Chance, or fate, meant that I approached the history of methodologies in three different courses and in three different universities: L’Analyse des manuels de FLE (Université de Nantes, 2005-2006, 2006-2007), Francophonie, patrimoine culturel et usage didactique (Paris 8, 2017-2018), L’appropriation des langues étrangères et histoire des méthodologies d’enseignement des langues vivantes (Université de Strasbourg, 2019-2020).

At the same time, I was a practitioner and I taught French to different types of public and I supervised students during their internships. And of course, classes were often a great opportunity to discuss « methods » and « methodologies », where students shared their successes and failures « among colleagues ».

These exchanges often made it possible to observe the discrepancy between the very commendable theoretical vision of the didacticians and the difficulties of its implementation in the language class:

– I want to use this or that method, offer this or that activity, but the organization where I teach imposes this or that other approach, or that other manual;

– I really like the action-oriented approach, but I find it very difficult to apply it with beginners, I think it is not adapted to their level;

– I would like to use the communicative method, but my students require structural exercises and deductive and explicit grammar, I think that reassures them. What should I do?

– My students loved the project that I proposed to them as part of the action-oriented approach, but I realize that when working in small groups, they use their mother tongue. All the activity is therefore done in the mother tongue, and not in French. How can I make it work?…

– I would like to prepare well-structured lessons, well done methodically, but I have a lot of hours, and we have no support: no manuals, no teaching kits… I do what I can, to have just enough materials to hold the number of hours I have to do…

– I know that the traditional method has a reputation for being boring and repetitive, but I liked it: it gave me good basics, and then I just added some “spoken French” which I was missing.

I could have continued, testimonies of this type were numerous. Many of them applied to situations that I have experienced myself as a teacher.

As time passes, my status changed. I am no longer affiliated with any training organization. I am independent, on my own, with all the risks and advantages that this represents. Let’s put the risks aside, that’s not the subject of this text. The advantage is that I am free in the choice and application of methods and I can finally put into practice the postulate that I often repeated to my students: any method is good, except those that are ineffective.

During the courses that I now offer, this pedagogical freedom consists above all in adapting the teaching to each specific case, according to the level, needs, objectives, and possibilities of my students.

As for the materials that I create and which will be published here as they arise, this freedom manifests itself in the presentation of the content and the organization of the materials.

If I had to situate myself concerning existing methods and approaches, I would say like this:

•  The action-oriented approach, as well as other types of « project pedagogy », is not for me an optimal method in the case of individual courses for adults who often have only one project: to be able to interact in very concrete professional situations or take a language certificate or test. The action-oriented approach can be exciting and very motivating for a group of students, especially for children or young teenagers, but adults who have specific professional goals do not necessarily need motivational games, which are often time-consuming.

•  The communicative method – yes, of course. Overall, any language learning objective can be reduced to this expression: learning to communicate. Also, it all depends on how you go about it and what you hear in the communication. Building one’s teaching practice on a work of descriptive grammar would nowadays make little sense. Whatever the preferences and objectives of the students, they all learn French to be able to use it in a communication situation. The choice of themes is therefore determined by this primary need of every learner: to be able to communicate.

•  The traditional method – I understand that this may upset some people, but I have some nostalgic memories of this method of which I am in a way a “victim”. Despite its well-known and repeatedly criticized flaws, it has certain advantages: it has the merit of being “transparent” for the learner who understands what he is doing at each instant t; it makes it possible to work in a targeted manner on “points that pose problems” for learners, sometimes going so far as to create automatisms that allow significant progress to be made; it allows you to work on writing, which is very important for some learners with concrete professional objectives; its repetitive side is sometimes « reassuring » and reassures learners who feel destabilized when they are made to work on things « not in the right order » and who are demanding as to the content of each lesson, in the style: « What is what I learned during this one-hour lesson for which I just paid XX€? « . Finally, the last reason is that I most often work with adults who have already been educated in their mother tongue and who are used to writing. Working from the letter to the sound, from the written to the spoken, therefore seems more logical and safer for this type of learner.

As for the content, as usual, it will be necessary to manage to reconcile several factors: the learning objectives, the authenticity of the content, the copyrights, the needs of the progression of the learners, etc. I start from the idea that the needs of learners come before abstract pedagogical postulates. I, therefore, offer beginners the fabricated texts, written specially to work on the content progressively, and among the authentic documents, I choose those which are accessible at this stage. Generally, the higher the level, the greater the choice of documents, but another question remains unavoidable, the one of intellectual property and the educational use of texts subject to copyright.

The content of my sequences published on this website and offered to students during the course responds above all to all these objectives. I hope it will be of interest to all those who, like me, are passionate about the French language.