La classe de langue comme observatoire et laboratoire d'un apprentissage expérientiel des langues étrangères à travers la pédagogie par projet

G. Simons begins by pointing out the difficulties encountered by many language teachers in trying to provide students with real communication situations. According to the author, the methodological approach which consists in asking students to "imagine they are Mr Smith" hardly conceals its formal interest. Furthemore, it should be completed with an experiential approach aiming at an articulation of the active experimentation of the foreign language in the here and now as well as the analysis of the functioning of the language as a system. The preparation and exploitation of a pedagogical project for a linguistic stay provides the foreign language course with a concrete aim and a real linguistic material, which it often lacks. In analysing and comparing the linguistic data from students and native speakers in real and identical communication situations, the language teacher can test the interlanguage of his students. Moreover, this process of comparison enables the language teacher to make students "notice the gap" between their language production and that of native speakers. This "notice the gap" technique transforms the traditional language class into an observatory and laboratory of the foreign language and of the interlanguage.