretical implication, rhetorical mobilization). Recursive processes (i.e., provided by "recursive loops") ensure the coherence and stability of each subsystem through iteration and feedback, while the conceptualization of field data provides the interface between the two subsystems. Like any system, the global DLC research system modeled in this way receives "inputs" –of five types in the case of: empirical, methodological, technological, social and theoretical– and produces "outputs" –books, articles, exchanges between researchers at meetings, textbooks, practical information sheets, etc.– likely to provoke a change in the system. These are likely to provoke "reinputs" and "new inputs", as when exchanges between researchers or the analysis of textbooks leads to the evolution of thinking in the discipline and of intervention tools. This model was developed with DLC student-researchers in mind, in order to offer them a global vision of research activities and to help them design their own research work. It complements a model of research types already presented elsewhere and reproduced here as an appendix. (Back cover)

 

- 2024h-en. "Modeling in language-culture didactics: the example of combining models of different documentary logics and learner roles". ESBB journal, Volume 10, Issue 1, pp. 4-15. The aim of this article is to present the value of modeling in language didactics, taking as examples the model of the different documentary logics that teachers can implement, and that of the different roles that students can assume in relation to documents. Based on a literary project carried out by foreign-language students within the methodological framework of the action-oriented perspective, the author shows how exploiting each of these models and combining them can enrich teaching-learning practices by diversifying the forms of L2 use in the classroom as much as possible. (June 2024)  Also available on ResearchGate. Direct link to the article on the journal's website.

 

- 2024g-en. "The mechanism of change, development and adaptation of the methodologies in didactics of languages-cultures: the "3M" Model (Matrix - Models - Methodology)". This article develops the "3M model" (Matrix - Models - Methodology), which represents the mechanism of change, elaboration and adaptation of methodologies at work in didactics of languages-cultures, a model elaborated on the basis of personal research into the history of methodologies in France and Europe from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. It is illustrated by four major methodologies that appeared in the French school system and in French as a foreign language during this period: the active methodology (focused on understanding authentic documents), the communicative approach (focused on oral interaction), the plurilingual and pluricultural approach (focused on mediation) and the action perspective (focused on social action). A new methodology emerges as a result of a social change in the intended use goal and use situation of the L2, and a new matrix is formed with these two primary elements, to which are added the action of use and the corresponding language and cultural competences. The new methodology is then generated by applying a range of different models to this matrix: pedagogical, linguistic, cognitive, cultural, methodological, epistemological and ideological. Beyond the example of this particular 3M model, the article shows the value of developing and manipulating models to develop reflection and stimulate creativity in didactics of languages-cultures. (June 2024)"The mechanism of change, development and adaptation of the methodologies in didactics of languages-cultures: the "3M" Model (Matrix - Models - Methodology)". This article develops the "3M model" (Matrix - Models - Methodology), which represents the mechanism of change, elaboration and adaptation of methodologies at work in didactics of languages-cultures, a model elaborated on the basis of personal research into the history of methodologies in France and Europe from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day. It is illustrated by four major methodologies that appeared in the French school system and in French as a foreign language during this period: the active methodology (focused on understanding authentic documents), the communicative approach (focused on oral interaction), the plurilingual and pluricultural approach (focused on mediation) and the action perspective (focused on social action). A new methodology emerges as a result of a social change in the intended use goal and use situation of the L2, and a new matrix is formed with these two primary elements, to which are added the action of use and the corresponding language and cultural competences. The new methodology is then generated by applying a range of different models to this matrix: pedagogical, linguistic, cognitive, cultural, methodological, epistemological and ideological. Beyond the example of this particular 3M model, the article shows the value of developing and manipulating models to develop reflection and stimulate creativity in didactics of languages-cultures.

Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381155045 (June 2024).

 

- 2024f-en. "Herbert Alexander Simon, a central epistemological reference point for a complex dDdactics of Languages-Cultures (DLC). English traduction (July 2024) of "Herbert Alexander Simon, une référence épistémologique centrale de la Didactique Complexe des Langues-Cultures (DLC)". Herbert Alexander Simon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978, and the Turing Medal (known as the "Nobel of Computing") in 1975 for his research into Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. I consider him to be one of my three main reference authors for the epistemology of the discipline, along with the French philosopher of complexity, Edgard Morin, and the American pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. In this short synthetic article, I propose to summarize H.A.'s seven ideas, all of which can be found in his 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial (available online; see reference in final bibliography). The order in which these ideas are presented here is not significant: 1) Artificiality to manage complexilty. 2) The relationship between artificiality and engineering: the notions of "device" and "project”. 3) Adopting the adequacy paradigm and abandoning the optimization paradigm. 4) Shifting the focus from product to process, 5) Ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis, 6) Criticism of applicationism, 7) The project approach (by way of conclusion). In this short article, I refer you to some ersonal publications that can be downloaded online for each of these ideas. Available too on ResearchGate. Version française également disponible: 2024f, ou sur ResearchGate.

 

- 2024e-en. "Praise for the artificial in school didactics of languages-cultures". English translation from "Éloge de l’artificiel en didactique scolaire des langues-cultures", EDL, Études de Didactique des Langues no. 40-June 2023, pp. 49-62. This article proposes a journey through the history of methodologies in school didactics of languages-cultures, which shows that authenticity has not always been opposed to artificiality, but that for a long time these two notions have been considered as both opposed and complementary. The authenticity valued over the criticized artificiality was then successively attributed to different objects: then, to literary documents only at the expense of non-literary documents; to social documents at the expense of documents manufactured for the needs of teaching-learning; finally, to real or simulated communication situations in society at the expense of learning situations in class. With the latest methodological evolution – the social action-oriented approach and its reference pedagogy, project-based pedagogy – the opposition loses much of its relevance with regard to documents and situations. As for language exercises, they have always been and still are "artificial", but this artificiality must be claimed and valued: the core of the teacher's job is indeed pedagogical engineering, that is to say precisely the design of artificial teaching-learning devices. Against the opinion of some didacticians, and in agreement with the empirical observation of many teachers, this article, as its title announces, makes the praise of the artificial in school didactics of languages-cultures. Available also on ResearchGate. Version française disponible sur christianpuren.com et sur ResearchGate.

 

- 2024d-en. ACAR Ahmet & PUREN Christian. 2024. "Integrating Language Activities through the Mini-projects of Language Textbooks", pp. 141-157 in: Benâ Gül Peker, Ahmet Acar (ed.), Developing and Designing Materials for English Language Teaching and Learning, Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 194 p. January 2024. Editors' Presentation: In their chapter, Ahmet Acar & Christian Puren put forward that mini-projects promote the integration of the different language activities defined by the CEFR and its companion volume (CEFRCV): the written and/or oral activities of reception, production, interaction, and mediation, which are thus combined in a natural way. For this purpose, an analysis grid of the different types of language activities for a mini-project is proposed to show the capacity of mini-projects to integrate the different language activities. Extracts: Introduction and Conclusion.

 

- 2024c-en. "A Scale of Competence Levels of the Foreign Language Teacher in the Use of a Textbook". pp. 108-123 in: Benâ Gül Peker, Ahmet Acar (ed.), Developing and Designing Materials for English Language Teaching and Learning, Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 194 p. January 2024. Editors' Presentation: Christian Puren analyzes the use of digital technologies (NT) in the context of the implementation of the Social Action Oriented Approach (SAOA). The author draws attention to the case of SAOA, asserting that the convergences between technological innovations and this didactic innovation are numerous and promising. But, as is all too often the case, he also adds that we cannot simply confine ourselves to more or less personal and one-off experiments: we need to give ourselves the means to bring about change, that is to say to generalize and sustain the innovation. Extracts: Introduction and Conclusion.

 

- 2024b-en. "Didactic Innovation and Technological Innovation: The Case of Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA) and Digital Technologies", pp. 27-46 in: Benâ Gül Peker, Ahmet Acar (ed.), Developing and Designing Materials for English Language Teaching and Learning, Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 194 p. January 2024. Editors' Presentation: Christian Puren analyzes the relationship between current technological innovation, enabled by digital environments, and current didactic innovation, that of Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA). In the course of the history of didactics of languages-cultures, three different models have been mobilized to consider this relationship: didactic determinism, technological determinism and multifactorial convergencesdivergences. The author shows that, in the case of SAOA, it's this last model that prevails, as the convergences between the potentialities of digital environments and those of SAOA are as numerous and promising. Extracts: Introduction and Conclusion.

 

- 2023h-en. "Criticism of the Dominant Academic Standards of “Scientific Communication” in the Didactics of Languages-Cultures". First publication: ESBB Journal (English Scholars Beyond Borders), Volume 9, Issue 1, 2023, pp. 14-22. Two fundamental criticisms can be made of the dominant academic standards of "scientific communication” in the Didactics of Languages-Cultures: 1) While Didactics of Languages-Culturesbelongs to the action paradigm, since its main aim is to improve the teaching-learning processes, these standards belong to the communication paradigm; yet these two paradigms are opposed to each other, as can be seen in Didactics of Languages-Cultures precisely in the differences between the social action-oriented approach and the communicative approach, with the repetitive vs. inchoative, durative vs. punctual and imperfective vs. perfective respectively. 2) Whereas Didactics of Languages-Cultures seeks primarily to develop models (in the sense of products of the modeling operation) as indispensable interfaces between theory and practice, because they alone are both practical enough to generate modes of intervention in the classroom, but sufficiently abstract to be adaptable to very varied and variable teaching-learning environments, the current scientific paradigm admits only theoretical communication, or practical communication, or communication that strives, with variable degrees of relevance, to put theory and practice in direct relation in one direction or the other.Text written from the slideshow of my talk at the ITC International TESOL conference 2022,  "Envisioning possibilities", Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam, December 9-10, 2022.

 

- 2023c-en. “The current orientations of the didactics of languages and cultures and education for democratic citizenship”. Inaugural lecture at the International Colloquium "Ethics, citizenship and educational issues in language teaching and learning", University of Artois, Arras, CoTraLiS - EA 4028, January 19 and 20, 2023. "Ethics, citizenship and educational issues in language teaching and learning" at the Université d'Artois (France) in January 2023. I show that the Language Policy Unit of the Council of Europe, to which the organizers of the colloquium refer in their orientation text, represents a counter-model of democratic functioning, and that their proposals constitute a counter-model of "citizen didactics". As the pedagogy of reference of the actional perspective, namely the project pedagogy, requires, the problem of the formation of democratic citizenship in the language class is concretely that of the autonomy and the responsibility of the students in the conduct of their common learning project and in the realization of pedagogical projects, which implies the mobilization of all the methodological matrices available. While the proposals of the Council of Europe lead to the dissolution of language teaching in a vague "plurilingual and intercultural education", the citizenship training of students must be conceived in a very concrete way as the responsible management, between the teacher and the learners, of the modes and means of effective learning of the language.

Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370025288.

Version française disponible: 2023c.

 

- 2023b-en. The treatment of models in international english didactics: a reductive epistemological conception of the discipline. The example of the PPP "model” (Presentation, Practice, Production). Essay. Exclusive publication for www.christianpuren.com, April 2023, 68 p. This essay takes the example of the PPP model (Presentation - Practice - Production) as it has been used for decades in international English didactics, to criticize a certain conception of "models", and, beyond that, a certain conception of the epistemology of the discipline "didactics of languages and cultures". The essay begins with a long first part in which I present the opposition between "theories" and "models", as well as the different forms, functions and types of models in didactics that must be taken into account in order to apprehend and manage the complexity of the discipline. In the second part, I present the different reductions of this complexity that many specialists of international English didactics make in their use of the PPP model. They conceive of the model as a product based on a theory of acquisition -hence the recurrent debate among them between the proponents of this PPP and those of the TBL (Task Based Learning) model- and not, as the complexity of the discipline would require, as a process of “praxeologization” in the course of which this model is tested, explored and manipulated by means of variations both internally (modifications, additions) and externally (in combination or articulation with other models). When we look at the results of the analyses, the medical diagnosis is easy to make: many specialists in international English didactics are affected by a particularly virulent form of applicationism. And the prescription for their treatment seems just as easy to write: "In-depth reflection sessions on the epistemology of the discipline 'didactics of languages and cultures' until the PPP (or PBL) symptom disappears, and the complexity paradigm appears... Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370023687. Version française originale: Le traitement des modèles en didactique internationale de l’anglais : une conception épistémologique réductrice de la discipline. L’exemple du « modèle » PPP (Présentation, Pratique, Production). Essai, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370023950.

 

- 2022h-en. "Methods and types of research in didactics of languages and cultures". This text is the English version of Part 5, "Mettre en oeuvre ses méthodes de recherche" ("Implementing research methods") of my online course "Méthodologie de la recherche en didactique des langues-cultures” “Methodology of research in didactics of languages and cultures” (DLC), French original version of July 25, 2013, translation to English November 10, 2022. In this text, "Part 5" therefore refers to the text itself. In the first part, I present the different types of research in DLC based on a model that crosses the comprehension-intervention axis with the object-subject axis. In the second part, I review the different research methods that seem to me to be the most appropriate, and I argue that it is necessary to cross them as well in order to take into account properly the complexity of any didactic problem. As a general conclusion, I support the idea that DLC being an intervention discipline aiming at the generalization and the perpetuation of proposals for the improvement of the teaching-learning process, the horizon of any research project is the "research-development", which mobilizes all types of research at its service. Also available at www.researchgate.net/publication/365316991.

 

- 2022g-en. "From eclecticism to the complex management of methodological variation in didactics of languages-cultures". This slide show with written comments in pdf document format is essentially the slides and oral comments of a remote lecture given at the University of São Paulo on October 14, 2022. The thesis I defend is presented in its short summary: "Methodological variation is indispensable for many reasons. It has been managed until now by historical passages from one constituted methodology to another within different didactic configurations, or in the inter-methodological mode of eclecticism. Its management must now expand to the modes of multimethodology and plurimethodology." In a recent ("Modeling types of approach to methodological variation in language-culture teaching-learning: from eclecticism to complex didactics," https://www.christianpuren.com/mes-travaux/2021f-en/), I had proposed a modeling that focused on different conceptions of eclecticism. This conference focuses on the different ways in which methodological variation is carried out by teachers and authors of didactic materials using available methodological resources. The model crosses the four major modes of methodological variation - intra-, inter-, multi- and pluri-methodological - with the three levels of the methodological - micro, meso and macro - with eclecticism historically corresponding to inter-methodological variations at the micro and meso levels. The paper concludes with a table of "components of the teacher's complex management of methodological variation competence" that reuses, applying it to didactic cultures, the complex model of cultural competence (2011j), with its meta-, inter-, multi-, pluri-, co- and trans-cultural components.

Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/367335701. Original French version: 2022g.

 

- 2022e-en. "The epistemology of the didactics of languages-cultures, a complex epistemology for a complex discipline". Epistemological questioning in a discipline is a sign of disciplinary maturity. The didactics of French as a foreign language has thus moved from (1) an initial perspective, until the 1960s, of a "methodological" type, in which "methodologists" thought they could find the right answers to the problems they had identified; (2) to a "didactic" or meta-methodological perspective, in the 1970s, in which methodological problems become problematic because "didacticians" have become aware that the answers can only be contextual, i.e., plural, local, partial and temporary; (3) finally, in the 1980s, to the "didactological" or meta-didactic perspective, in which didacticians question their own discipline from the ideological, ethical or, as the coordinators of this book invite, epistemological point of view. After presenting the main characteristics of an epistemology adapted to the didactics of languages and cultures, i.e., a complex one, and its consequences for teacher training and teaching-learning practices, the author shows that they are particularly interesting in the didactics of languages for specific purposes, because they make it possible to allow the language class to function as an incubator of professional skills.

English translation from « L’épistémologie de la didactique des langues-cultures, une épistémologie complexe pour une discipline complexe », chap. 6 pp. 187-195 in : 0'CONNELL Anne-Marie & CHAPLIER Claire (coord.), Épistémologie à usage didactique, Langues de spécialité (secteur LANSAD), Paris : L'Harmattan, 2019, 266 p. Also available at www.researchgate.net/publication/361938492.

 

- 2022d-en. "Felix dubitatio! Uncertainty and complexity in didactics of languages and cultures". English translation from "Felix dubitatio ! Incertitude et complexité en didactique des langues-cultures", EDL. Études en Didactique des Langues, revue du LAIRDIL, Laboratoire Inter-universitaire de Recherche en Didactique LANSAD, IUT A - Toulouse III, NQ° 37 "L'incertitude / Uncertainty"), MAY 2021, pp. 51-68. The complexity of the objects and processes that are constitutive of the didactics of languages and cultures, as well as the diversity and heterogeneity of learners, structurally confront the teachers with complexity, and therefore with uncertainty. This is the reason why most teachers have always implemented an empirical eclecticism in their classrooms, instead of the necessarily simplifying coherence of all the constituted methodologies that their institutions often want to impose upon them. It is for the same reason that the discipline, when it finally took this complexity into account, had to add to its first “methodological” perspective, first the “didactic” (or meta-methodological) perspective in the early 1970s, and then the “didactological” (or meta-didactic) perspective, from the early 1980s. This historical evolution of the discipline came up against, and continues to come up against, three forms of reductionism: theoretical, technological and practical applicationism; the second, reactivated by the emergence of digital technologies, has recently been reinforced by the intensive use of these technologies to ensure the so-called “pedagogical continuity”. This article proposes what the author calls, alluding to the current pandemic, “some off-patent components of the anti-certainty vaccine”: teacher training in the epistemology of the discipline, “learner-centeredness” and the “project approach”. The author concludes with the idea that since the language classroom is a place and a time for collective learning in a complex environment, it can function as an “incubator” for the skills now required in a professional world that is also confronted with complexity and uncertainty. Also available at:

www.researchgate.net/publication/361650533.

 

- 2022c-en. "Didactic and technological innovation in language and culture didactics: historical approach and current problems". The history of the didactics of languages and cultures since the end of the XIXe century shows three main models of the relationship between didactic innovation and technological innovation: (1) the model of didactic determinism, which privileges didactic factors: it would be the didactic evolutions that would lead teachers to resort to such or such new technology; (2) the model of technological determinism, which privileges technological factors: (3) the convergence-divergence model: didactic innovations and technological innovations would only bring about lasting change - i.e. they would only be widely disseminated and sustained - if they met, and in the absence of more powerful divergent factors of other types (psychological, managerial, technical,...). As for the current situation, it shows a series of strong convergences between the two didactic innovations simultaneously in progress - the actional perspective and the plurilingual approach, which are themselves convergent - and the technological innovation in progress, namely the digital. Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361930433. English translation from an original French version : Christian Puren, "Innovation didactique et innovation technologique en didactique des langues-cultures : approche historique", Recherche et pratiques pédagogiques en langues de spécialité, Vol. 41 N°1-2022. Also available at: https://journals.openedition.org/apliut/9708 or

https://doi.org/10.4000/apliut.9708.

 

- 2022b-en. "Didactic analysis of the postmethod condition of B. Kumaravadivelu: eclecticism and complex didactics of languages and-cultures". Bala Kumaravadivelu Mahwah (henceforth "B.K."), a long-time professor at San Jose State University in California, gained international recognition in 1994 with an article entitled "The Postmethod Condition: Emerging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching," published in TESOL Quarterly (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), a widely read journal for teachers of English as a foreign language around the world. In this article, and in his subsequent works, he criticizes all methodologies as being unsuitable for local cultures. His main target is the communicative approach, dominant in international EFL teaching, as an instrument for perpetuating American colonialism, as well as methodological eclecticism, which he considers still dependent on constituted methodologies. Instead, he promotes the construction by teachers of coherent sets of strategies theorized by themselves from their own situated practices. In this long article of 40 pages, I study the evolution of B.K.'s work during his career by means of several personal tools of analysis: the different forms of eclecticism, and their logics; the different methodological matrices available; the methodological, didactical and didactological perspectives of a "complex didactics of language-cultures"; the models as indispensable interfaces between practices and theories; the multi- and pluri-methodological approaches; the characteristics of the communication paradigm; the opposition between the optimization-substitution paradigm and the adaptation-addition paradigm. Although I share B.K.'s main aim, which is to give power back to teachers in the field, by considering them as researchers of their own environments and practices, as well as many of his criticisms of the dominant constituted methodologies, including the communicative approach, I explain in this article my disagreement with some of his analyses and proposals, which suffer in my opinion from two important contradictions: he promotes situated modes of teaching-learning, but he builds his proposals on a single problematic of reference (the effects of the implementation of the communicative approach in the teaching of international English in Third World countries); he denounces the perverse effects of the global coherences of the constituted methodologies, but he promotes the construction by the teachers themselves of their own methodological coherences. It will not be surprising, finally, that I point out in B.K.'s observations, analyses, and proposals, all the problems generated by the fact that he never situates himself within the framework of a didactic of languages-cultures constituted as an autonomous discipline. English translation from a French article (2022b), April 2022. Also available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/359816228.

- 2021c-en. “'The experiential' in didactics of languages-cultures: an attempt at modelling" (11 p.). Abstract: This text is the English translation from the article entitled “L’expérientiel en didactique des langues-cultures: essai de modélisation” (2021c, online April 2, 2021). In didactics of languages-cultures (DLC), "the experiential" can be defined as any form of experience lived by the learner directly in a foreign language, which is elicited and exploited by the teacher for the purposes of teaching-learning a foreign language-culture. It can also be described by its notional components -authenticity, spontaneity, experience, affectivity, emotionality, pleasure, confidence, conviviality, imagination, creativity, relationality, interactivity, corporeality...)- and the four techniques most commonly used in school didactics to provoke this experience: play, song, poetry and drama. Implementations of the experiential can be classified on a continuum that ranges from the most isolated ("techniques") to the most integrated ("methodologies", often referred to as "unconventional"), via approaches integrated with conventional methodologies. And they can be linked, as techniques or approaches, to one or other of the existing methodological matrices: active, communicative-intercultural, plurilingual-pluricultural and action-oriented. At the end of this article, we present a model that crosses these different typologies, and which a priori covers the whole problematic of experiential learning in DLC. (English translation online June 3, 2023)

 

- 2021j-en. "Learning an L2 at School not Primarily to Communicate in L2, but to Better Inform Oneself and Act in L1 in One's Country", pp. 25-43 in: ACAR Ahmet (ed.), Training social actors in ELT [English Language Teaching], Ankara: Akademisyen Kitabevi A.Ş., 231 p. Abstract by the editor of the book : In his second chapter, Learning an L2 at school not primarily to communicate in L2, but to better inform oneself and act in L1 in one's country, Puren deals with the issue of the relevance of social action-oriented approach for ELT (English language teaching) in Turkey, which has implications for other countries like Turkey, where people do not mainly live and work together in a foreign language. Puren, first of all, criticizes the fact that in the communicative approach, communication is considered both as the means and the goal, and considers that it is necessary to move from this paradigm of communication to the paradigm of action, in which communication is only a means at the service of action. Thus, he argues that “in a school teaching of an L2, the objective of communication must be rationally weighted in relation to the general finalities and objectives of the educational system and in relation to the real needs of society in terms of real uses of the L2, even if this weighting is a matter of concern for those responsible for the educational policy of each country”. In line with this observation, he contends that “the most frequent information needs in a foreign language, in Turkey as elsewhere, are those that are satisfied at a distance by means of consulting documents: the foreign language is mainly used to better inform oneself in one's own country”. He also argues that “learning an L2 at school can also be used to learn to ‘act better in one's country’, whether as a citizen or as a professional” since he considers the classroom, in the social action-oriented approach, as an “incubator of social competencies”, a critical stance against the communicative approach, which considers communication as the ultimate goal of foreign language teaching. (Full text available online by king permission of editor: June 2, 2023.) Version française disponible : 2021j.

 

- 2021i-en. "Integrative Functions of the "Mini-Projects" of the Didactic Units of Language Textbooks in the Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA)", pp. 9-24 in: ACAR Ahmet (ed.), Training social actors in ELT [English Language Teaching], Ankara: Akademisyen Kitabevi A.Ş., 231 p. Abstract by the editor of the book: Christian Puren, the major developer of the action-oriented approach just after the publication of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR, 2001), which sets the goal of training learners as social actors, contributed to this edited book with his two chapters. In his first chapter, Integrative functions of the "mini-projects" of the didactic units of language textbooks in the social action-oriented approach (SAOA), Puren examines “three forms of didactic integration that an adapted "project pedagogy" makes it possible to achieve in language textbooks: the integration of the different areas of activity, the integration of the different spaces of teaching-learning-use, and the integration of the different methodological matrices with their documentary logics and their components of cultural competence”. Thus, Puren indicates, in detail, that “one of the functions of the didactic unit of the textbooks, is to ensure the coherence and synergy of the contents and activities of these different spaces”, and also that the pedagogical projects have “the feature of integrating different spaces: (The class as a (micro-)society in its own right, the outside society simulated in the classroom, the classroom as a didactic space and the external outside school-society), the pedagogical projects make it possible to integrate these different spaces themselves, calling for all the methodological matrices. (Full text online by king permission of editor: June 2, 2023).

 

- 2021h-en. "Writing the research in language and culture didactics". English translation (August 2021) of: Cours en ligne “Écriture de la recherche en Didactique des langues-cultures” (Online course "Research Writing in language and culture Didactics”) Chapitre 1: “Recherche et écriture de la recherche”. Also available on ResearchGate (August 2021): www.researchgate.net/publication/353756835. Version originale française disponible.

 

- 2021g-en. "Information Literacy in a Social Action-Oriented Approach: From Communicative Competence to Informational Competence", ESBB, English Scholar Beyond Borders (online magazine, www.englishscholarsbeyondborders.org/), vol. 1, Issue 1, 2021, pp. 50-62. The author of the article shows that the authors of the CEFRL clearly distinguish between the communicative approach, where the tasks are (inter)individual and isolated communicative language tasks, and the "action-oriented approach", where the actions have a social dimension: so, they are necessarily more or less complex projects in which some of the tasks may be non-language tasks, and in which they are only elements of an overall action scenario. The author of the article draws from this, with concrete examples, one of the major implications that the authors of the CEFRL were unable or unwilling to draw, namely the shift, in terms of teaching-learning objectives, from communicative competence to information literacy, defined as the ability to act on and through information as a social actor, as defined for example by UNESCO in a 2008 book. Original English version, ESBB, English Scholar Beyond Borders (online magazine, www.englishscholarsbeyondborders.org/), vol. 1, Issue 1, 2021, pp. 50-62. Also downloadable on the website of the magazine at: www.englishscholarsbeyondborders.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Christian-Puren.pdf and on ResarchGate at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353688628.

 

-2021f-en. "Modeling of the types of approach to methodological variation in language-cultures didactics: between eclecticism to complex didactics". Eclecticism is considered here as "a mode of management of methodological variation", an appellation which has the advantage of covering the different types of eclecticism which have appeared to me in the course of my personal research, those of the authors of textbooks in the 1980s (presented in my Essay on Eclecticism, 1994e) those of specialists in the teaching-learning of language-cultures from the 1880s to the 1990s (on the basis of the corpus treated in my History of Methodologies, 1988a), as well as the mode of management of methodological variation that I propose within the framework of the "complex didactics" described in my 2003 manifesto article (2003b), and that I have recently developed under the names of "multimethodological approach" and "plurimethodological approach" (2020f, chapters 3 and 4). The comparative analysis of these different modes required the mobilization of four notional groups: practice-theoretical-modeler, positive-negative, product-process, learner-teacher-manual-institution-discipline. In addition to a more rational comparative description of the different forms of eclecticism, this research has made it possible to reveal the specificities of the methodological variation management mode in complex didactics: it is "model" oriented, and at the same time product-discipline (the products of didactic research), process-teacher (with the indispensable adaptations of the implementation of these products by the teachers according to their environment) and process-learner (with the equally necessary leeway for learners to bring their own learning strategies into play). Posted online July 1, 2021. French version available (2021f). Also downloadable at:

www.researchgate.net/publication/352786300, June 2021.

 

- 2021e-en. "The problematic of 'innovation' in language and culture didactics: a proposal for a conceptual modelling". This article proposes modelling of the notion of "innovation" in cultural language didactics in the form of five pairs of antagonistic concepts illustrated by examples taken from the history of the discipline: innovation and continuity, innovation and conformism, innovation and myths, innovation and regression, innovation and change. This problematization leads to a modification of the perception that one may have of the evolution of the discipline, and it finally imposes the idea that it is necessary to modify the still largely dominant conception of change. English translation from French original 2021e. Also downloadable at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353588258, August 2021.

 

- 2021c-en. “'The experiential' in didactics of languages-cultures: an attempt at modelling" (11 p.). This text is the English translation from the article entitled “L’expérientiel en didactique des langues-cultures: essai de modélisation” (2021c, online April 2, 2021). In didactics of languages-cultures (DLC), "the experiential" can be defined as any form of experience lived by the learner directly in a foreign language, which is elicited and exploited by the teacher for the purposes of teaching-learning a foreign language-culture. It can also be described by its notional components -authenticity, spontaneity, experience, affectivity, emotionality, pleasure, confidence, conviviality, imagination, creativity, relationality, interactivity, corporeality...)- and the four techniques most commonly used in school didactics to provoke this experience: play, song, poetry and drama. Implementations of the experiential can be classified on a continuum that ranges from the most isolated ("techniques") to the most integrated ("methodologies", often referred to as "unconventional"), via approaches integrated with conventional methodologies. And they can be linked, as techniques or approaches, to one or other of the existing methodological matrices: active, communicative-intercultural, plurilingual-pluricultural and action-oriented. At the end of this article, we present a model that crosses these different typologies, and which a priori covers the whole problematic of experiential learning in DLC. Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371276689. (English translation online June 3, 2023)

 

- 2020e-en. Attempt at problematization and modeling of "distance learning" in educational didactics of languages-cultures: for an engineering of hybridization. English translation from Essai de problématisation et de modélisation de l’« enseignement à distance » en didactique scolaire des langues-cultures : pour une ingénierie de l’hybridation, 1e éd. électronique septembre 2020, 56 p. This essay deals with the so-called in French “Enseignement à Distance” ("Distance Teaching"), renamed here "Hybrid Teaching-Learning" (HTL, in English “Blended Teaching-Learning”) because, from the author's perspective of school didactics, it crosses the fundamental disciplinary problem of the teaching-learning relationship with that of the face-to-face-distance relationship. Its objective is to propose activation and idea generation tools for the design of pluralistic HTL systems. Also available at  www.researchgate.net/publication/360354677 (May 2022).

 

- 2020g-en. "Communicative-intercultural approach and the paradigm of immediacy (Threshold levels from 1975, CEFR 2001, Companion Volume 2018)". The thesis of this article is that the Companion Volume of the CEFR, published in February 2018, could not propose, contrary to its authors' main objective, satisfactory modes of assessing mediation competence because its authors had not really become aware of, or at least not questioned, the paradigm of immediacy dominant in methodological thinking about language teaching since the methodology, significantly called "direct", of the early years of the twentieth century. A critical analysis of its descriptors is carried out here, with particular reference to the "genes" that the communicative-intercultural approach has inherited from its global reference situation, the tourist journey, namely the inchoative, the punctual, the perfective and the individual, all of which are incompatible with the mediation paradigm. In the final analysis, this blockage on the part of the authors of the Companion Volume can be explained by their essential objective, which is to propose modes of assessment compatible with the tests proposed by the international certification bodies that have been monitoring the Council of Europe's linguistic guidelines for almost half a century: these tests must "provide assessors with a 'snapshot', an im–mediate photograph of the candidates' language competences; in both senses of the word, i.e., by means of an extrapolation based on performances achieved (1) on the spot, without delay, in an (2) unmediated way, with no other intermediary between the candidates and the language to be produced, than the supports and instructions of the assessment system alone". Available also at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377241998. Online Junuary 2024. Original French version: 2020g.

 

- 2020c-en. "From an internationalized communicative approach to contextualized plurimethodological approaches". Dokuz Eylül University, Department of ELT, İzmir, Turkey, April 2020. Prepared as a contribution to the distance education course: ELT Curricula. Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352197831. The communicative approach, or task-based (communicative) learning, has unduly occupied almost all the space for didactic reflection and methodological development in the world over the last 40 years. Indeed, this approach is not appropriate for all the goals and objectives of teaching and learning in schools. We will illustrate this point by taking as an example the historical evolution of methodologies in France. The pre-communicative methodology of the 1920s to 1960s, based on the collective reading and oral commentary of authentic documents, is still relevant for students who only want to keep a distance contact with the foreign language-culture. Two post-communicative orientations have become necessary to meet the challenges of living and working together in "a multilingual and multicultural Europe" (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, 2000), namely plurilingual approaches and the action-oriented approach. All these methodological matrices need to be protected and maintained in applied linguistics in the same way as the diversity of languages in the world or biodiversity in nature. The only relevant question is how they can be selected and combined or articulated in language programmes taking into account students, goals, objectives and contexts, especially in relation to local educational cultures. (Mise  21 avril 2020). Also downloadable at: www.researchgate.net/publication/352197831.

 

- 2019g-en. "Development of the social action-oriented approach and the resulting methodological situation in didactic of languages and cultures". “L’élaboration de la perspective actionnelle et la situation méthodologique résultante en didactique des langues-cultures”, was published in French in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Methodological Colloquium "Methodology of Language Learning . Towards Pedagogical, Didactic and Linguistic Excellence", Thessaloniki (Greece), 3-4 September 2018, https://methodal.net/L-elaboration-de-la-perspective-actionnelle-et-la-situation-methodologique. Also downloadable at : www.researchgate.net/publication/349830168.

 

- 2019d-en. CEFRL: this way out! English translation from the following parts of Bruno Maurer & Christian Puren, Par ici la sortie! (2019d):  Back cover, General introduction, Chapter 1.3.4.7. A deception and a stratagem, Chapter 3.6.2 Communicative approach and Action-Oriented Approach e in the CEFRL and CV proficiency grids (extract), Conclusion of the first part (extract), General conclusion and (related) Bibliography. In February 2018, the Council of Europe published, more than 15 years after the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (henceforth “CEFRL”), a Companion volume supposed to complete the 2001 document, with new scales of descriptors, especially for mediation. This late addition ignores all the criticisms of the CEFRL formulated in the meantime, as if this document were the definitive and unsurpassable reference in language-culture didactics. The first three parts of this book, CEFRL: This Way Out!, provide a close critique of these two publications, at the end of which it appears that the project of the CEFRL and its Companion Volume can be summarized in a few words: pretending to deal with teaching-learning-assessment, but in reality, working only to promote a limited and commercial form of assessment, namely certification. In the first two parts, the stranglehold of private interests on the European project of school language teaching is established, with supporting evidence, while the third part highlights the many theoretical and practical dead ends and inadequacies of the CEFRL, in particular its dependence on a single methodology, the communicative approach. The last two parts outline two parallel ways out of the CEFRL, both from a resolutely plurimethodological perspective: an "integrated assessment" that takes into account all the issues at stake in the language teaching-learning process; and an "integrated plurilingual methodology" that draws on the already existing in terms of learners' language repertoires and on the already constructed in terms of knowledge about languages and language-learning competencies. The "exit" of the CEFRL is now open, free and wide: the authors' wish is that researchers, trainers, publishers and teachers borrow it in great numbers, and develop it! (Back cover).

Also available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/362717596.

 

- 2019a-en. "The two opposing paradigms of the researcher in didactics of languages-cultures: personal conceptions and convictions". English translation from 2019a. In this conference I argue that the idea that the "good" researcher in didactics of languages-cultures (DLC) must be "specialized", "sharp", and "deep"; "cutting edge" and "innovative"; "objective" is a one-size-fits-all thinking, in this case a conception of research that cannot and should not be the only one. In a polemical way, to make people think, I argue why a "good" researcher must be equally "superficial", "traditionalist", and even, if necessary, "opportunist" and "polemical". The thesis that I seriously defend in this conference is that "the researcher's posture is in tension between opposing logics", and at the same time complementary, as the epistemology of complexity requires. As the French artist Georges Braque said: "It always takes two ideas: one to kill the other". Also available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/365587805 (November 2022).

 

-2018f-en. "The actuality of the communicative approach within the framework of the implementation of the Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA): A matter of contextualized and finalized construction". English translation from "L’actualité de l’approche communicative dans le cadre de la mise en œuvre de la perspective actionnelle : une affaire de construction située et finalisée", 2018f. This article deals with a particular example of didactic engineering within the framework of a global reform of language teaching in a given school system, in this case Algeria, for the reform of the methodology of teaching national and foreign languages which is in progress there, centered on the implementation of the Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA). However, mastery of the communicative approach (CA) is essential to implement this AP, and in the absence of a single and coherent description of this approach, it is therefore essential to build an adequate model. The article may be of interest beyond the particular case of Algeria, insofar as the combination of the communicative approach and the action-oriented perspective is a choice that is currently imposed in school education in many countries (this is the case in France, for example). The article proposes a theoretical process, a practical approach, and several tools to design this combination: a table of "Different methodological matrices available in foreign language-culture didactics", to be combined and articulated between them; different existing lists of CA principles to be prioritized according to local institutional priorities ; finally, a "Conceptual map matrix of the communicative approach " allowing, by adding, deleting and relating its elements, to build a conceptual map of CA in adequacy with the teaching-learning-use environment (it is a "situated" construction), and which therefore takes into account the finalities and objectives of the school teaching of the language-culture (it is a "finalized" construction). Many concepts of the systemic theory used for the presentation of the "general system of research in didactics of languages and cultures" will be found in this essay : "Théorie générale de la recherche en didactique des langues-cultures. Essai" (Puren 2015a, also available in Spanish, 2015a-es). English version online: June 6, 2023.

 

- 2016c-en. "The standard language exercisation procedure". English translation from 2016 article. This long 2016 article takes up, develops and illustrates with concrete examples of FFL (French as a Foreign Language) textbooks the standard procedure of language exercisation which appeared with the direct methodology of the beginning of the 20th century, and which remains until now the most developed model of management of teaching-learning activities between the initial presentation of a new language form and its objective, the spontaneous re-use by the learner in a personal situation of communication and/or action. This procedure consists of the following phases: reproduction (identical, identification/recognition, conceptualization, application, training, directed reuse, free reuse, and finally spontaneous reuse (or "re-production": production of a new personal message). I compare this procedure with Bloom's "taxonomy of objectives" and D'Hainaut's "intellectual activities" adapted to language didactics by two FFL specialists. In actual classroom practice, this procedure is subjected in real time by teachers and learners to adaptations in real time, the typography of which I propose (these are recursivity, inversion, combination, resumption, shortcut, postponement, continuum and differentiation). These adaptations ultimately transform this procedure into a process (as is the case with all procedures: cf. on this point my essay on modelization (“Modélisation, types généraux et types didactiques de modèles en didactique complexe des langues-cultures, 2022f, chap. 4.1.3.3 "Du modèle-procédure au modèle-processus… et l’inverse, dans les pratiques de classe quotidiennes" ("From model-procedure to model-process... and the reverse, in everyday classroom practices, pp. 28-30). I conclude by proposing seven ways in which textbooks, despite their constraints, can help teachers make these adaptations. This article as a whole finally proposes a complex model of processual management of language practice that is useful both for teachers in their classroom practices and for students in their analyses of language textbooks. Also available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/365565266. (November 2022)

 

- 2015f-en. "The methodological reflection in the teaching of French since the publication of the CEFR, an anemic field in need of healthy polemics". English translation from "La réflexion méthodologique en didactique du FLE depuis la publication du CECR, un domaine anémique en manque de saines polémiques" (2015f). After an analysis of the underlying epistemology of the CEFR, characterized by the "ideology of consensual communication", the "ideology of expertise" and the "scientistic ideology", the author makes a very critical assessment of the current situation of the didactics of French as a foreign language (FFL) in France.  1) The question of methodology, evacuated by the authors of the CEFR and deserted by the majority of didacticians, constitutes a work in progress to be urgently resumed. 2) "[The] reverence of most French didacticians towards this document, on which for years they have poured ad nauseam respectful glosses worthy of biblical exegesis, as well as the silence of almost all the others (including the authors of the CEFR), are cruel revelations and a damning historical testimony of the level of intellectual anemia to which the didactics of the FFL has fallen in France." 3) "[...] it seems that the whole didactics of the FFL in France has become too anemic to carry and carry out public controversies on any issue, and that it can only generate latent dissensions or aborted debates." Also available at:

www.researchgate.net/publication/365344708 (November 2022).

 

- 2015b-en. "Cultural competence and its different components in the implementation of the social action-oriented approach. A new didactic issue". Original version (in French): "La compétence culturelle et ses différentes composantes dans la mise en œuvre de la perspective actionnelle: une nouvelle problématique didactique". Intercâmbio, Revue d’Études Françaises, Instituto de estudos franceses da Universidade do Porto; 2e série, vol. 7, 2014, pp. 21-38. 2015b. The "intercultural competence", as it is still generally conceived in didactics of languages-cultures, has been the object for years of a whole series of criticisms, which we briefly recall. In particular, it can no longer be opposed to "cultural competence", but must be considered as one of its components, in necessary relation to two other components that have previously appeared in the discipline, transcultural and metacultural. A sufficiently complex model of cultural competence must now even integrate two additional components, pluricultural and co-cultural, because they are required by the two new issues that have appeared in the Common European Framework of Reference, namely living together and acting together in a multilingual and multicultural Europe. The article illustrates this new cultural problematic in language-culture didactics by presenting the example of an FLE textbook whose cultural approach aims at working simultaneously on all these components of cultural competence. This article synthesizes ideas that I have already presented in previous articles. It is also available online in this issue on the journal's website, alone (http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/13060.pdf) or with the other articles in this issue 7-2014 (http://ler.letras.up.pt/site/default.aspx?qry=id05id1184&sum=sim).Also downloadable at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349830124, March 2021. 

 

- 2014a-en. "Communicative approach and social action-oriented approach, two genetically opposed and complementary methodological organisms". English version of 2014a. Also downloadable at: www.researchgate.net/publication/349829905.

 

- 2013k-en. "Educational technologies and the social action-oriented approach: what future for language textbooks?" English translation (May 2023) of "Technologies éducatives et perspective actionnelle : quel avenir pour les manuels de langue ?" Long version of an article published in French under the same title pp. 122-130 in Issue 54, July 2013, of the special issue "Recherches et applications" of the journal Le Français dans le monde (Paris: CLE international, 179 p., https://www.christianpuren.com/mes-travaux/2013k/. Language textbooks have sometimes been criticized in the past: in particular, they would prevent "learner-centeredness", would generate repetitive practices for the teacher, and would even become useless at a time when teachers, thanks to the Internet, can have access to authentic documents themselves. However, one cannot help but notice the resistance of textbooks in language teaching, and I explain the reason for this through the various very useful didactic functions that they provide. Furthermore, there is "a whole series of convergences between the implementation of the social action-oriented approach (SAOA) in language textbooks and educational technologies". Nevertheless, two new problems created by this SAOA must be taken into account: (1) the demand for a certain degree of autonomy on the part of the students, contrary to the pre-programming of contents and activities, which is precisely one of the functions of textbooks; (2) the demand for a longer time than that of the classic didactic unit, so that the students have time to become involved in their action. I cite the French as a foreign language textbook Original Version 4 (level B2), which I directed, as proposing a compromise solution, namely the conception of didactic units as "mini-projects" of which the students can propose variants in groups: the margin of autonomy left to the students thus makes it possible to implement, in addition to project-based pedagogy, another type of pedagogy that is very rarely taken into account in textbooks, namely “differentiated pedagogy”. English translation (May 2023) of "Technologies éducatives et perspective actionnelle : quel avenir pour les manuels de langue ?" Long version of an article published in French under the same title pp. 122-130 in Issue 54, July 2013, of the special issue "Recherches et applications" of the journal Le Français dans le monde (Paris: CLE international, 179 p., 2013k. Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37041105.

 

- 2013e-en. “The shift from the paradigm of communication to the paradigm of action, and its implications for practical implementation of the social action-oriented approach”, www.researchgate.net/publication/349829876 (March 2021), www.christianpuren.com/mes-travaux/2013e-en/. This 9-page text based on this short lecture (less than 20 minutes) is essentially based on ideas and illustrations that I have already presented elsewhere (see bibliography included in the text). With the new purpose of training a social actor, the paradigm of action is certainly one of the foundations on which the action perspective has been built over the last ten years. English translation from the original article : "Le passage du paradigme de la communication au paradigme de l’action, et ses implications dans la mise en œuvre pratique de la perspective actionnelle” (2013e). Also available at www.researchgate.net/publication/349829876.

 

- 2011b-en. "Pedagogical project and engineering of the didactic unit", English translation (nov. 2022) of "Projet pédagogique et ingénierie de l’unité didactique" (2011b). Within the framework of the theme of this conference entitled "Language teachers, project engineers", I will limit my intervention to the devices conceived by the teacher in the space of the class with an explicit principal objective of teaching-learning of the foreign language-culture, whether this device corresponds to the whole of its project, or whether it corresponds to a didactic exploitation in the classroom of project activities carried out outside the classroom (exploitation of documents collected or experiences lived during a professional internship abroad, for example), or conversely to a preparation in the classroom of projects which will then be carried out in the field. More precisely, I will focus on a form of device that is as central as it is unavoidable, namely the didactic unit, which, I will show, assumes indispensable functions, whereas it poses a problem when the teacher implements pedagogical projects: the combination of the two formats constitutes a real "problematic": in conclusion, I will not propose any solution(s), but rather possible modes of management. Also available at www.researchgate.net/publication/365319194.

 

- 2009b-en. "Variations on the theme of social action in didactics of foreign languages and cultures". English translation from the article entitled "Variations sur le thème de l'agir social en didactique des langues-cultures" (2009b). This text is the (much longer) electronic version of an article initially published pp. 154-167 in : ROSEN Évelyne (coord.), La perspective actionnelle et l'approche par les tâches en classe de langue. Paris : CLE international-FIPF, 192 p. Publication of this translation: May 2021. Also downloadable at: www.researchgate.net/publication/351194660.

 

- 2004c-en. "How to make the unity of the 'didactic units'? Historical evolution of the modes of coherence of the didactic units in didactics of languages-cultures". English translation from "L'évolution historique des approches en didactique des langues-cultures, ou comment faire l'unité des 'unités didactiques'" (2004c). Conference given of November 2, 2004 at the Annual Congress of the Association pour le DÉveloppement de l’Allemand en France (ADÉAF), École Supérieure de Commerce de Clermont-Ferrand, November 2-3, 2004. Published in Le nouveau bulletin de l'ADEAF n° 89, April 2005, pp. 40-51. The domains of activity to be combined within the didactic units of language textbooks are numerous and heterogeneous: they are grammar, lexicon, phonetics, comprehension and production in writing and speaking, culture and methodology (this last domain corresponding to the objective "teaching-learning to learn"). The consequence is that a constant problematic, during the history of the didactics of languages-cultures, is that of the way in which one can put in coherence these different domains so as to put them in synergy, in other words, of the way in which one builds the unity of the didactic unit. Until the beginning of the 1960s in France, until the audiovisual methodology, the way was always the same, namely that one chose one of the domains to begin the didactic unit, to "enter" it ("approaches" has in this article this sense of "entries"): the didactic units of the textbooks began successively by the grammar, then by the lexicon, then by the culture. The input used later to create the unity of the didactic units was a communication situation, and finally the action (with an action to be prepared throughout the didactic unit). In conclusion, the author argues that all these inputs must now be combined or articulated differently in complex classroom sequences: "their unity is to be made, unmade and remade continuously". Also available at www.researchgate.net/publication/368330834 (February 7, 2023)

 

- 2003b-en. "For a complex didactics of languages and cultures". English translation (August 2021) of "Pour une didactique comparée des langues-cultures", Études de Linguistique Appliquée n° 129, janvier-mars 2003, pp. 121-129 (2003b). The desing of research in the discipline "didactics of language-cultures"is not yet perfectly shared and stabilized among its French specialists. (But is such a general and definitive agreement possible and desirable in any field so that an internal dynamic is maintained?) Already, however, it seems to me that a broad consensus has been reached on the following six major approaches, which are very strongly linked to each other as well as to the current scientific paradigms on which they are based: 1. The comprehensive approach (focus on the actors). 2. The environmentalist approach (contextualization). 3. The qualitative approach (the internal conceptualization). 4. The pragmatist approach (the confrontation with reality). 5. The complex approach (the variation of perspectives). 6. The constructivist approach (cognition and metacognition). 7. The comparative approach. Also downloadable in English at: 

www.researchgate.net/publication/353841296. Spanish translatation available (2003b-es).

 

- 2002b-en. "Actional perspectives and cultural perspectives in language and culture didactics: towards a co-cultural co-actional perspective". English version of 2002b, published online May 2021. In this article, the author reviews the succession, in French school foreign language teaching, of the different methodologies that have been developed, by showing how each one has been built on a mode of adequacy between its action perspective (i.e. the actions that it prepares students to carry out in a foreign language) and its cultural perspective (i.e. the cultural competences for which it prepares the students). He defends the idea that the new (social) action-oriented approach proposed in the Council of Europe's Common European Framework constitutes a rupture from the action perspective of the communicative approach, and that it therefore implies a rupture from the cultural perspective that was linked to it, that of the intercultural. Finally, he outlines what the new corresponding coherence should be, which he calls "co-actional-co-cultural perspective", while specifying that in the framework of the "complex didactics" that he promotes, it is not a question of substituting this new coherence for the previous ones, but of adding it to the panoply of instruments already available for the management of the teaching/learning process. This article, published in French in 2002, is the first one that the author wrote on the "perspective actionnelle" ("perspective actionnelle" in the French CEFR, "social action approach" in the English CFERL, upon publication of the final version of this Council of Europe publication in 2001. Also downloadable from ResarchGate.net:

www.researchgate.net/publication/351287242.

 

 

- 1998f-en. "Object perspective and subject perspective in didactics of languages-cultures". English translation (July, 2024) of French original version 1998f. This article describes the evolution of the didactics of French as a foreign language over the last thirty years, using the "object-subject" model, inspired from philosophy. This model immediately reveals a marked and parallel evolution in didactics of languages-cultures, from a focus on the object (language, culture or constituted methodology) to a focus on the subject (in this case, the learner), an evolution probably driven by the rise of individualistic values in contemporary society. This model can only be productive for didactic theorizing, however, if the relationships between the two terms are considered in ways other than the hitherto used modes of Manichean opposition or progressive evolution, and if they simultaneously incorporate the modes of contact (the "inter-") and continuum, which enable us to think about eclecticism, as well as that of the dialogic, which enables us to think about complexity. The model thus completed is applied heuristically to the fields of methodology and training. It could serve as a basis for the treatment of the other two fundamental couples of didactics of languages-cultures (teaching-learning, language-culture), for the elaboration of a genuine disciplinary epistemology. Disponibles: version originale française 1998f, versión española 1998f-es.

 

- 1997d-en. "What remains of the idea of progress in language teaching?". English translation from "Que reste-t-il de l'idée de progrès en didactique des langues ?" (1997d). "Progress is no longer just a hope, but a danger, no longer just a solution, but a problem to be posed and analyzed as such. Four propositions are made corresponding to this observation: 1. the perception of progress depends closely on the dominant values of the moment. 2. Progress in knowledge can be progress in uncertainty. 3. Progress in one area may cause regressions in another. 4. Progress in one area can be a regression in another. Each of these propositions is illustrated by several short examples drawn from the evolution of foreign language didactics in schools in France since its constitution a century ago. Two postfaces are published following this text published in 1997, one dated 2008 ("Ten years later"), the other dated 2018 ("Twenty years later"), which take up these proposals to point out their permanence or modifications by means of new current examples. Also available at: www.researchgate.net/publication/365354383 (November 2022).

 

- 1995a-en. "The problematic of learner-centered approach in the school context". English translation (June 2024) of "La problématique de la centration sur l'apprenant en contexte scolaire", Études de Linguistique Appliquée no. 100, oct.-déc. 1995, pp. 129-149. With an afterword from June 2024. Abstract (1995): The aim of this article is to analyze the practical problems posed by the implementation of “learner-centered approach” in school didactics. After showing its inadequacies, we propose to replace it with the idea of “multi-centered approach” (on the learner, the adolescent, the learner, communication, content, language, the teacher, materials, methodology, the group, the institution), whose simultaneous management (through different selections, combinations and modulations) can only be conceived within the framework of complex didactics.  Afterword (June 2024): This short afterword is written almost thirty years after the publication of this article, on the occasion of its publication online in its original French version and English translation on the ResarchGate website. The various criticisms made of the notion of “learner-centered approach” and of the implementation of needs analysis in the communicative approach still seem to me to be valid, as do the tools used for these criticisms, namely ideology, epistemology and deontology, which constitute the three positions of the “didactological” perspective in complex didactics of languages-cultures (the other two being the methodological and didactic perspectives). I also consider that these tools remain valid for the analysis of the current situation in our discipline, and that they must also be applied to the new Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA), in the development of which we must avoid the same drifts to which the development of the communicative approach gave rise. Some didacticians, in particular, propose building action scenarios on the basis of CEFR competence descriptors, which is a way of maintaining needs analysis as it was conceived in the communicative approach. As a result, the teacher-centeredness is just as open to criticism as the summative hetero-assessment-centeredness. Both this prior analysis of language needs without learner participation, and the inclusion of this type of assessment right from the design of project scenarios, are totally incompatible with the natural pedagogical model of the SAOA, particularly in school didactics, namely project pedagogy and its educational goals. Available also at

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381461612.