The standard language exercisation procedure

Abstract

This long 2016 article takes up, develops and illustrates with concrete examples of FFL (French as a Foreign Language) textbooks the standard procedure of language exercisation which appeared with the direct methodology of the beginning of the 20th century, and which remains until now the most developed model of management of teaching-learning activities between the initial presentation of a new language form and its objective, the spontaneous re-use by the learner in a personal situation of communication and/or action. This procedure consists of the following phases: reproduction (identical, identification/recognition, conceptualization, application, training, directed reuse, free reuse, and finally spontaneous reuse (or "re-production": production of a new personal message). I compare this procedure with Bloom's "taxonomy of objectives" and D'Hainaut's "intellectual activities" adapted to language didactics by two FFL specialists. In actual classroom practice, this procedure is subjected in real time by teachers and learners to adaptations in real time, the typography of which I propose (these are recursivity, inversion, combination, resumption, shortcut, postponement, continuum and differentiation). These adaptations ultimately transform this procedure into a process (as is the case with all procedures: cf. on this point my essay on modelization (“Modélisation, types généraux et types didactiques de modèles en didactique complexe des langues-cultures, www.researchgate.net/publication/364928557) chap. 4.1.3.3 "Du modèle-procédure au modèle-processus… et l’inverse, dans les pratiques de classe quotidiennes" ("From model-procedure to model-process... and the reverse, in everyday classroom practices, pp. 28-30). I conclude by proposing seven ways in which textbooks, despite their constraints, can help teachers make these adaptations. This article as a whole finally proposes a complex model of processual management of language practice that is useful both for teachers in their classroom practices and for students in their analyses of language textbooks. Also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365565266.