CY Cergy Paris University - Connected Community Portrait

« Francophonies et rapport au reste du monde » //  ‘Francophone communities and their relationship with the rest of the world’

1. Information

1. Our Story

Origins and Development

The starting point was the will to set up a minor in Francophonie between CY Cergy Paris University and Pompeu Fabra University-Barcelona, including a few other university partners of the alliance. After many online meetings, changes in direction, and people involved, the group has decided to apply to the second-round call for EUTOPIA Connected Communities in 2024 (with CY as the coordinator). It first started with a research angle, led by the former director of the French language centre of Cergy Paris, PhD in French language teaching. But after she left CY for a position in another university, the group, now led by a less specialised leader, who trains teachers to be in French and interculturality, agreed on a panel of topics that could reflect the complexity of the «francophonie» concept and would allow us to address it thanks to international comparisons.

Where We Are Today

Thanks to enthusiasm, collaborative work, and the involvement of our support staff, the community has grown to this day in a very warm and friendly atmosphere, both administratively and in student activities. Our meetings are becoming increasingly creative and efficient. To begin with, each member offered to share a project/activity they enjoyed and had completed, which was very well received by all the other members. We then added some new common ideas and some new partners (we are also happy to welcome more).

The first year enabled us to bring together international groups of students to work on literature, sociolinguistics and teaching, with guests from Ukraine and Korea, and to see through their presentations how much they had developed their enjoyment and creativity.

We can now offer a fairly comprehensive catalogue of learning activities for students at the start of this second year, where we have designed a formal model for all the activities we have explored. This gives us a great picture of the community we belong to and allows us to communicate its value, both within our institutions and to our external partners.

Our Ambitions & Future Directions

Aim towards “romance cross-comprehension” (we count in the CC several countries with a romance language) and “intuitive” didactics of languages. 

The results we’ve got from our students encourage us to go on, as does the nice atmosphere among us: we’ve been thinking about how we will continue once the EUTOPIA’s support is over, which is next year, and want to go on supporting interactive and collaborative work through e learning devices, or European platforms such as eTwinning.

The impact we can sketch at the moment is, on the one hand, the enlargement of the perspectives given to the students of French studies departments in Europe, either literature or language: they can now rely on an international network to get opportunities, and to practice thanks to informal conversation with their new friends. On the other hand, it has brought French native students to reconsider their relation to their “mother tongue”, and to understand that France is not the origin of Francophonie, but just part of it.

2. What We've Accomplished Together

A first cross-campus activity involving a survey applied to students on “My relationship to French, and the place of French in my country”. Results of this survey, presented by the students themselves, made us notice not only the similarities in the way we study French, but also made us aware that many other ways of touching francophonie exist, and even sometimes despite being subject to uncertain contexts (for example, Ukrainian students studying French in Lviv).

3. The Impact We're Making

One of the special moment this community offered us was to meet and involve an Ukrainian teams, thanks to a forum devoted to French teachers in Eastern Europe that was taking place in Bucharest: this “francophonie” key opens many doors, and we were very happy to have and give the opportunity to work with students from different parts of Ukraine, and to show how culture, language and cooperation can be a source of pleasure even in dire straits such as a war.

Another literature debate-style activity on books from the Goncourt Prize allowed us to notice the shared literary interests of students from different universities and to be amazed by their high level of reflection and comments.

4. Voices from the Community

Margaux Whiskin, Assistant Professor, University of Warwick

Before joining the community, the opportunities to exchange with French teaching specialists, beyond my department, were mostly limited to conferences. This kind of exchange were short and scarce, with no dedicated structure to deepen further. Since I have joined the community, instead of just staying at simple exchange of ideas stage, discussions and collaboration lead to real outputs, based on common objectives. The environment is a real place for testing innovative learning approaches, like gamification and to get out of the closed walls of my department.

Florence Bray, community lead, CY

The chance of “leading” this community gave me the opportunity to hear a great variety of ideas and points of view on this subject that has been one of my favourites for decades, and so to improve  its understanding.  But it also showed me how easy it is to lead when people have volunteered, and how our usual professional practice, with students, staff and colleagues, could benefit from this community-based approach.

Simona Jișa, community partner, UBB

I feel like I have a much better understanding of how French is being taught in Europe.