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BAYREUTH CONTRIBUTIONSTO GLOTTODIDACTICS

BAYREUTHER BEITRAGEZUR GLOTTODIDAKTIK

Ed. UdoO.H.Jung

Vol. 10

¿PETERLANG

Frankfurt am Main . Berlin •Bern •BruxeUes . New York, Oxford . Wien

TerryLambHayo Reinders

(eds.)

SUPPORTINGINDEPENDENTLANGUAGELEARNING

Issues and Interventions

~PETERLANG

Europaíscher Verlag der Wissenschaften

)

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction.................................................................. ... 1

Part 1: Issues

Sophie Bailly and Maud Ciekanski

Leaming as Identity in Practice: the Role of the Leamer-

Advisor Relationship in a Supported Self-directed

Leaming Structure.............................. 3

Marie-José Gremmo and Desirée Castillo

Advising in a Multilingual Setting: New Perspectives

for the Role of the Advisor.......................................... 21

Shawn Loewen

Autonomy and Language Leaming Behaviour: the

Role of Student Initiation in Meaning-focused L2

Lessons................................................... 37

Cynthia White

Robinson Crusoe and the Challenges of Supported

Distance Language Learning........................................ 55

Bruce Morrison

( Mapping a Self-access Language Learning Centre........... .... 73

'TerryLamb

Supporting Independence: Students' Perceptions of

Self-management............ 95

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.,' ~.

Thi, is the challenge counselling sessions have to tackle It is aprofessional relationship as well as an interpersonal relationship thatcontem 1 . " ..s earrung m ItS cogmtrve and subjective dimensions.

Rejerences

Bailly, S. 1995. La formation du conseiller. Mélanges Pédagogiques 22'63-83. .

BroVtn P. and Levinson S. 1987. Politeness. Some Universals inLanguage Usage. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

CicOllrel,A. 1978. Cognitive Sociology. Penguin.

Gofftr¡anE. 1974. Les Rites d'interaction. Paris: Minuit.

GreIllmo, M.J. 1995. Conseiller n'est pas enseigner. MélangesPédagogiques 22: 33-61.

Gre~o,. M.!. an,d Ril.ey'P. 1~97. Autonomie et apprentissage autodirigé:1histoire d une Idee. Melanges Pédagogiques 23: 81-107.

GreIlllno, ~.J. 2003. ~der l'apprenant a mieux apprendre: le róle ducon~eIller ou le discours cornme lieu de rencontre pédagogique. InAlber~, B. (ed.) Autolormation et Enseignement Supérieur. Paris:Hermes.

Gumperz 1. and Hymes D. 1972. Directions in Sociolinguistics: theEt~nography 01 Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart andWinston.

Holec, H. 1998. L'apprentissage autodirigé: une autre offre de formationIn Apprentissage et Usage des Langues Dans le Cadre Européen'les Langues Vivantes Apprendre, Enseigner, Évaluer. Un Cadr;J;;uropéen Commun de Rélérence. Etudes Préparatoires. Editions<.1uConseil de l'Europe.

Kerbrai O hi . C 1990- rece 10m. . Les lnteractions Verbales, Tome l,Itpproche lnteractionnelle et Structure des Conversations. Paris:Armand Colin.

Ril ~ey, .. 2003. Self-Access as Access to Self: Cultural variation in theDotlOns of self and personhood. In Palfreyman, D. and Smith, R.(eds.) Learner Autonomy across Cultures. Language EducationPerspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wenger, ~. 1~8811989. Community 01 Practice. Cambridge: CambridgeUrnversIty Press.

20

ADVISING IN A MUL TILINGUAL SETTING: NEWPERSPECTIVES FOR THE ROLE OF THE ADVISOR

Marie-José Gremmo and E. Desirée Castillo

Introduction

In the past fifteen years, there has been an increase in the number of self-access centres around the world. By using new technologies that allowaccess to up-to-date material s in different languages, they have becomecentres for multilingual learning. Many of these centres are based on aself-directed system, meaning that an advising service is provided.

In the literature on self-directed language learning, the advisor isconsidered to be' the keystone in a self-access centre. In 1995, Grernmoset out to define the advisor's role. One of the aspects she mentions is thatthe advisor can advise in and for different languages without being aspecialist in those languages. Thus we are confronted with the"plurilingualism" of the advisor, about which almost no research has beendone.

Here we need to explain an important distinction between the two termswe will be using. The first is the term "multilingual", which describes anenvironment or milieu where two or more languages are spoken orexpressed. It refers to the nature of the environment, such as a society thatuses different languages, learning material presented in differentlanguages, language centres that afford access to different languages, etc.The second is the French term "plurilingual" as it is used by the Councilof Europe: "A person who is capable of using advisedly severallinguisticvarieties" is plurilingual (Riley 2003: 13). This distinction is discussed inRiley (2003).

With the purpose of deepening our knowledge of the plurilingualism ofthe advisor, we investigated the following questions:

1. Does the multilingualism of the technology and materials found inself-access language centres promote a pedagogicalplurilingualism?

2. What factors promote plurilingual advising?

3. What training would advisors need to be able to do plurilingualadvising in a multilingual setting?

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4. What are the advantages to offering plurilingual advising?

The first step toward answering these questions is to recognize the natureof the environment in which an advisor must function competently: that isto say the multilingualism that occurs in a self-access language centre. Inthis context, multilingualism is present in two different ways:

• First, in the different languages available to be learned asrepresented by the various materials.

• Second, in the learners and advisors who may speak one or morelanguages (independent of the languages they want to learn). Inother words, the plurilingual learners and advisors for~ amultilingual environment for the centre.

However, we discovered that the multilingual environment in whichadvisors may have to work can vary significantly from centre to centre, aswe will show with the following three cases. As a result, the skillsrequired by advisors, and in particular, the extent to which advisors areallowed to use their plurilingualism, can vary significantly depending onwhat type of centre they are working in.

Before we continue, we would like to define two other terms that we willbe using. First, we will call 'learning language' the language that is beinglearned by the learner, the language that is the object of the advice givenby an advisor. Second, we will call 'advising language' the language thatis used during the advice session to cornmunicate between the advisorand the learner.

Definition o/ the role o/ the advisorOur concept of an advisor is that as defined in the work on self-directioncarried out at the CRAPEL. As Grernmo (1995) has shown, the advisor isthe person who will help the learner to establish a learning programoBecause the objective of the advising is to develop in the learner thecapacity to learn, the main focus of the advising will be themethodological aspects, instead of the linguistic ones. For that purpose,the language used in the interview is not necessarily the one being learnedby the learner. It needs to be a language in which both advisor and learnerfeel cornfortable to talk about the learning language. Therefore, theadvisor can be plurilingual in two ways:

• First, in being able to advise for severallearning langua~es, and

• Second, in being able to advise in several advising languages.

22

Presentation of the organization o/ each centre

We interviewed advisors from three centres in three countries: Mexico,France and Luxembourg. In each of these centres, the CRAPEL hadpreviously intervened as an expert in the training of advisors,

A University in Mexico

The first self-access centre is located in a public university in Mexico.

Users: The Mexican centre is part of a range of services offered by theuniversity's language department. The centre is open to students anduniversity personnel. Three languages are offered: English, French andGerman. Portuguese will soon be introduced. The majority of the learnersare Mexican, and most of them take regular language courses in thelanguage department.

Advisory structure: In the Mexican centre, advising is optional. There areeight advisors, who are teachers from the language department, and eachadvisor specializes in just one learning language, the one they teach in thec1assroom: five for English, two for French and one for German. Theadvising language is Spanish, the mother tongue of the majority of thelearners and the advisors.

Advisors establish their schedule so that no two advisors of the samelanguage are present at the same time, though advisors for differentlanguages may be present. There is a bulletin board showing theschedule, inc1uding the names of the advisors and the learning languages.

When the centre first opened, only the original French advisors weretrained by the CRAPEL.

A University in France

The second self-access centre is located in a public university in France.

Users: The French centre is oriented primarily toward the students of theuniversity, whether or not they are language specialists. It is also open tothe teachers and administrative personnel of the university. The centreoffers eleven languages for study (Arabic, Danish, English, French as aForeign Language, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish,Swedish), the materials for each language differ in quantity and quality.The majority of the learners are French, who principally learn English.The centre is also used by foreign students.

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Advisory structure: The advising service is provided by three advisors.The use of the service is optional for the students. One of the advisors is auniversity teacher, and the two others are PhD students who volunteertheir time. The availability of the advisors is posted, and there is noschedule overIap. Learners are encouraged to make an appointment,though impromptu sessions are accepted.

The French centre was set up by the CRAPEL in the 70's, and as wasmentioned before, the advisory structure is based on the "plurilingual"understanding of the advisor' s role as defined by the CRAPEL, i.e., thatadvisors can advise for several languages. As a result, there is noinformation posted conceming which languages an advisor can advise foror advise in. The only moment when the learning language is mentionedis when the learner makes an appointment, at which time the learnerindicates the language (s)he is learning. With this information, the advisorcan review in advance the material that the centre has for the languagechosen by the learner. As for the advising language, it is negotiated by thelearner and the advisor during the first meeting.

Table 1: Advising structure

Advisor Advising language Learning language

Ll French FrenchItalian ItalianEnglish English

PortugueseL2 Gennan Gennan

French FrenchLuxembourgish Luxembourgish

EnglishL3 Gennan Gennan

French FrenchEnglish English

LuxembourgishL4 French French

English EnglishGennan

A Language centre in LuxembourgA learner meets with the same advisor for each session. The learner andthe advisor decide during the first meeting which will be the advisinglanguage or languages. The advising language can change during themeetings. Furthermore, advisors accept to advise in the learninglanguage, so that the learners will have more opportunity to practice thelanguage. On this aspect, this procedure differs from the practicesadvocated by the CRAPEL.

As we can see, the three self-access centres experience and manage theplurilingualism of the advisors in different ways:

• In the Mexican centre, there is no acknowledgement of theplurilingualism of the advisors. Rather, a culture of virtual'monolingualism' pervades: all advisors advise almostexclusively in Spanish, and they advise for just one language,the language they teach in class.

• In the French centre, advisors are assumed to be plurilingual:they can advise for different languages, and they can give advicein different languages.

• In the Luxembourg centre, the advisors have decided to stipulateand control the degree of their plurilingualism, by specifying thelearning languages and the advising languages for each advisor.

The third self-access centre is located in a language school.

Users: The Luxembourg centre opened one year ago. It is in anexperimental stage, so the number of languages and learners is limited.The centre offers five languages: English, French, German, Italian andLuxembourgish and its users are adults in continuing education. Thelearners can choose just to use the self-access centre, just to take languagecourses, or to combine the two to deepen what is learned in theclassroom.

Advisory structure: There are four advisors, and all of them were trainedby the CRAPEL. They have developed a structure for 'plurilingualadvising,' which is explained to the learners. The advisors indicate whichlanguages they are willing to advise in (the advising languages) andadvise for (the learning languages), as seen in the following table.

24 25

26 27

Methodology Advising for a language in which advisors are not specialists

Most of the advisors spoke at least two languages. For some advisors, itwas normal to advise for languages in which they are not specialized. Wealso noticed that even where they were not specialists of a learninglanguage, they had some knowledge of it. Thus, nobody had to advise fora language that was completely unknown to himlher. The most extremecase is that of an advisor from the French centre who advised for Italian,a language that she did not know at all, but she said that it was not aproblem for her because of her knowledge of Spanish and French.

We asked advisors how they would fee1 about advising for a completelyunknown language. The answers were not unanimous:

• Whereas one advisor from the Mexican centre was re1uctant, theothers were willing, with some reservations:

"1 think that it can be done, but obviously you have to take theattitude that 1 am not a know-it-all but just a guide, the onewho will teach how to do it, but not do it"

• The advisors from the French centre were willing to advise foran unknown language, but specified the type of material that thecentre has to have in order to do this kind of advising

• Three advisors from the Luxembourg centre did not feel'uncornfortable' with the idea, but they specified that sinceadvising is already a completelynew experience for them (theyhad only been advising for one year), they would prefer to starttheir advising experience with languages they felt they couldhandle. One of them said she could do it:

For example, Russian I will not say no. I will try, because now Irealize from my experience that the advice that we give in thistype of teaching, in quotes, is advice of a methodological nature,and that it is really the how and not the what. I realized thisduring my work. So for Japanese or Russian, yes, that wouldbother me, but I could at the very least tell people "do it like thatfor oral comprehension, if this is your objective, then just do it".

Interviews were chosen as the primary means of obtaining data, becauseit allowed us to get more insights in a research area where there is littledata as yet. In particular we felt that individual interviews would fumishus with valuable c1ues to the following:

• The way advisors are likely to organise their practice in amultilingual centre

• The way in which the advisors' specific contexts influence theway they conceive their role

• The way in which innovative aspects brought about bytechnology (i.e., grouping together materials and learners ofvarious languages) may cause pedagogical relationships toevolve.

We developed a three-part questioning guide. The first section wasdesigned to collect information about the setting in which advisors andlearners work. The second section was designed to explore the advisor' spersonal experience with plurilingualism. The third part was designed toinvestigate the training they had hado The average length of the interviewswas 35 minutes.

For our research, we interviewed ten advisors:

• Four advisors at the Mexican university. (At the time of theinterview, just one of them is working in the centre. The threeothers were advisors in the self-access centre who had recentlyleft: one is studying for her master' s degree, one is directinganother self-access centre, and the third has taken on amanagement position in the university language department.)

• Two advisors at the French centre (the two volunteers) and

• All four advisors at the Luxembourg centre.

The reality o/ plurilingual advising

We would now like to highlight, with extracts from OUT interviews withadvisors, some of the most important issues we explored.

- ~---- -

28 29

Concerns about not being a specialist

a. Disclosing non-specialist status to the learner

b. Learners' reactions to the advisor not being a specialist

Advisors were divided over whether to telllearners that they wereadvising for non-specialist languages.

As v.:e have already said, advising for a non-specialist language wasc?nsld~re~ 'normal' by some advisors. Since it was a part of their role togrve pnonty to the language learning process and methodology, they didnot feel forced to say that they were not specialists, unless they were in anextreme situation, such as when they were confronted with specific termsor with completely unknown languages:

"That has happened when they asked me a question that 1 found toospecific on languages "oh you know, it's not my speciality" that hashappened to me, but otherwise 1never te11them up front"

"It seems to me that for ltalian 1 told him that 1 had never done Italian(... ) perhaps 1 was afraid of that expectation of someone who was aspecialist in the language, even if we didn't deal with grammaticalstuff but (... ) everything [in the materials] was in Italian, so (... ) it wasmore difficult for me to understand, and yes, perhaps 1 needed to say"excuse me, 1 am taking more time to understand what it' s about, as 1do not speak that language?"

For ?ther~, disc1~sing their status was an issue of 'professional ethics',that IS an imperative not to lie to the learners:

"You have to be frank. You have to be honest one hundred percent.That' s what counts"

It seems that when a centre does not specify the advising languages, as inthe French centre, learners never asked for the speciality of the advisor:

"1 think that the people whocome to the centre think that the advisorsknow all the languages. That seems more or less to be theirrepresentation"

The case of the Mexican centre is interesting in this aspect. At first, theMexican centre did not have a precise advising 'schedule', and it seemsthat at that time the- learners did not expect to have a specialist in thelanguage. Indeed, for some learners, the speciality of the advisors was nota concem and they kept working with the non-specialist advisor:

"Yes, 1 have had to give advice to the same English student, yes ofcourse leven though it is not my speciality]"

When the new schedule was set up, advisors were only supposed toadvise for their speciality language. Nonetheless, learners often had toseek advice from a non-specialist advisor, because no specialist wasavailable. Yet a remarkable change occurred in the attitude of the learners.If they discovered that they were being advised by a non-specialist, theywould irnmediately want to switch, believing that a specialist would givethem better advice, since the centre seemed to focus on the importance ofspecialist-only advising. It was then up to the advisors to convince thelearner that they were capable of advising for another language:

"Perhaps they thought that therefore it couldn't be done. 1 mean, 1remember vividly occasions when to say "1 am from the Frenchsection" would get a response, a reaction of "ah, we11,then 1'11leave"(... ) and then you te11him "no, no, there's no problem, there's noproblem. 1 know the French section, but of course we can talk aboutyour difficulties or whatever you want about your English learning.There's no problem.''"

In the Mexican centre, where the organization was based on separation oflanguages, advisors would specify their speciality:

"Of course (... ) 'cartes sur table', the cards on the table, so there is nocheating, no cheating. [And then, we can work with the learner] as faras possible, and on whatever possible, then it works, of course."

Consequently, in the Mexican centre, three of the advisors used tominimize their a~vising role with learners who were not in their speciality.At the first meeting, they would give a minimum of advice and then tellthe learners to meet with the appropriate colleague for the next meeting.In contrast, the fourth advisor would continue to advise the learners, butshe felt that her initiative caused her problems with her colleagues.

c. Colleagues' reaction to non-specialist advisors

When the advising languages are strictly assigned, as in the Mexicancentre, it seems that those advisors who just advise in their specialitylanguage are surprised by the fact that some colleagues do plurilingualadvising. In some cases, advisors actually disapproved of their colleaguesdoing plurilingual advising.

One of the former French advisors at the Mexican centre described thereaction of her new colleagues at one of the university's English-onlylanguage centres. Although her English is not very fluent, she

30 31

successfully advises English language leamers, and she is in fact thedirector of the centre:

"1 feel that at the beginning there was a reaction of surprise from theadvisors, not from the leamers but from the rest of the advisors,because first, the director who was before me did not do advising, andshe was an English teacher, and second (... ) because I was from theFrench department, how could I dare do advising? So they used tomake fun of me. I started advising, and all of them where watching-what I was doing, and they made fun of me, but now they see it assomething realIy normal"

An advisor cornments that advising for an unfamiliar language puts theadvisor in a situation where the linguistic aspect cannot be addressed,yet. ..

"it is in that situation where the advisor realizes that (s)he is real1y anadvisor"

Characteristics of a "good" plurilingual advisor

The advisors also discússed some of the characteristics that would helpadvisors to advise competently.

Changing attitudes of advisors

It seems that when advisors advise for a language which is their speciality,they act more like experts: they know the material the centre has, where itcan be found, etc. But when advisors are advising for a language in whichthey are not experts, this knowledge is missing, so they feel that they acton more equal terms, more like partners.

"1mean that those obstac1es that I have been talking about for a whilecan be overcome, they can be overcome, I mean you can be aplurilingual advisor if you adopt the attitude "let' s look together, andI' 1Ihelp you'"

"It seems that for Italian I told him that I had never done Italian, butbetween us, we found a way. We looked, for example, at the methods,we reviewed what he wanted to work on, and we found (... ) more orless (... ) those things he could work on."

a. Having a common language with the learner

What advisors from the French centre said about plurilingual advising isthat the most important factor is to find a language that is cornmon toboth advisor and leamer:

"Now I am convinced that there must be a language in which the twoare at ease, because I found myself sometimes using English withsomeone who did not feel at ease. AIready you're talking withsomeone from another culture. How do you tell him what is our role(... ) That' s to say, he has a very specific program, and to be able to tellhim, to make him understand why we are asking these questions, andwhat the process is. It is not obvious if there is no language that weboth master"

The content of advising

b. Importance of knowing the materials

Most of the advisors highlighted the importance of knowing thematerials of the centre well:

"One of our functions (.... ) is to know and know and know and neverstop knowing the material that is in our area, that seems essential forme, essential (... ) it is part of our function, so in the tiny free momentsthat we have, we should be reviewing the material so we could knowwhat we have and where we have it, whatwe have here and there ( ... )you do not need to know everything, and you cannot do it. So there isalways the procedure of searching, but if you already have moreprecise notions of what you have you can help more rapidly in thesearch"

Advisors say that they work above all on the methodological aspect,instead of the linguistic one:

"We try to make the advising not too linguistic but moremethodological (... ) how to solve this or that problem, how toapproach this or that aspect, how to start with this or that"

"1 feel realIy cornfortable and I feel I am the same in alI languages,because ultimately I feel that the advice that I give to people is of amethodological nature (... ) I concentrate on the methodology"

Indeed, it is precisely this factor in which advisors feel weak whenadvising for languages they are not specialized in:

c. Training as plurilingual advisors

Advising in and for severallanguages requires a different approach fromthat which is usually used for the training of language teachers. Ratherthan focusing on language specialization, training must focus on themethodology, on the didactics of learning languages:

"1 realize now that it is finally a whole focus (... ) because to be trainedto be a plurilingual advisor is something that has to be proposed fromthe beginning, as an approach to be trained like that."

The importance of a common training language

An important aspect in the training concems the language used during thetraining. Advisors are usually trained in the language of their speciality,which tends to include a focus on linguistics and also tends to excludeadvisors who do not speak that language. But since more and morecentres are multilingual, a common training is important, implyingtraining in a common language. This is what the CRAPEL started to do inLuxembourg, where the training for all the advisors was conducted inFrench. Similarly, at a public university in Colombia, all of the futureadvisors were trained in a common language, in this case Spanish. As aresult, the training privileged a didactic approach instead of thespecialization in a particular language. This helped also to develop acommon 'vision' of what the self-access centre could be.

"1 realize that (... ) 1 do not know the materials well enough to telllearners "do this or that", But when it has to do with questions ofmethodology, 1can help them"

In the French and Luxembourg centres, all of the advisors were trained bythe same institution (CRAPEL), which privileged a plurilingual approach.Both centres have developed multilingual systems for advising. It seemsthat the common training helped to develop a coherent methodology inthe workplace, in spite of the different specializations. On the other hand,each centre has chosen to manage this multilingualism in a different way,no boundaries at the French centre, and clear boundaries and thepossibility of using the learning language as the advising language at theLuxembourg centre.

Discussion

Using the information drawn from the analysis of the interviews, wewould now like to discuss the issues raised by the questions that were setout at the beginning.

The importance of a common training

One of our questions was whether multilingualism begets plurilingualism.The interviews seem to show that it is not the multilingualism of thetechnology and material s found in a centre that stimulate plurilingualism,per se. Rather, it is the training that the advisors have received thatencourages them to work plurilingually. Indeed, the way in whichadvisors are trained is crucial to how they see their role and how they dotheir work. Of course, this effect is strongest if all of the advisors,including the director of the centre, share the same ideal.

In the Mexican centre, the advisors were trained principally by twodifferent institutions, each proposing a different concept for the role ofthe advisor. We have already mentioned that the French advisors weretrained with a plurilingual approach. On the other hand, the advisors forother languages were trained by an institution that gave preference to a'monolingual' method (that is, advisors should advise for the language oftheir speciality). When the advisors began to work together, theirdiffering concepts of how the centre should be run created a great deal ofconflict between them. After a period of negotiation, the monolingualsystem of advising was adopted.

The importance ofthe advisor's professional status

The number of languages spoken by an advisor, the idea of what anadvisor is and the professional status of an advisor can have a positive ornegative influence at work.

At the Mexican centre, the advisors were categorized according to theirspeciality language. As it tumed out, the French advisors had notion~ ofother languages (usually English and German), and for them an advisorcould advise for different languages. Most of the other advisors onlyknew the language of their speciality, and for them an advisor could onlyadvise in his/her speciality language. It seems that the monolingualadvisors may have been opposed to plurilingual advising, because theyperceived it as a threat to the control of their "language territory". Theyhad the feeling that their status was diminished, because while they onlyfelt cornfortable advising for their speciality language, the Frenchadvisors' field of action was now extending into their speciality.

32 33

In a typical centre, there are advisors present for each language at specificand limited times during the week. As a result it is often difficult forleamers to match their constrained schedule with that of 'the' advisor oftheir learning language. Indeed, some leamers never see an advisor,because their schedules do not match. In contrast with plurilingualadvisors, advising can be provided for all languages at almost all times.This is an irnmense advantage to leamers. References

Grernmo, M.-J. 1995. Conseiller n'est pas enseigner: le róle du conseillerdans l'entretien de conseil. Mélanges Pédagogiques 22: 33-61.

Riley, P. 2003. Le «linguisme» - multi, poly, pluri? Points de repereterminologiques et sociolinguistiques. Le Francais dans le monde.Recherches et applications 'Vers une compétence plurilingueJuillet: 8-17.

On the other hand, in the French and Luxembourg centres, advisors werenot considered specialists of a particular language, as all the advisorsspoke a number of different languages. The advisor' s role was alsoperceived as that of an expert more in methodological rather thanlinguistically aspects. This seerns to lead to a greater willingness on thepart of the advisors to work together and to help each other.

c. Greater focus on methodology

But the most important advantage lies in the nature of the role itself. Aswas said above, when a plurilingual advisor advises in a non-specialitylanguage, the advisor tends to focus on the methodological aspect ofleaming. This could be a greater advantage to leamers, who thus acquirea better understanding of how to leam a language, rather than justleaming the linguistic aspects of a specific language.

The importance of extemal factors

The sociolinguistic context could be another reason that helps or inhibitsplurilingualism. One has to remember that the sociolinguistic makeup ofMexico and Luxembourg may be influencing the system adopted by theirrespective self-access centres. Mexico is officially a monolingual country(Spanish). This monolingualism may have an influence on an advisor'swillingness to advise for more than one language. In comparison,Luxembourg is muItilingual, which has undoubtedly helped advisors tobe more willing to advise in and for different languages.

Conclusion

The advantages of a plurilingual approach

Finally, there are three important advantages of a plurilingual advisorystructure:

Based on our analysis of the three self-access language centres, we findthat the multilingualism of the centre does not promote, per se, aplurilingualism in advising. It is the team of advisors and the type oftraining that promote a plurilingual approach. It is c1ear that a team ofadvisors should not just be a group of language teachers who work sideby side but do not really cooperate. Rather the team members should beexperts in an overall language leaming methodology so that theirknowledge and professional know-how are based on language didacticsmuch more than on language studies. With plurilingual advising, we areconfronted with an 'ideological' innovation: the cohabitation oflanguages in a self-access centre implicitly brings with it the cohabitationof different didactic currents.

If we do not want se1f-access centres to remain in a state of segregatedmuItilingualism but rather to develop a plurilingual advisory structure, weneed to redefine the notion of 'speciality' , moving from a definition basedon languages to one that is more transversal and based on languagedidactics.

a. More flexible scheduling

b. Increase of knowledge of resources

Typically advisors are only familiar with the resources in their specialitylanguage. By advising in several languages, advisors enrich theirknowledge of resources, in quantity as well as in quality. In particular, anadvisor may disco ver interesting and useful materials in one language thatare not currently used in other languages. Thus the needs of the leamerscan be better met across alllanguages.

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