Integrative Functions of the "Mini-Projects" of the Didactic Units of Language Textbooks in the Social Action-Oriented Approach (SAOA)

Abstract by the editor of the book

Christian Puren, the major developer of the action-oriented approach just after the publication of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR, 2001), which sets the goal of training learners as social actors, contributed to this edited book with his two chapters. In his first chapter, Integrative functions of the "mini-projects" of the didactic units of language textbooks in the social action-oriented approach (SAOA), Puren examines “three forms of didactic integration that an adapted "project pedagogy" makes it possible to achieve in language textbooks: the integration of the different areas of activity, the integration of the different spaces of teaching-learning-use, and the integration of the different methodological matrices with their documentary logics and their components of cultural competence”. Thus, Puren indicates, in detail, that “one of the functions of the didactic unit of the textbooks, is to ensure the coherence and synergy of the contents and activities of these different spaces”, and also that the pedagogical projects have “the feature of integrating different spaces: (The class as a (micro-)society in its own right, the outside society simulated in the classroom, the classroom as a didactic space and the external outside school-society), the pedagogical projects make it possible to integrate these different spaces themselves, calling for all the methodological matrices. (Ankara: Nobel, September 2021, 205 p. (Integral text online by king permission of the editor: June 2,  2023)