Eleni Agathopoulou
Editor’s Note
Panagiotis Axampanopoulos
La systématisation grammaticale à l’école primaire hellénique Notions, principes et un réexamen de la méthodologie à partir de deux manuels
Dans cet article, nous nous penchons sur la composante grammaticale du cours de FLE destiné aux élèves de l’école primaire en Grèce et, en particulier, sur l’étape du parcours didactico-méthodologique désignée sous le nom de systématisation des contenus grammaticaux. Malgré les préconisations des spécialistes pour une pédagogie active centrée sur les tâches et l’agir communicationnel des apprenants, une analyse menée sur un échantillon représentatif de deux manuels du primaire fait apparaître un paradoxe : bien que les objectifs d’enseignement y soient formulés selon des critères communicatifs et que les documents supports y soient conçus conformément aux objectifs poursuivis, les auteurs ne semblent voir dans la compétence grammaticale qu’une compétence purement formelle sans préoccupation pour sa mise en œuvre dans le discours. Nous expliquerons la discontinuité qui en découle et la décontextualisation des formes à enseigner qui l’accompagne par les effets que la méthodologie dite globaliste (ou ordinaire) produit sur les manuels grecs. Enfin, nous illustrerons quelques pistes de remédiation possibles visant la modification des démarches méthodologiques existantes en matière de systématisation grammaticale.
Anastasia Gkaintartzi, Georgia Triantou
Activating diversity: The use of dual language books for critical plurilingual education
This paper presents an action research which aimed at exploring the implementation of multilingual storytelling with the use of dual language picture books among young learners in a pre-school class in order to promote critical multilingual awareness (García, 2017) and intercultural competence for fostering diversity, social equity and linguistic justice (Piller, 2021). Throughout the four research cycles of the action research, the children were actively engaged with multilingual books and plurilingual activities, including and voicing minoritised and ‘invisibilised’ languages in class, thus opening a ‘window’ to the rich linguistic diversity in society beyond the languages validated in school education. The research data was collected through the use of multiple and multimodal research tools which included observation, group discussions with the children, interviews with parents while also, drawing from an arts-based visual methodology, students’ language portraits, concept maps and Dominant Language Constellations (DLCs) (Aronin, 2019). After presenting parts of the action research cycles, we discuss the research findings, with a focus on the children’s DLC models, visualizing their perceptions, feelings and lived experiences with multilingualism through their active engagement with the multilingual books and activities. Implications of the findings are discussed for the multiple potentialities of dual language books in striving for a more inclusive and emancipatory language education, which can develop critical multilingual awareness and promote linguistic justice.
Giacomo Klein
Greek L1 attrition in Germany: Evidence from elicited narratives corpora
Previous research has highlighted lexical, morphological, syntactic, and discourse-level differences between L1 attriters and control groups (e.g. Kaltsa et al., 2015; Pavlenko, 2003; Schmid & Jarvis 2014; Sorace, 2011; Tsimpli et al., 2004). This study examines potential indicators of first language (L1) attrition in oral L1 Greek produced by Greek residents in Germany. The experimental group consisted of 66 adult Greeks who had lived in Germany 16.23 years on average and had left Greece after the age of 17. We also included a control group of 31 adult Greeks living in Greece.All participants were asked to complete a re-telling task and those in the experimental group also answered questions about their life in Germany. The recorded narratives were transcribed, normalized, and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. We discuss our findings with respect to possible attrition in lexis, aspect, syntax and discourse phenomena.
Anastasia Paspali
The Greek and German narrative micro-structure of heritage speakers: A corpus study
Narratives have been extensively used as a tool to investigate language development in various populations, such as children and second language learners. However, the narrative abilities of heritage populations remain underexplored, and the body of work especially in heritage adults is very limited. The present study explores the micro-structure of spoken narratives (i.e., number of words and clauses, lexical diversity, subordination, and conjunctions) produced by adult Greek-German heritage bilinguals residing in Germany and compares them with the monolingual groups. Additionally, the study explores the narrative performance between the heritage and the majority language of the heritage group with the aim to explore the same/different patterns they follow in each language as well as individual variation (i.e., working memory). The results show that heritage adults exhibit both similarities and differences compared to monolinguals, with differences being more prominent in the heritage language, while working memory modulates narration length and syntactic complexity.
Konstantinos Sipitanos
Reconstructing the language curriculum to promote Knowledge Democracy for refugee and non-refugee students
Students as autoethnographers is an empowering tradition which if combined with the Knowledge Democracy (KD) initiative can provide new insights and new educational perspectives for refugee and non-refugee students towards inclusive classrooms. More specifically in an Erasmus plus project in four European countries the combination of the students as autoethnographers approach and KD was combined creatively. The students in this case collected personal and family stories from their contexts and discussed them in the classroom with their classmates. By analyzing the students’ final artifacts (e.g. stories, identity maps, videos, pictures) and the open questionnaires from the intervention the finding showed that educational practices like the promotion of multiple language repertoires, translanguaging, multimodal texts and digital literacy can provide new potentials for educational inclusion. Furthermore, this combined framework enhanced newcomers initial academic skills and socialization by story sharing. These findings suggest that combination between KD and students as autoethnographers framework provides not only the opportunity to understand the complexity of the world and the acceptance of multiple ways of knowing and being, but also it promotes socialization with specific ways such as writing, designing, expressing, and understanding through story sharing.
Alexandros Tantos, Nikolaos Amvrazis, Chrysi-Eleni Drakonaki
Greek Learner Corpus II (GLCII): Design and development of an online corpus for L2 Greek
This paper presents an error-annotated learner corpus, the Greek Learner Corpus II (GLCII). GLCII responds to the need for representational data of less spoken and taught languages that will support research on Greek as a second (L2) or foreign language (FL). To this aim, the GLCII includes both written and spoken learners’ productions from a range of genres accompanied with metadata relevant to L2/FL teaching and acquisition. GLCII has drawn on practices and current trends in corpus construction when adopting specific design criteria to ensure its originality, suitability, and availability as a language resource (Brezina, 2018; Tracy-Ventura et al., 2021). Currently, the GLCII is the largest online, freely available, Learner Corpus (LC) of L2 Greek, compiled within the framework of the research project Latent Aspects in L2 Acquisition (LAL2A).
Χριστίνα Χατζηγιαννίδου, Αναστασία Στάμου
Κατασκευές της γερμανικότητας στο δημοτικό σχολείο: Η περίπτωση του εγχειριδίου Junior
Learning a foreign language means the contact with another culture and worldview, but also with the language ideologies and ethnocultural stereotypes associated with this language. In the present study, we investigate constructions of Germanness ─meaning a nexus of representations about the German language, the German-speaking countries and cultures─ in the textbook Junior. Junior is an adapted version of the international textbook series Wo ist Paula?, to be used for the teaching of German as a second foreign language in the Greek primary school context. To account for the constructions of Germanness and their ideological role in the textbook, we drew upon Critical Discourse Analysis. In addition, a comparative analysis of the Greek adapted version with the original/international textbook discloses several modifications with respect to the constructions of Germanness for the Greek audience, shedding light on how the Greek national self considers the German national other.