Multilingual telecollaboration project

Project led by Elsa Chachkine (senior lecturer in French, Cnam, Paris), Eva Dessein (Senior Lecturer in French, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Isabelle Salengros (lecturer at École des Ponts ParisTech), Per Urlaub (Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Director of Global Languages).

Participants : Cnam international masters students and MIT students for the first experiment. The second experiment will also involve students from the Ponts et Chaussées engineering school.

Aim of the project: as part of an FLE course, students are asked to solve a problem in French but, at key stages of the project, to use other languages in their repertoire (English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, etc.), with the help of tools (automatic translators, multilingual dictionaries, etc.). This project enables students to collaborate in French with students from other foreign institutions, drawing on other languages that the students have in common and with the support of tools (automatic translators, multilingual dictionaries). The project leaders are seeking to understand whether the use of different languages maximises the processes of understanding and expression, and therefore improves collaboration. A great project to Master's international students to learn French differently and prepare themselves to join international projects in the future.