Abstrakt
This study presents the preliminary stage of research on plurilingualism among Czech and international students at Charles University taking part in a language exchange self-directed course. The students work in pairs: the international student learns Czech as a second language and the Czech student practices the foreign language.
For both participants of the language exchange, the target language is always L3+. The study builds on the theoretical framework of the L2 Motivational Self-System (Dorney, 2009) adapted to the Multilingual Motivational Self-System (Henry, 2017) where the original Ideal L2 Self was replaced by the Ideal Multilingual Self.
The aim of the study is to examine the representations of the Ideal Multilingual Selves (Henry, 2017, 2020; Ushioda, 2017) among the international and Czech students, with a link to perceived positive language interaction in the individuals (Thompson & Erdil-Moody, 2016), and examine the plurilingual learning/teaching strategies in their language sessions, which may include translanguaging, code-switching, or cross-linguistic pedagogy (Woll, 2020). The data collection tools for the qualitative study are questionnaires and interviews focusing on language background and perceived positive language orientation, and three language exchange lesson recordings.
Two language learners have participated in the preliminary stage. The data show two different profiles of a Czech student learning French as L4 and a Canadian student learning Czech as L4 and demonstrate multilingual learning/teaching strategies applied in their exchange sessions, which may impact plurilingual pedagogies in the broader scope.
The preliminary stage confirms that research on plurilingual learning experience, ideal plurilingual selves, and plurilingualism in language lessons represents a fruitful research direction and contributes to the current discussion on the motivation to learn LOTES, the learning and teaching of L3+ as well as multilingualism at European universities.