It starts from a thorough and complete transformation of the nature of the pedagogic action, as they it does not provide the student with a produced knowledge and he is not demanded to do a preconceived work, organized and assessed without his participation; the aim is to guide the student in the production of his own learning (access to the documentation sources, work methods) and in the construction of his vocational training and his social existence. The teaching innovation project “How to advance to self-learning in French Didactics as a foreign language, with the help of the New Technologies of Information and Communication (NTIC)”, aspires to redefine the student as a person capable of defining a project, organizing his work in an individually and in group, taking initiatives and responsabilities, creating and preparing a knowledge from the reflection on the already existing knowledge….
With these premises, the project aims help the students to acquire the ability to use the New technologies of Information and communication (NTIC), to develop a critical spirit and a sense of responsability, to acquire a thorough and founded knowledge (as they find answers for their own searchs and questions) and a capacity to elaborate their own documents and assess their work according to the steps taken and the final product, to open university teaching to the working world (teaching staff of languages on active, permanent training) and founding an organism and a centre to interchange educational experiences on french teaching as a foreign language.
According to the teachers of the University of Granada, “Self-learning must not get mixed up with individualized teaching: in this case, the traditional program adjusts to the particular characteristics of the students. Individualized teaching is a work method, a didactic technique and keeps the student in his traditional role of dependence on what has been decided and planned by a teacher or an institution and the student limits, as his classmates do, to absorbing a previously determined knowledge. It is about soilving a particular problem. However, self-learning has the advantage of going not noly for individualization, but also for teaching personalization: in this case, the aim is to modify the function of the student for him to become a person “à part entière” in fis education process, this is, basing on an education philosophy that believes that the pupil –we must not forget that we are talking about a higher education context and students are adults at the age of majority- must become the “decider” of his education, taking part in the decisions that conciern him at every level of his education process”.
A three-year project
The teaching innovation project “How to advance to self-learning in French Didactics as a foreign language, with the help of the NTIC” can be used in the three following years: 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2003-04, according to the persons in charge: “There is no doubt that the experince in the management of this new way of conceiving the didactic work will positively move from one year to another, carrying out the necessary modifications both in the work process and in the drawing up of the materials. Thus, we will carry out an assessment of every school year. We think that, at the end of the third year of application we will be well enough to expound a description of the experimentation, in writing, to guide other teachers, adapting it, of course, to the peculiarities of their subjects”.
In this sense, the authors of this teaching innovation project intend to maintain the work method beyond the period of carrying out of the project: “We think –they say–, that it must be the normal way of class work with university pupils. Of course, such experience will never get into a rut, as we must continuously incorporate the acumulated experience, which will allow us to improve certain elements; as there are application contexts–CAP, permanent training for FL teachers, PhD students—they will add new training modules, new objectives and new demands. At the end of the experimentation process, ther must be a germ of a Training service for French Didactics as a Foreign Language, which would work exclusively on-line (tele-enseñanza), in paralell with the teaching of the aforementioned subjects”.
Further information:
Javier Suso López. Professor of French Studies
Dpt. of French Studies. Phone number: 958 243667. E–mail: jsuso@ugr.es
Mª Eugenia Fernández Fraile. Professor of University College
Dpt. of Didactics of Language and Literature. Phone number: 958 243964. E-mail: mefraile@ugr.es
Antonia Navarro Rincón. Dpt. of Didactics of Language and Literature. F.of Education and Humanities. Melilla. Phone number: 952.698747 E-mail: anavarro@ugr.es
