Plenary 2 / Plénière 2: D’une langue à l’autre: pour une didactique plurilingue et translangagière de l’écrit (Guillaume Gentil, Carleton University)
La didactique de l’écrit est traditionnellement cloisonnée en fonction de la langue : anglais ou français, langue première ou langue additionnelle. Ce cloisonnement est en décalage par rapport aux besoins et pratiques des scripteurs en situations multilingues qui imposent de rédiger dans une langue à partir de sources dans une autre langue tout en alternant la langue utilisée pour composer. Par exemple, au Québec et en France, il n’est pas rare que des étudiants scientifiques rédigent leurs thèses en français à partir d’articles en anglais, avant de publier eux-mêmes en anglais tout en vulgarisant leurs résultats en français. Une autre pratique de plus en plus courante est de soumettre une thèse bilingue comprenant des articles publiés, généralement en anglais, insérés dans une charpente en français. De telles pratiques exigent non seulement de savoir lire et écrire dans deux langues (bilittératie), voire plusieurs (plurilittératie), mais aussi de pouvoir passer aisément d’une langue et d’un mode à l’autre (compétences translangagières ou translittératie).
À partir d’études de cas sur des scripteurs bilingues et autres études sur le transfert en écriture, l’éducation plurilingue et la traduction, cette communication vise à illustrer les défis que posent le développement de la bilittératie et de la translittératie tout en proposant des stratégies pédagogiques et curriculaires pour faciliter cet apprentissage.
From one language to another: Toward a plurilingual and translanguaging approach to writing instruction
Writing instruction tends to be compartmentalized along clearly demarcated language lines: English or French, first language or additional language. Such monolingual arrangements are at odds with the needs and practices of writers in multilingual situations where one must compose in one language from sources in another and vice versa. For example, it is not uncommon for science students in Québec and France to first compose their theses in French from English research articles and then to publish in English while popularizing results back into French. Another increasingly common practice is to submit a bilingual thesis with English publications inserted into a French framework. Such practices demand not only writing and reading abilities in two languages (biliteracy) or more (pluriliteracy), but also the added ability to move effortlessly between languages and modes (translanguaging skills or transliteracy).
Drawing on case studies on bilingual writers and other research on writing transfer, multilingual education, and translation, this talk aims to (1) illustrate the challenges of biliteracy and transliteracy development, and (2) propose educational strategies for biliteracy and transliteracy at the classroom and curriculum levels.
Guillaume Gentil is Associate Professor in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He currently serves as co-editor, with Icy Lee, of the Journal of Second Language Writing, an international, peer-reviewed journal that publishes theory and research in second and foreign language writing and writing instruction.
His research interests in second language writing and biliteracy development in professional and postsecondary settings originated from his academic literacy experiences in France, the USA, and Canada. As a student of biology and agricultural sciences at France’s Institut National Agronomique (M. Sc. in plant pathology, Paris), and then a student of applied linguistics in Canada (M.A. and Ph.D. in second language education, McGill University, Montréal; postdoctoral internship with Alister Cumming, University of Toronto), he experienced firsthand the challenges of bilingual academic writers who must shuttle back and forth between languages and discourse communities, writing in one language while reading in another, and alternating the language of composing while negotiating divided linguistic loyalties. This interest has resulted in several case studies and institutional ethnographies of academic and professional biliteracy over the last ten years with a threefold focus on multilingual writers’ motivations for biliteracy, individual and institutional strategies for biliteracy, and ways to design enabling contexts for biliteracy.
This research work has appeared in Canadian Modern Language Review, Discourse & Society, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, Journal of Second Language Writing, Written Communication, and several co-edited books. The theoretical and programmatic piece “A biliteracy agenda for genre research,” originally published in JSLW, was reproduced in The Best of the Independent Rhetoric and Composition Journals: 2011.