Abstract:

In order to teach any subject effectively, it is generally accepted that an adequate degree of subject knowledge is required. In foreign language teaching, the language teachers’ proficiency is essential to teach students to become linguistically competent themselves. In addition, within the European Union it is teachers’ linguistic proficiency that often appears to be the focus of most attention. Therefore, the acquisition of a near-native level is certainly a challenge for non-native foreign language teachers.

The main objective of this study was to describe French as a foreign language (FFL) written proficiency in non-native pre-service FFL teachers. In addition, the frequency and types of written errors made by pre-service teachers of FFL, holding a different master’s degree is still unknown. This study was performed with 40 postgraduate students coursing an Academic Teacher Education Program at Ghent University (Belgium). The students had acquired their master’s degree in French philology (n=32, PHIL Group) or in French translation and interpretation studies (n=8, TI Group).

The data for this study was obtained from essays written by all the postgraduate students. The frequency and types of errors were analyzed. For this study, following types of written errors were evaluated:
(1) spelling mistakes;
(2) grammar errors;
(3) vocabulary errors;
(4) discourse errors and
(5) content errors.

In addition, the following subtypes of errors were considered in (2), (3) and (4): omission, misselection, overinclusion and order.

The text length of the analyzed essays ranged from 197 to 432 words with a mean of 276.73. The mean length of PHIL Group (271.28 words) was slightly lower than TI Group (298.50 words) but they were still under the maximum established length of 400 words. Analyses revealed interesting findings about the different error types in their written productions.

In conclusion, the persistence of written errors could have an impact in the professional performance of these pre-service teachers of FFL. Therefore, it would be useful to design novel didactic strategies at the undergraduate programs focusing on the improvement of overall written proficiency in FFL.

Keywords:

French as a foreign language, pre-service teachers, teacher training, writing, error analysis.