2nd Call for papers > Focus

In-depth and well-argued reflections (and to some extent theorizations) relating to the transmission, appropriation, teaching and learning of languages have been engaged in for several centuries. However, even though research in the field of language education did not begin in the twentieth century, it was only after the Second World War that it gradually gained legitimacy, within forms of institutionalized/disciplinarized recognition.

With specific reference to French, for example, while research in the field of FLE/S cannot be said to have become fully institutionalized within the relatively autonomous field of 'didactique/didactologie des langues', until the 1980s, it was in the immediate post-war period that reflection on the diffusion of French abroad first became organized, leading to research on modes of teaching and learning deemed appropriate to new social and geopolitical realities. Meanwhile, theories that have emerged in France have of course been received, adapted, and reworked according to very diverse situations in many countries. It is therefore essential to examine how reception and adaptation, outside the French-speaking world, have also contributed to the evolution of choices and theories developed mainly, initially, in France. Furthermore, the field of Teaching French as a Second/Foreign Language has encountered, in different contexts, ideas and research developed for other languages, sometimes within other disciplinary domains (e.g. research into 'applied linguistics' in English-dominant contexts; or more broadly in the humanities in other countries). Such considerations will apply equally to histories of diffusion and traditions of teaching other
languages, in interestingly different ways. The last 20 years have seen further change relating to greater internationalization of language education research and theory in connection with growing influence of European institutions (in particular, the Council of Europe).