The impact of age and gender on the learners' motivation and attitudes towards French in secondary education in Flanders

Motivation is one of the most important factors in the acquisition of a foreign language. A desire or a need felt by the learner is necessary to make efforts in order to achieve a certain goal. In the context of foreign language acquisition, the ultimate goal would be the perfect mastery of the target language. Learners who are highly motivated progress faster and reach a higher level of knowledge than the less motivated. A less motivated learner, once the communication needs accomplished, would tend to stop learning the language before he reaches the quasi-native level of mastery. The aim of our study is to analyze the impact of age and gender on the learners' motivational attitudes and beliefs towards French in a secondary school in Flanders (Instituut van Gent). Firstly, we verify if the prestige of the French language has decreased in Flanders, as is sometimes claimed, and, if there is a decline of the language level, whether it can be linked either to internal factors of the French language or to the lack of motivation. We also analyze why young learners (12-18 years old) would be motivated to learn French and whether opinions towards French differ according to age and gender. In order to investigate these aspects, we created a questionnaire consisting of 50 items covering integrative and instrumental motivation features, which are closely linked to the learners' beliefs. Our results show that the observed decline in the prestige of French is mostly related to internal factors and not to motivation: e. g. young learners seem to believe that English is easier to understand than French. As far as motivation is concerned, we see a certain lack of integrative motivation, especially among boys who tend to have a slightly higher instrumental motivation. Secondly, young learners seem more motivated than older ones. These observations can be explained by the beliefs of boys that expanding friendship is less important than finding a good employment. Young learners, on the other hand, are mostly motivated to learn French because it allows them to travel, to expand the boundaries of their social setting and also to increase the chances of finding employment after college. In conclusion, this study demonstrates first of all, that the decline of knowledge of French seems to be related mainly to internal factors of French and not to the motivation of the learners. In addition, the boys have a higher instrumental motivation in comparison with the girls who are more motivated in an integrative manner. Finally, young learners are a little more motivated than elder ones

La construction corrélative et les marqueurs en qu-

Our aim is to illustrate the functionality of the correlative scheme for the description of clause linking mechanisms expressed by wh- proforms in modern French. The correlative construction stricto sensu is one of the central configurations in which these proforms are used, beside those of the headed and free relative constructions

L'acquisition de la temporalité en FRL2: étude descriptive de narrations au passé par des apprenants néerlandophones et hispanophones

L’objectif de notre contribution est d’analyser comment des apprenants néerlandophones et hispanophones du français langue étrangère (FR L2) acquièrent la temporalité – plus spécifiquement la référence au passé – et de vérifier dans quelle mesure leurs interlangues se rapprochent de la langue cible ou, au contraire, reflètent de manière plus ou moins fidèle des mécanismes propres à la langue maternelle (L1). Afin de dresser une image aussi complète que possible, nous présenterons d’abord brièvement les notions essentielles à notre étude ainsi que nos hypothèses de recherche et nos données. Nous adopterons, dans notre description, une approche multifactorielle qui intègre l’analyse de différents moyens linguistiques – morphologiques, lexicaux, sémantiques – et qui essaiera de déterminer la raison du choix pour tel ou tel temps verbal du passé. Pour expliquer ces choix possibles, nous vérifierons les hypothèses de la primauté de l’aspect lexical et du transfert de la L1