L'influence des méthodes didactiques sur la production orale en FLE : Comment les enseignants de français font parler les élèves

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of didactic methods on oral production in French as a foreign language. This is done by studying how three French teachers in Sweden use different didactic methods to encourage secondary school students to speak French. COLT observations and audio recordings were made at six occasions in three classes of sixth graders and three classes of ninth graders. The results show that the main didactic methods used to encourage students to speak were to ask questions, let students read aloud from textbooks and prepared presentations, let students repeat, and engage students in educational games. Asking questions is the most frequent method but produces a varied amount of oral production. Educational games engage most students and produces the most oral production. No pronounced difference was found between the use of didactic methods in sixth grade and ninth grade. The conclusion is that the choice of didactic method has an impact on oral production. Not only the method itself, but even more so in the way it is applied and adjusted to student’s level of knowledge. This might explain why the same didactic methods are used at different educational levels