Blogs and the development of plurilingual and intercultural competence: report of a co-actional approach in Portuguese foreign language classroom

Abstract

Focusing on the topic of the development of the plurilingual and intercultural competence through the integration of electronic communicative practices both in foreign language classrooms and non-formal contexts, this work aims at defining and characterizing, in view of a co-actional perspective, a “pedagogical blog”, by considering it from three different axes: a personal and social dimension, a collaborative and co-actional dimension and the management of linguistic and cultural repertoires dimension. In order to do so, this contribution presents and describes a case study which will highlight how blogs can be used in order to develop plurilingual and intercultural competences: we will present the classroom dynamics developed by the blog “Falar pelos cotovelos”, a year-long project created within the scope of the teaching and learning of Portuguese as a foreign language, in a non-formal setting (non-scholar public). Throughout the discussion of this purposeful sampling, our analysis will allow us to consider pedagogical blogs as means of socialization, as instruments at the service of exolingual interaction and as time-spaces for languages and cultures.

Keywords:

• pedagogical blog
• co-actional perspective
• plurilingual competence
• intercultural competence

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Susana Senos for her commitment to the reviewing process and Maria Helena Araújo e Sá for her constructive insights to this approach.

Notes

1. In the French version: “les interactions à teneur interculturelle observées lors de formations à distance en langue, quand elles existent, se résument souvent à des échanges d’informations sur la culture cible (…). Nous y voyons rarement la dimension de prise de risque ou d’engagement qui, pour nous, fait l’authenticité et l’existence de l’acte de rencontrer l’autre, et qui est une des marques d’acquisition d’une compétence interculturelle” (2007, p. 26).

2. “Exolingual”, a term referring to communication between people not sharing a common mother tongue, was initially presented by Porquier (1979, p. 50). Currently, the concept of exolingual communication is even more enriched with the intercultural dimension, and it is understood as the communication that happens between individuals from different ethno-cultural backgrounds.

3. Documents or links to documents (written, oral or audiovisual).

4. Which also seems to be, from our point of view, a limitation (originated in the communicative approach), given that the Internet allows for much more than mere activities close to real life or the typical “jeux de roles” which characterize that approach.

5. See Puren (2006) on some reserves concerning the methodological considerations of this document, their inconsistencies and limitations concerning a perspective which is truly actional.

6. Puren defines task as “what the learner does within his/her learning process” (in the original: “ce que fait l’apprenand dans son processus d’apprentissage”) and action as “what the user does in social contexts” (in the original: “ce que fait l’usager dans la sociéte” (2004, p. 122).

7. In the original: “la dimension collective des actions et la finalité sociale de ces actions” (Puren, 2004, p. 123).

8. In the original: “les phénomènes d’élaboration d’une culture commune par et pour l’action collective”.

9. Since their beginning, activities with and in the blog can be carried out in classes in which students are physically present or absent, for example, from home.

10. All the other examples in this text were produced by Spanish students from our partner blog. Nicknames were chosen by them.

11. As opposed to blogs under the exclusive responsibility of the tutor/teacher or of a student/group of students.

12. All the excerpts are presented with the learners’ sintactic and spelling choices. The only changes made are in terms of formatting (use of colours, bold, italic, size of letters, …) in order to condense the text.

13. “Fado” is a typical Portuguese musical genre, which includes references to sadness, melancholia, the life of the poor people and the feeling of loss. Since November 2011, Fado is inscribed in the Unesco Cultual Heritage list.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer

Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer holds a PhD in Foreign Language Education. She is a member of CIDTFF (Research Centre for Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education) at the University of Aveiro. Her research interests include: online communication, plurilingual and intercultural interaction, images of languages, intercomprehension in romance languages and heritage language education. She currently coordinates the educational department at the Portuguese Embassy in Berlin (Germany).