Cette contribution se focalise sur les manifestations et la prise en compte des états émotionnels qui se révèlent lors d’activités créatives menées avec des jeunes enfants issus d’un contexte migratoire, âgé-e-s de 4 à 7 ans ayant des fragilités dans l’interaction orale. Il s’agit d’activités guidées en collaboration avec le Dispositif de Réussite Éducative de la ville de Saint-Etienne élaborées dans le cadre d’un dispositif dénommé « Ateliers de Langage Créatifs » (ALC) et mises en place avec des étudiant-e-s de Master 1 en Didactique des langues, spécialité Sociodidactique, Contact des langues et des Cultures de l’Université de Saint-Etienne. L’ancrage théorique à la base de la création des ALC a pour objectif de préparer le terrain d’une recherche-action-formation-intervention (RAFI) portant sur la valorisation de la diversité linguistique et culturelle au cycle 1, visant à découvrir si des activités créatives favorisent l'émergence d’émotions à valence positive et si ces émotions ont un impact sur le processus d’apprentissage de la langue française.
In this paper we present a research carried out in association and on the request of with the Dispositif de Réussite Educative (DRE) of Saint-Etienne. This research followed the long-established field surveys led by the team of the Jean Monnet University in Saint-Etienne in local schools, and more particularly primary schools. The DRE is a local organization which aims at answering social, educational, school, and language weaknesses met by children who live in disadvantaged areas of the city. The staff of the organization is multiprofessionnal and multidisciplinary: it includes a coordinator, a psychologist and a special educational needs coordinator. It is based in four classes on three different areas. The request of the DRE highlighted that these young children are considered as “struggling” learners, for whom preschool teachers sometimes recommended medicalized guidance (for instance, the intervention of a speech therapist), due to a probable lack of other options. Having decided to refuse the medicalized option, the DRE contacted us to implement a collaborative work with the idea to overcome the children's linguistic weaknesses. To reply to this demand, we have established together with the DRE and the students of the first year in Master's degree of Didactique des langues specialised in Sociodidactique, contact des langues et des cultures at the University of Saint-Etienne, an innovative device: the “Creative Language Workshops”, aside from any formal or educative context. This project aims at strengthening the learning capacities in French and laying the foundations of a favorable construction of “bi-plurilingual” abilities for young children (aged 4 to 7), and in the meantime, creating a regular bond between children’s families and the DRE. The children have various profiles: in 2018, they were coming from various peripheral neighborhoods of the city, and from different schools and classes. They shared multiple origins (Turkey, Laos, Maghreb, Congo, Algeria, Bulgaria, Mayotte, Germany, Chechnya, Guinea, Italy, etc), and multiple native languages (Arabic, French, Bulgarian, Guinean, Chechen, Kabylian, German, Lingala, Maore, Turkish, Hmong, Italian). They had been living in France for different periods of time, and their knowledge of French varied. Let us before anything remark that the preschool period is admitted as having a consequent weight for the pursuit of education, works on linguistic needs for children of the primary school are scarcely developed in France. Our starting point is the official instructions given for preschools teachers, which are rarely familiar with the issues of “non-native speakers”, this due to a lack of adequate measures provided by the educational system. However, the literature has put forward the specificity represented by very young learners, particularly concerning the simultaneity in the learning of speech and the learning of a specific language. This must not be considered as a “difficulty” but rather as a “waiting time”. We need to ask the question of the “difficulties”, as well as the promotion of the “bi-plurilingual” abilities of these children, in establishing for instance an adequate terminology with our learning audience. Language learning and studies on emotions provide, in this sensitive context, a field to investigate, especially in the context of learning French as a second language which is less explored in literature. The young “becoming plurilingual” are encouraged in facing their insecurity (linguistic or else) by voicing their emotions when they face such a situation. Naming their emotions allows them to feel empathy because the others feel similar emotions. Independently from their culture, the children can observe radical transformation happening due to their migratory process. The first data provided by the ALC have already allowed us to confirm that professional displays of linguistic benevolence favored a diminution of insecurity for the young children. More broadly, this exploratory work allows us to tackle different leads concerning sociolinguistic interventions, the training of teachers, and to trigger a debate on the different aspects of the valorization or devaluation of languages within primary school in France, which is an essential space where young learners build their very first perceptions on their native language, and thus on the legitimacy of plurilingual linguistic practices.
