Euphonie
Year : 2017, Volume : 1, Issue : 1
First page : ( 77) Last page : ( 82)
Online ISSN : 2457-0192.
Article DOI : 10.5958/2457-0192.2017.00014.0

Stereotypes in Foreign Language Learning with Reference to French Language

Rathore Jaivardhan Singh

Assistant Professor (French), Amity School of Languages, Amity University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

Online published on 21 April, 2018.

Abstract

Foreign language learning has always been fascinating and intriguing when it comes to explore the unknown culture and the distant people. This learning becomes all the more challenging when the notions of stereotypes and prejudices have to be passed on to the learners through a smooth transition in the teaching/learning methodology. The unlearning of the clichés has to be instilled among the students to escort them towards the appropriate path of culture comprehension. This difference of cultural understanding might lead to the zone of discrimination and segregation among the learners for the foreign natives whose language they are learning. The enhancement of the foreign language happens when the individual shifts his/her focus from the linguistic to the sociocultural elements in the language acquisition. These stereotypical representations may hinder the growth and knowledge of the learners if it is not delivered in the right way to the students. In this multicultural era, it becomes highly imperative that the monolithic approach be rejected to weave the relations of unity in diversity. This article aims at exhibiting the stereotypes prevailing in the learning of French as a foreign language. At the same time, the paper tries to put forward the challenges that French language teachers have to encounter and the ways in which they surmount them by adopting the right technique to teach the students.

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Keywords

Sociolinguistic stereotypes, Representations, Language learning and teaching, Multilingualism.

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