2007 Biennial Cross-Campus Conference in Education

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Subjectivist methodology for teaching French as a foreign language
(School of Education, UWI, St. Augustine, 2008) Boufoy-Bastick, Beatrice
This paper discusses the need for language learning methods designed to capitalize on the rich cultural diversity of students. It introduces basic subjectivist teaching principles and shows how these were successfully applied to the multi-ethnic, multi-ability, and multi-age teaching of French as a foreign language. The paper underlines the importance of language competence for social, economic, and political development within an increasingly globalized world. While the last quarter of the 20th century recognized the status of regional and Creole languages, the 21st century is set to place greater emphasis on the role of international languages for economic development and political integration. National education systems ought to respond to these new market-oriented political pressures by devising language curricula that maximize attainments for culturally diverse students in at least one foreign language. This is a commitment that has major pedagogical implications. To address this diversity, a culturally responsive language teaching approach is presented, which uses multimodal subjectivist techniques. These powerful techniques utilize student diversity and empower learners by enhancing positive subjective feelings of learning. The techniques are presented using examples from a subjectivist French as a foreign language lesson