Corpus et enseignants de français L2 en Flandre : une histoire réussie

This paper presents the results of data-based study carried out in the field of teacher training for second language (L2) French. The project, initiated in 1994, involves the use of spoken French data gathered from French and Flemish speakers, known as the LANCOM corpus. LANCOM was used to train Flemish teachers of French in the late nineties and to define the attainment targets of the Flemish curriculum for French. In 2008 Delahaie carried out research on how three Flemish teachers of French taught a communicative spoken French course to their classes. She shows that only the teacher who benefited from the use of LANCOM in her training succeeds in making her pupils acquire authentic spoken French, even though, due to lack of practice, she is a less fluent speaker of French than her two colleagues. This study addresses the issue of how corpora can be used to meet teachers' needs when they have to deal with the thorny issue of spoken French ability.