Issues in French as a foreign language teacher training: the teacher’s intermediary role and interculturality in the classroom
Enjeux de la formation des enseignants de FLE : le rôle d’intermédiaire de l’enseignant et l’interculturalité dans la classe
Résumé
Training for language teachers aims to develop the trainee teacher’s cognitive repertoire, which he/she makes use of to play an intermediary role in learners’ language learning. As this study shows, the trainer refers to or requests that trainee teachers refer to verbal and/or nonverbal actions in the classroom or to their experiences as teachers, which makes the interaction between the trainer and the trainee teachers both “praxeologically (or action based) polyphonic” and “cognitively (or thinking/recognition based) polyphonic.” The training course for language teachers does not unfold only in the classroom with its characteristic culture; instead, it is marked by two orders of “conglomerates of cultures,” namely, that of the classroom and that of the training course. How can a training course make it possible for a trainee teacher to improve the intercultural viewpoint(s) of his/her cognitive repertoire as a teacher and help language learners acquire the intercultural competences necessary to practice the target language? This is a question that should be addressed in future teacher training research.