From multilingualism to plurilingualism: university students’ beliefs about language learning in a monolingual context
Résumé
The study aims to highlight the representations that university students have about plurilingualism, in order to research how they can develop plurilingual competences in an essentially monolingual French academic setting. It is based on a survey of 684 students enrolled in two foreign language programmes across two year levels (first and fourth years) at the University of Nantes (France). The questionnaire we have designed includes 26 items which explicitly refer to, on the one hand, a plurilingual posture and, on the other hand, a monolingual posture. The path analysis shows that advanced students who learn several languages have a more plurilingual posture than beginners or those who learn fewer languages. Differences about the two investigated programmes are discussed.