In the master's thesis we discuss the regulatory framework for integration of pupils whose mother-tongue is not French into compulsory education in France. We find that integration and schooling of those pupils are defined in a Circular on the organization of schooling of newly arrived pupils whose mother-tongue is not French (REDE1236612C - Ministère de l'Éducation nationale), laying down that on arrival all those pupils are enrolled (i) in a suitable grade/class, to which pupils of the same age, or one or two years younger pupils, are enrolled, in accordance to their demonstrated acquired knowledge of mathematics; and at the same time (ii) in a pedagogical unit for newly arrived pupils whose mother-tongue is not French, where they learn French as a second language and a language of schooling. We observe that some academic centres for schooling of newly arrived pupils whose mother-tongue is not French and pupils of itinerant and travelling families have prepared some guidelines indicating more specifically the reception procedure and the schooling of those pupils. For this purpose, the Academic centre of Lille prepared a Guide for schooling of newly arrived pupils whose mother-tongue is not French (Bernard and Lecocq 2010) that defines the reception procedure, the examination of acquired level of French and mathematics knowledge upon the pupil's arrival. The Guide for schooling of newly arrived pupils whose mother-tongue is not French (ibid) contains a precisely defined classification system on the basis of which a reception-inclusive plan is created. The reception-inclusive plan takes into account pupil''s age, demonstrated acquired level of French and mathematics knowledge, pupils previous schooling and also the fact whether the school which the pupil is enrolled to has its own pedagogical unit. The reception-inclusive plan defines the scale of integration in the pedagogical unit (from 0 to 21 hours weekly), or the extend of individual remedial education for learning French as a second language (maximum 40 hours), the scope of individual remedial education, of extra-curricular activities and the priorities of teaching and learning French as a second language and as a language of schooling. In the empirical part of the master's thesis we discuss teaching French as a second language in pedagogical unit. We note that certain authors (Vigner 1992 in Maurer 1995, Cuq 1991) preclude the use of the communicative approach when teaching French as a second language in the pedagogical unit. With triangulation of qualitative methods of (i) unstructured observation, which was carried out on non-randomised units that contain two groups of pupils and a teacher from the pedagogical unit of Public Elementary School la Paix (ISCED 1) and (ii) analysis of the document of the same pedagogical unit that describes the basic guidelines for teaching and learning and the learning activities. Through analysing qualitative material we discover that the teacher in this pedagogical unit uses teaching methods specific to the communicative approach: the conversation method, the role play (theatre), he is uses authentic materials and encourages the simultaneous use of different competences (talking, reading, listening). We also note that the teacher of the pedagogical unit of Public Elementary School la Paix (ISCED 1), when teaching reading and writing, uses teaching methods typical of the didactics of French as a mother tongue: he teaches French phonemes and graphemes, the connection between them, the pupils learn the correct word order in the sentence (subject, verb, object) and the syllable segmentation of words.
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