International Journal of Multilingualism
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmjm20
Plurilingualism and the learning of French as a
foreign language in Ghana
Elias Kossi Kaiza & Sewoenam Chachu
To cite this article: Elias Kossi Kaiza & Sewoenam Chachu (2023): Plurilingualism and the
learning of French as a foreign language in Ghana, International Journal of Multilingualism,
DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2023.2224006
To link to this article:  https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2023.2224006
Published online: 20 Jun 2023.
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM
https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2023.2224006
Plurilingualism and the learning of French as a foreign
language in Ghana
Elias Kossi Kaiza and Sewoenam Chachu
Department of French, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY
The current article studies the competencies of plurilingual Received 21 July 2021
students and how these competencies are exploited in the Accepted 7 June 2023
learning of French as a Foreign Language. Adopting a
translanguaging theoretical approach, we argue that learners of KEYWORDSPlurilingualism; competence;
foreign languages who already speak at least one other language translanguging; error;
have some linguistic competencies which manifest during their foreign language learning
learning of the French language. Through observation of learners
of French at the University of Ghana Business School and analysis
of their written production, we confirm that some of these
plurilingual competencies in students are demonstrated in the
nature of the errors identified. The paper therefore recommends
that learners’ existing competencies be taken into account and
built upon when developing lessons for the foreign language
classroom and during classroom delivery.
Introduction
Observation of translanguaging
This research was motivated in part by an observation of two Ghanaian young ladies (8
and 10 years old) who are sisters and are living in Benin with their Ghanaian parents.
They speak Akuapim Twi (a Ghanaian Language) at home and attend an international
school where English is the language of education. They are however in a francophone
country and so have acquired French as a third language with Akuapim Twi being their
first language and English being their second language. We observe a conversation
between the girls. This conversation drew our attention to the competencies that plurilin-
gual speakers exhibit in the process of learning a third or foreign language. Below is a
transcription of an extract of the dialogue between sisters A and B:
A: Wo koraa, me pε se me bisa wo asεm.
[In fact, I want to ask you a question]
B: εdiε asem?
[What question?]
A: Asanka, ne french ne dεn?
[What is French for Asanka1?]
CONTACT Elias Kossi Kaiza ekkaiza@ug.edu.gh Department of French, University of Ghana, P. O. Box LG 25,
Legon, Ghana
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
B: εnyε /asεnkεr/?
[Isn’t it /asεnkεr/?]
A: Adεn na wo re-ka saa?
[Why are you saying that?]
B: Se wo French mu /riva/ yε ka no /rivyε/
[Don’t we say « rivière » in French for the word « river » (in English)?]
B: Se wo yε no saa ma brofoa, yε betumi ayε no saa wo akuapim mu.
[If we can do that for English, we can do the same for Akuapim.]
In this conversation, we observe the passage of a transposition ‘rule’ from English to
French which is applied to a third language, Akuapim Twi (a variant of the Akan
language). It is observed that girl B undertook a linguistic transfer of the ending of a
word from one language to a word in another language. Even if the reasoning is erro-
neous, the fact that the student was able to make this remark demonstrates that she
has implicitly acquired metalinguistic competencies – in this case, interlinguistic transfers.
We believe that the acquisition is implicit because the speaker seems to have not yet
learnt the morphology of French. We therefore postulate that there is the presence of
an instinctive or intuitive competence that allowed speaker B to operate an intercodic
transfer among the three languages. We are however not certain if in saying /rivyεr/
and /asεenkεr/, student B was relying on a phonetic transformation (oral) or a written
transformation based on what she has learnt in school. Moreover, this conversation
also seems to confirm earlier research that bilingual or plurilingual children are more crea-
tive than monolingual children (García et al., 2006; Leikin, 2013; Skutnabb-Kangas, 2002).
This observation questions the general view that metalinguistic competencies must be
learnt or consciously developed specifically for each language before they can be applied
as learning strategies. Very intriguing is the fact that girl B, using Twi as a basis of com-
parison with English, demonstrates a transfer of the linguistic competence of undertaking
a morphological transfer from one language to the other, and even extending this to a
third language. This is therefore a clear case of translanguaging due to the intentional
nature in which the three languages are used.
This observation is interesting and worthy of further study and verification since its
confirmation has implications for the teaching of foreign languages. We had always con-
sidered that foreign languages such as English and French are learnt in relation to one
another and independently of other languages in which the learners had not developed
a metalanguage. However, this exchange between the sisters led us to two major
questions:
1. What are the plurilingual competencies identified in the errors of productions of stu-
dents studying French as a foreign language at the University of Ghana?
2. How can these identified competencies be harnessed in the translanguaging class-
room to facilitate the teaching and learning of French?
We decided to pursue this observation further by considering the productions of stu-
dents learning French who have similar language repertoires of a Ghanaian language as a
first language, English as their second language and language of Education, and who are
learning French as a foreign language. We presuppose that students who are plurilingual
make use of their existing competencies when learning a new language. In this study, we
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 3
hope to shed light on the complex nature of plurilingual learners, discover their compe-
tencies and the unique way they use these competencies in the process of learning
foreign languages. To be able to answer the research questions stated and analyse this
phenomenon effectively, the study will rely on the theory of translanguaging.
Language learning in the classroom versus language learning in society
Studies show that language learning in the classroom differs from language learning in
society. However, these two are not to be seen as opposing activities but rather as comp-
lementary activities. Language learning in the classroom gives an opportunity to learners
to participate individually or collectively, to speak, write, play a role or represent and
learning is more explicit as opposed to learning in the society where language is
usually just ‘picked up. Learners in the classroom listen to the facilitator and their
peers, get the opportunity to read to check for pronunciation and share the views of
other learners. Classroom learning is usually well-structured and there is the frequent
use of repetition, which helps learners to make progress in steps. However, Dubiner
(2018) posits that repetition in classroom is best achieved when implemented in a com-
municative and significant way. Contextualised repetition necessitates classroom activi-
ties that allow for productive (and not merely receptive) recycling of grammatical
structures and vocabulary items in a relevant and meaningful context.
On the other hand, learning language in society can be termed as informal learning
where a learner acquires language from various sources such as friends, native speakers,
markets, listening to public conversations. This learning is not normally structured like
that of a classroom which goes with specific objectives. Beyond the difference in
context for language learning, some language classrooms have adopted the monolingual
approach to learning where no room is made for the learner’s linguistic repertoire. Indeed,
in some cases, learners are even punished for using their linguistic repertoire other than
the target language or the language of education. As confirmed by Hurwitz and Kambel
(2020), this practice has not created the desired effect as some learners struggle with
mastery of certain concepts especially when these concepts are unfamiliar to them and
are not explained in a language that they understand.
Studies by Blyth (1995) indicate that even though some foreign language teachers posit
that the foreign language classroom should be a target-language-only space, this is not
always practised with some of the teachers using both English and French in a French
language classroom. However, it seems that some learners prefer this method to being
taught only in the foreign language. Indeed, the foreign language teachers who adopt
the use of both languages use the languages for different classroom activities – for
example, they explain grammatical concepts in English and carry out communicative
tasks in French. Current research seems to favour making use of the language repertoire
of the learners. With research showing better performance for students who are not cut
off from the languages they already know and being taught only in the target language
or in the language of education in multilingual or migratory contexts. See for example Char-
amba (2020) for cases from Zimbabwe or Ahadzie et al. (2015) for a case study on Ghana.
However, most of the studies on translanguaging in the classroom in the African
context have focused on the use the contact between local or indigenous languages
and the second language, usually the official language. The existing research also
4 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
focused mainly on primary or secondary level education. Our study focuses on trans-
languaging during the learning of a foreign language, meaning that the learners
already know a first language and a second language before the introduction of a
foreign language. Secondly, our research is based on a study at the tertiary level as our
participants are university students. We hope to demonstrate or confirm the need to
leverage what learners already know when they are learning a new language, no
matter their level of education and no matter whether the language they are learning
is a second language or a third or nth language.
Multilingualism in Ghana
Ghana, an anglophone country in West Africa has a population of about 30.8 million
inhabitants according to the Ghana Statistical Service (2021). Surrounded by three franco-
phone countries: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and the Republic of Togo, Ghana has English
as its official language but has about 81 local languages (Eberhard et al., 2020). These indi-
genous Ghanaian languages belong largely to three different families of the Niger-Congo
group, namely: Kwa, Mande and Gur (Pozdniakov, 2018). With more than a half of the
population lives in urban areas (Anarfi et al., 2020), there is evidence of intense language
contact which has led to many speakers speaking several languages in addition to their
first language (see, e.g. Dakubu, 2009). In a social context characterised by such linguistic
diversity, majority of Ghanaian speakers have competencies in at least two local
languages in addition to English hence the average Ghanaian can be said to be
plurilingual.
According to the Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR)
designed by the Council of Europe (2001), plurilingual and pluricultural competence is
the ability to make use of different languages for the purposes of communication and to
participate in intercultural interaction. Indeed, a plurilingual person is a social agent with
varying degrees of proficiency in several languages and exposure to several cultures. In
this context, there is a shift in perspective both vertically and horizontally, where horizontal
indicates a shift towards the use of multiple language and vertical represents the value one
places on the knowledge (however partial) one has of languages as tools that can facilitate
communication. This knowledge helps one know which language or languages to use in
various situations and the plurilingual person is able to manipulate various languages
with varied levels of mastery (Beacco, 2005; Coste et al., 2009; Piccardo & Capron Puozzo,
2015).
Among the multitude of languages spoken in the country, it is English, part of the
country’s colonial legacy, which has been adopted as the official language of the
country and as the language of education (Bonney, 2021). This adoption of English as
the official language and the language of education for a greater portion of the edu-
cational cycle is because it is considered a neutral language or a link language in a
multi-ethnic and multilingual environment (Coleman, 2010). Another reason proffered
for this adoption of the English language is the fact that it was the language of formal
education from colonial through pre-independence to post-independence times and
was adopted in continuity in the judicial, and legislative fields. English is therefore seen
as a language of the educated and the elite and most people see proficiency in English
as equivalent to being ‘educated’. Indeed, as posited by Anyidoho and Dakubu (2008,
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 5
p. 144) ‘nearly all legal and constitutional documents from colonial times to the present
are silent on any possible role for Ghanaian languages, tacitly confining them to domestic,
local and “traditional” non-literate domains’.
With the currently educational policy, a few local languages are selected as
languages that are taught as subjects in school or that can be used as languages of edu-
cation up to the third year of primary education. However, this is poorly practised and
managed especially as teaching materials and reading books are developed in English
and most teachers who try to put this policy into practice usually translate from English
as they teach. Most learners therefore do not develop metalanguage in the local
languages as they do in English or French where they are explicitly taught grammar
and where they have more printed resources in these languages. We could also add
to this that currently, English also plays an important role in maintaining international
relations just as the indigenous languages maintain sociocultural relationships among
the citizens. The French language, on the other hand also plays a major role in regional
integration due to the fact that majority of the West African countries speak French.
Most people who study French do so to enhance their career prospects in regional
and international bodies where a knowledge of French in addition to English will be
an advantage.
Contrary to English which has a colonial history in Ghana, French was adopted by the
government of Ghana into the educational system before independence, by its introduc-
tion as a subject in Achimota College in 1948. Since then, efforts have been made to inte-
grate the learning of French into the educational system (Ayi-Adzimah, 2010). This
adoption had been necessitated due to the geopolitical environment or position of
Ghana in the sub-region. The study of the French language in Ghana is especially impor-
tant for strategic regional integration and partnerships with neighboring countries and
across the globe. Competence in French can foster good relationships in promoting socio-
economic and political activities in the sub-region and beyond. According to the presi-
dential report on the new educational reform, French is a compulsory subject from
Junior High School (Government of Ghana 2007, p. 15). Efforts to make French a
common language in Ghana continue from regime to regime. The very Francophile Pre-
sident Nana Akufo-Addo declared in 2018 that his goal was ‘to live, one day, in a bilingual
Ghana, with French and English’. A goal that still seems a bit distant though the political
will is there. This is to say that should the policy be well-crafted and adopted, French will
become the second official language for Ghana. Very recently, in 2019, a directive from
the Ghanaian government introduced the teaching of French as a foreign language in
upper primary schools. The directive encourages the teaching of French where French
teachers are available (NACCA, Ministry of Education, 2019).
Other languages such as, Spanish, Chinese, German, Swahili, Russian and Arabic are
taught in some schools as foreign languages but apart from the Arabic language, the
others are taught only in private primary and secondary schools or at the tertiary level.
The Ghanaian population has different perceptions and attitudes with regard to the mul-
tiple languages spoken in the country. Indeed, as posited by Ahadzi et al. (2015, p. 4),
In the matter of language use in education in Ghana, attitudes are influenced by factors such
as the place of the languages in the linguistic ecology and their domains of use, as well as
socio-historical and cultural factors that account for the language situation. Also playing a
role are the status and linguistic life history of the individuals that have the attitudes.
6 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
Also, a study by Nutakor (2020) reveals the diverse perceptions of the relevance of the
French language, in particular among the Ewes of Aflao and the Akans of Ejisu. This research
points out that different ethnic groups consider the learning of the French language differ-
ently and this perception depends on the immediate needs and gains that the language
brings. The Akans of Ejisu do not place a high value on learning French. For this ethnic
group, French has no importance in their daily life. On the other hand, the Ewe of Aflao
close to the border value learning the French language for economic gain. Economic
gains push Ewe parents to encourage their children to learn French.
Multilingualism in the language classroom
Available literature on multilingualism in the language classroom has changed in tone
with researchers recommending a more holistic approach to the multilingual classroom
and the perception of multilingual language learners as having their own unique set of
competencies which may be different from that of a monolingual native speaker
(Cenoz & Gorter, 2011; Illman & Pietilä, 2018; Melo-Pfeifer, 2018). They posit that lear-
ners make full use of their full linguistic repertoire, and this must not be seen in a
negative light by comparing their productions with that of monolingual speakers to
try and find shortcomings. This competence is referred to as multicompetence by
Cook (2016).
These learners possess not just linguistic competence but other forms of competence
including sociolinguistic competence – e.g. knowing what language in their repertoire to
use with whom – and metalinguistic knowledge. To explain further, plurilingual people
possess special competencies in managing language learning and have different percep-
tions about the various languages that they can communicate in as demonstrated by
Coste et al., (2009). There is thus a distinction between the perceived use of the various
languages in their repertoire – one for social purposes and the other two for academic
purposes. This could probably explain why most students in the foreign language class-
room in Ghana seem to consider French just as subject that they need to study in order to
pass a written exam.
According to Causa (2002, p. 46), the foreign language class is inevitably multilingual
because there is language contact and this includes:
‘The language(s) the learners are taught in.
The language(s) the learners understand in.
The language(s) the learners process the information and produce in.’
In other words, the contact is among the languages of teaching, that of meaning or
mutual understanding and the one in which the learner uses to process ideas for oral
or written production. Even though there may be overlaps of this multilingualism, one
can agree to a large extent on this distribution of the different languages in the multilin-
gual foreign language class. In the Ghanaian school system, French is largely taught in
either English, French or both, depending on the level of the learners and, even some-
times, of the teachers. Most often, explanations are given in English.
It has been observed that in the Ghanaian classroom, English appears in both
the written and oral productions of the students rather than the local languages
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 7
(Owu-Ewie et al., 2006). This is evident especially in our second cycle and tertiary insti-
tutions. One of the reasons why this is so may be because the students have developed
metalanguage in English. Another reason could be the availability of teaching and learn-
ing materials that facilitate the transfer from English to French, rather than from the local
languages. For example, it is easier to find French-English/English-French dictionaries
than to find dictionaries from local languages to either French or English. The same for
most language-learning materials which, when they are bilingual, are from English
rather than any local language. This makes it easier for the learners to make lexical and
grammatical transfers from English to French than from the local languages into
French. Additionally, since they learn all the other subjects and concepts in English,
they will use this same strategy when learning French. Learners’ written productions
that were collected for this study highlight these transfers into French showing students’
reliability on English syntax and structure to learn French. This intentional manipulation of
language syntax and structure is due to metalinguistic competence. As explained by
Roehr and Gánem-Gutiérrez (2009, p. 166), and Ellis (2016, p. 145), metalinguistic knowl-
edge renders explicit knowledge of the L2 held by the learners and encompasses the
‘syntactic, morphological, lexical, phonological and pragmatic features of the target
language’.
Metalinguistic knowledge plays a facilitative role in drawing or directing learners’ focus
to various types of morphosyntax to be employed in their productions (oral or written).
The students whose production we are interested in, may thus make use of their reflec-
tions of how language works in both the source and the target language and transfer this
knowledge when learning French. This concept is very important in language learning by
people who are already bilingual or plurilingual. It is described as a learning process in
which learners of a foreign language seem to rely more on the second language than
on their mother tongue when acquiring a third language (Van Esch, 2003).
Our objective in this paper is to identify how through translanguaging, we can deter-
mine the plurilingual competencies identified in the errors of the written productions of
students studying French as a foreign language at the University of Ghana. We also hope
to discuss how these identified competencies can be put to use in the translanguaging
classroom.
Theoretical underpinnings of the study
Translingualism and translanguaging
This work is grounded in both Translingualism and Translanguaging theories. We choose
to use both terms because we see evidence of both terms in the activities of the learners.
Translingualism – which is defined by Canagarajah (2011, p. 401) as ‘the ability of multi-
lingual speakers to shuttle between languages, treating the diverse languages that form
their repertoire as an integrated system’. Translingualism is considered as another form of
multilingualism where speakers have native competence in more than one language
(Canagarajah, 2007) – for example in situations where English serves as a Lingua Franca
(as is the case in most African countries colonised by the British). Indeed, as Canagarajah
(2007, p. 925) puts it, ‘this type of native competence (and insider status) in multiple
languages is a well-known reality in many communities’. There is a distinction made
between competence and proficiency with proficiency being continually developed as
8 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
the learner spends more time and has more experiences with and in the language. The
competence accounts for cross-language contact and the use of hybrid linguistic codes
due to their multilingualism.
Translanguaging on the other hand is defined by García (2009, p. 45) as being ‘multiple
discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual
worlds’. García’s focus is on translanguaging in the classroom, which she describes as
going beyond translation and code switching. According to her, this is because it con-
siders how bilingual students perform bilingually in classrooms where there are varied
multimodal approaches. The interesting thing about translanguaging is that in the multi-
lingual classroom, it can actually serve as a pedagogical strategy with the intentional use
of different languages and manifests when two or more languages are combined in a sys-
tematic way within the same learning activity (Cenoz & Gorter, 2011; Illman & Pietilä, 2018).
This seems very relevant to our research where we observe that the productions of the
students are multilingual but seem to follow a certain logic and are not just haphazard
sentences. In a translanguaging approach, the multiple languages pupils bring into the
classroom are exploited for the benefit of pupils’ learning of both language and
content (Busse et al., 2020; Duarte, 2019; Yuzlu & Dikilitas, 2022). This view is confirmed
by May (2013, p. 79) who describes the term translingual practice as the art of people shut-
tling “in and out” of languages to borrow resources from different communities to com-
municate meaningfully at the contact zone through strategic communicative practices.
Indeed, Lee and Canagarajah (2019, p. 4) explain their preference of the term translin-
gual over other terms such as multicultural and multilingual as these emphasise the sep-
aration between the various cultural or linguistic elements in a person’s repertoire. For
them, the term translingual is more fluid, considering the various languages in a speaker’s
repertoire ‘in synergy’ and ‘generating new forms and meaning in contact’. This is demon-
strated in several ways for example when a language learner thinks of or conceptualises
an assignment in one language but writes it in another language. It is evident from our
classroom observations and the written production exercise that the students use trans-
languaging a lot in the foreign language classroom with an aim to communicate as effec-
tively as possible based on their proficiency level in the target language. In the following
section, we present the profile of our study participants.
Methodology
The study was conducted at the University of Ghana. The population of our study was
made up of first-year Business School students learning Business French (French for
Specific Purposes). These students were aged between 17 and 19 years and numbered
322 in total. The class was divided into two groups: beginners and intermediate with
182 students belonging to the beginners’ class and 140 belonging to the intermediate
class. The beginners’ class comprises students who have never studied French and
those who studied French up to the Junior High School and therefore have low compe-
tence in the language. The intermediate class is made up of students who studied French
as an elective course in the Senior High School and therefore have mastered the basic
notions in French. Out of a population of 322 students, a representative sample of the pro-
ductions of 70 students was selected at random (from both beginners and intermediate
levels) for our analysis. It must be noted that for this kind of research which did not involve
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 9
Table 1. Number of students offering languages at the UGBS.
Year French Chinese Spanish
2020 990 209 08
2021 1860 157 06
2022 2340 194 06
direct communication with any students, there was therefore no need for informed
consent. Respecting confidentiality was also assured because these productions were
chosen from the students’ end-of-semester examination scripts for the 2016/2017 aca-
demic year with the consent of the Lecturer in charge. The examination scripts were
already anonymised as students’ examinations scripts are identified by index numbers
and not by names. This anonymity is maintained throughout the study.
We chose to study their responses to a section of the examination in which they were
asked to present their profession, and the day-to-day activities of the bank in which they
work. We carried out a careful analysis of the written productions of these students of
French, using a prepared grid to enable us to classify the different kinds of errors that
were present and identifying those which pointed to strategies that indicated the use
of their plurilingual competencies, including the use of their various linguistic repertoires.
The data gathered was qualitatively analysed using the linguistic taxonomy described by
Burt et al. (1982) with an emphasis on how the plurilingual students exploit their compe-
tencies in relation to the learning of French.
The University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) is chosen as our point of interest since
the courses offered at the school are non-linguistic disciplines and languages such as
French, Chinese, and Spanish are taught in the first year as required examinable subjects.
As a matter of fact, one cannot graduate without obtaining a pass in the language
courses. These language courses have been part of the curriculum for over 15 years
and students used to have the choice between French and the other languages on
offer (Chinese or Spanish). However, over the years, the interest in French has been so tre-
mendous. For most students, French is the obvious choice because it is a foreign language
most of them would have already been exposed to in primary school but also because of
its perceived economic and political relevance since it is the language used by sub-
regional, regional and international organs as well as the major language of communi-
cation for Ghana’s immediate neighbouring countries. Recent students’ population for
French in UGBS has increased more than two-fold between 2020 and 2022 with
numbers moving from 990 in 2020 to 1860 in 2021 and 2340 in 2020 whereas the
numbers for Chinese and Spanish remain relatively stable with moderate interest in
Chinese and very little interest in Spanish. This can be observed from Table 1.
It must be specified that even though these language courses are housed in the
Business school, instructors are drawn from the Departments of French and Modern
Languages of the University through a private arrangement.
Profile of the study participants
The participants of our study are students of the University of Ghana Business School
offering non-linguistic disciplines. In other words, they offer courses like Accounting,
Administration, Marketing, Banking and Finance. These students learnt their respective
10 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
first languages at home or in a family. In addition to this, most of the students for this
study speak variations of the Akan language, which is the most widely spoken language
in Ghana. However, English is the medium of instruction in school at least from the fourth
year of primary school. The French language on the other hand is a subject taught in the
Business School during first year for two semesters. Some of these students already have a
basic knowledge in French as it is taught as an optional course in the basic schools. Due to
their plurilingual nature and the fact that they operate in multilingual communities, these
students change from one language to the other based on the communication situation
and based on the people they are speaking with. This means they speak their mother
tongue with their parents and others who share this language on various occasions,
other Ghanaian languages in communities and circles where there are spoken; they
speak English with their teachers and classmates and French in class during French
lessons and perhaps outside with friend or in a francophone environment if necessary.
However, they very rarely find themselves in a francophone environment where they
have to communicate in French.
These characteristics demonstrate that the students are plurilingual. Firstly, they live in
a multilingual society with many languages being spoken within their communities. Sec-
ondly, a number of them speak a first language which is different from other languages
within the same territory. Thirdly, they communicate using English, the country’s official
language – which is a second language to most of them – and other languages including
variants of Akan which is a lingua franca in Ghana (the most widely-spoken local
language). Finally, they also speak French which they are learning as a foreign language.
During our observation in class in Business School, Legon, we observed that the written
and oral productions of students, even when they were incorrect, did not seem hapha-
zard. Our attention was drawn to the fact that these beginner learners were exhibiting
plurilingual competencies in the process of learning a third or foreign language. It is
this reason that pushed us to seek out the plurilingual competencies identified in the
errors of productions of students, who engage in translingualism in the French as a
foreign language classroom and seek out how their competencies can be mobilised by
both teachers and learners to promote learning of French at the University of Ghana
Business School?
Findings, analysis and discussion
The analysis presented in this section shows that students with at least two languages
demonstrate communication strategies based on their language repertoire and how
these competencies are employed in learning a third language (French in this context).
This corroborates existing research which suggests that when an individual develops a
degree of competence in two or more languages s/he also develops higher levels of com-
municative sensitivity, creative thinking and metalinguistic awareness which facilitate the
acquisition of language (Jessner, 2008; Oliveira & Anca, 2009).
We obtained the written production of students through an exercise in which they
were asked to write a 200-word essay describing their day-to-day activities as banking
professionals. We were interested in their written production rather than oral production
since written production is usually less spontaneous and learners have more time to craft
what they want to communicate as opposed to oral production. Of the over 300 scripts
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 11
received, we randomly selected 70 from which we selected errors in the written pro-
duction. These errors were categorised and analysed. We made the kind of errors pro-
duced by the students as a main focus as previous studies suggest that errors made by
language learners are actually an indication that learning is taking place (See for
example Kaweera, 2013) who indicate that majority of errors made by second language
learners are developmental errors and overgeneralisation rather than interference
errors and Spada and Lightbown (2019), who indicate that second language learners
end up restructuring based on their first language.
These errors made by students in French reveal the unconscious creative ability of lear-
ners which leads us to agree with the notion of generative grammar with limited sense as
underlined by the creative constructive hypothesis of Dulay and Burt (1974), Dulay et al.,
(1982), and Krashen (1981, 1982). However, during this process, learners can produce
errors that they did not use to make. These errors are usually corrected over time. This
assertion is complemented by Erdoğan (2014), who indicates that errors are important
as they provide feedback on the teaching and learning process. They reiterate the impor-
tance of teachers identifying and describing the errors made from a linguistic point of
view but also from a psychological point of view. This means understanding not only
the what but also the why. It is only then that correction can be effective and help the
learners’ progress or improve. We also hoped to find evidence of students leveraging
their competencies in Ghanaian languages and English in learning French. However,
the data we gathered indicates reliance mainly on the English language and little evi-
dence of overt reliance on the Ghanaian languages in their repertoire. This could be
due to similarities between English and French languages in terms of sentence structure,
lexical similarities, alphabets, etc. (De Korchagina, 2019).
With a critical study of the students’ written productions, we came across a consider-
able number of expressions which were largely influenced by the complexity of their plur-
ilingual competencies, and which were manifested through translanguaging. These
expressions were identified and classified according to various error types and analysed.
The analysis of their written corpus enabled us to follow in context how plurilingual lear-
ners use previous knowledge and experience in their previously acquired languages to
communicate in their target language. Below are some of the productions of the learners
and the conclusions we can draw about their plurilingual competencies. It is worth noting
that during the translanguaging of the students in their written productions, four
different plurilingual competencies were identified. These include linguistic competen-
cies, sociolinguistic competencies, communicative competencies, and metalinguistic
competencies.
Linguistic competencies
Burt et al.’s (1982) description of linguistic taxonomies in terms of the difference between
the learner’s utterance and the reconstructed version were used to classify the identified
errors based on the linguistic components. These include orthographical errors, morpho-
logical errors and lexical, syntactic errors, interlinguistic errors and errors related to codes-
witching (see Table 2).
Students’ strategies in their written productions reveal their ability to exploit their
language repertoire in their written exercise, mainly making use of the structure of the
12 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
Table 2. Types of errors produced by students.
Linguistic components of errors
Examples of productions
Orthographical errors 1. *Les gens viennent depositer et retirer leurs argents.
(People come to deposit and withdraw their money)
Morphological and lexical errors 2. *Les gens qui ont withdrawn de l’argent.
3. *Aussi je donne accounts à la directrice.
4. *La banque est un lieu ou les gens laissent leurs valuables.
5. *Je dois vérifier que les choses sont en course.
6. *Voilà, cet homme prend et donne l’argent; il s’appelle cashier.
7. *Je m’appelle Jean Moreno, votre « host » pour aujourd’hui.
8. *La caissière écrit dans un cahier appele « ledger ».
Syntactic errors 9. *Il fait securité travail dans la banque.
10. *De 8 h dans le matin à 5 heures dans le soir.
11. *Nous avons personelle qui parler avec les customèrs.
12. *J’ai petits « meetings » ici et là.
Interlinguistic errors 13. *Je fais sure les comptes à balancé.
(I make sure the accounts are balanced)
14. *Pour mon jour à jour activités, je généralement directe l’argent de cette banque.
(For my day to day activities, I generally manage this bank’s money)
Codeswitching 15. *Nous vendons aussi « bonds » et « treasury bills ».
16. *Les personnes restent pour « balancing of accounts ».
17. *Nos customers achètent « shares ».
English language. From the few examples in Table 2 above, there is an attempt by stu-
dents to combine French and English words in the same order, assuming these carry
out the same meaning irrespective of the differences in structure. Despite the errors, it
is clear that the students make use of translanguaging as a strategy. They are intentional
in their writing to show an intention to communicate and that their errors are not just
haphazard. Usually, since their teachers of French also speak English, they understand
what message the students are trying to convey.
We identify several manifestations of translanguaging in these productions which reveal
varied forms of linguistic competence. Firstly, we have students applying somemorphologi-
cal rules to English words to turn them into French words as demonstrated in example 1 on
the table. The ‘er’ is added to the English verb deposit to make it an ER verb in French. Even
though the word depositer in that sentence reveals a spelling error and does not exist in
French, it displays competence resulting from the influence of grammatical rules in the
usage of French verbs. In example 2, the writer tries to respect the tense structure
(present perfect) in French and this is demonstrated with the conjugated form of the auxili-
ary ‘avoir’ in French, and the past participle of ‘withdraw’ in English (*Les gens qui ont with-
drawn de l’argent). These two examples (1 and 2) clearly indicate not only students’ ability
to use the linguistic repertoires but also expose the intriguing creativity in the manner the
learners leverage these plurilingual competencies on a new language they are learning. We
also find cases of transliteration, where the students do a literal syntactic translation from
English to French (examples 8–11). We see that the sentence order is just as in English
even though the French may not write in that way as in examples 9 and 10.
Sociolinguistic competencies
Sociolinguistic competencies have also been displayed in the students’ productions as one
of the plurilingual competencies in French as a foreign language class. From examples 12–
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 13
17 in Table 1 above, it is obvious that the learners are aware that they are in a French
language class and that their productions must be in French. However, since they cannot
readily find the French term to use or because they have a lexical deficit, they introduce
an English term and place it in inverted commas to differentiate it from the rest of the sen-
tence, which is in French as in *La caissière écrit dans un cahier appele « ledger ». This intro-
duction of English words in the inverted commas or the blended use of English and French
in their written productions suggests learners’ attempt to resort to code-switching as part of
their sociolinguistic competence strategies. It is a strategy learners deploy in communicat-
ing with others knowing very well this might not conform to the general norms and other
social situations that the language used presents.
Markee (2015) points out that sociolinguistic competence is mediated action by a con-
stellation of factors, including language learners’ histories, their knowledge of variable L2
forms and their meaningful potential, and the forms of support made available to them in
interaction. This suggests that this action emerges in a real and concrete communication.
Sociolinguistic competence can also be a result of the intra-language variation as well as
inter-language factor. In their productions, the English language is found to have a signifi-
cant relationship with the sociolinguistic competence of our learners. For instance, ‘*Il fait
securité travail dans la banque’, can be traced to the social norm usage in English where
we say ‘security work’ where ‘security’ precedes ‘work’ contrary to the reverse in French,
where “le travail de sécurité”. These errors reveal to us that in learning French, the stu-
dents draw a lot on the syntax and vocabulary of English and tend to also overgeneralise
certain rules. For situations like this, it is important that the French language teacher, who
also understands English guides learners to find vocabulary specific to the domain and
the equivalence in the source and target languages.
Communicative competencies
The analysis of the productions indicates that communicative competencies were
deployed by the learners. These are illustrated in the following examples:
*Voilà, cet homme prend et donne l’argent; il s’appelle cashier.
9. *Il fait securité travail dans la banque.
10. *De 8 h dans le matin à 5 heures dans le soir.
11. *Nous avons personelle qui parler avec les customèrs.
In these examples, learners’ message can be deduced despite the morphosyntactic and
lexical deficits in their productions. Though the appropriate vocabulary and expressions
were not used, one can infer understanding from these various examples especially if
the teacher has the same language repertoire – in this case, English as a source language.
These productions seemed highly motivated by interlinguistic interference from the
English language. When we consider example 10, it is clear that the writer reasoned in
English and literally translated ‘from 8 in the morning to 5 in the evening’ into French,
without realising the difference in syntactic structure. This comes to confirm that learners
who have two or three languages before learning a third one and in this case French as a
foreign language usually explore various plurilingual competencies in their oral and
14 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
written productions. This is also demonstrated by the students who even chose to insert
English words but put them in inverted commas (Examples 12, 15, 16 and 17):
12. *J’ai petits « meetings » ici et là.
15. *Nous vendons aussi « bonds » et « treasury bills ».
16. *Les personnes restent pour « balancing of accounts ».
17. *Nos customers achètent « shares ».
This act seems to suggest that the students are aware that the words they are using are
borrowed from English and are not normally the same words that are used in French.
However, because of their desire to communicate meaningfully, they use the inverted
commas so that the teacher is aware that it is not just a ‘mistake’ but an intention to com-
municate. They believe that the teacher will understand what they are trying to commu-
nicate because they have a shared code which is English, but more importantly,
specialised vocabulary used in the business sector.
Metalinguistic competencies
Metalanguage as stated earlier, refers to how a learner mostly uses his/her general under-
standing of one language to describe another language. As Ortega and Piccardo (2018)
observe, recourse to alternate forms in school situations is also often observed, and
switching to another language in the classroom can indicate appeals for help, indications
of a learning difficulty, or strategic use of language resources to maintain communication
at all costs. In this process, learners’ combination or mixture of languages may be con-
sidered as errors and perhaps penalised by teachers who might not have knowledge
on plurilingual pedagogy. However, Tagliante (2001) posits that errors indicate that the
learner is using his or her interlanguage and that the system is being put in place.
They represent transitory linguistic competencies which correspond, at a point in time,
to a state between ‘incorrect’ statements and right expression. To ascertain the role
and importance of metalanguage in advancing learners’ L2 or L3 understanding, a
careful study was done on their written corpus with reference to Swain et al.’s ‘Langua-
ging types framework’ (2009) which consists of language units (LU). These include infer-
ence-integration, inference-elaboration and inference-hypothesis formation. Learners use
inference-integration, a cross-reference of information of previous knowledge to think
about and understand the structure of the target language. This is evident in example
1 (Les gens viennent depositer et retirer leurs argents) as the learner tried to transform or
convert ‘deposit’ from English to fit into the conjugation rule that says that when two
verbs follow each other, the first one is conjugated and the other is kept in infinitive
form. This integration is again illustrated in example 17 where ‘customèrs’ was also
framed as a French word in the sentence since it was not placed in any inverted
commas but had the accent grave placed on it to give the [ɛ]̃ sound. This demonstrates
that learners carry out cognitive operations during translanguaging and that even
though their productions may contain errors, they have grasped certain aspects of the
grammar and vocabulary usage of the French language – though imperfectly and they
are trying to fit this into their existing repertoire the best way that they know how.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 15
Harnessing plurilingual competencies in the foreign language classroom
All these plurilingual competencies used by learners in their various productions demon-
strate that students draw on their other languages, especially English to help them demon-
strate their knowledge and competence in French, for example when they engage in
francisation of English words or when they borrow words directly from English into their
French productions. These strategies can be explored in the teaching and learning of a
new or foreign language as in the study of French in Ghana. A foreign language cannot
be learnt in a vacuum, the learner will rely on the concepts already acquired in the
languages he or she already knows in learning the new language and this is demonstrated
through the translanguaging activities in the productions of the students. Teachers can
therefore harness these competencies to promote foreign language learning, since one
learns from the known to the unknown. For instance, the student who produced the
extract in example 10 can be guided to discover the morphosyntactic structure in French
which may clearly not be the same as in English. Knowing the linguistic repertoire of the
learners will help the teacher to better understand and anticipate the strategies employed
by the learners when they are faced with difficulties in their foreign language learning.
Providing the learners with the appropriate rules of speaking and writing and raise
their sociolinguistics awareness thus getting to learn the socio-cultural differences
across languages can be one of the strategies in the plurilingual classroom learning.
Putting learners into groups with materials presenting various social real-life situations
with teacher assistance can help learners get involved in interactions. This will provide
opportunity for autocorrection or peer learning where some of these errors can amend.
By acknowledging and encouraging plurilingualism in the language classroom, teachers
will guide learners in the right direction in the process of learning the target language in a
relevant way given attention to its various components.
We agree with Fielding (2016) and Galante et al. (2020) who observed that learners
using their prior knowledge of language or dialects in plurilingual classroom help make
them feel more confident and motivated in their learning process. When the exploration
of their prior languages is accepted, the learners feel bold in participating in learning. We
must indicate that in the written productions of the students, there was no evidence, on
the morphosyntactic and lexical levels, of interference from the local languages but the
data we collected seemed to confirm the psychotypology theory of students relying on
one ‘external’ language to learn another language. However, we do think that there
may be other reasons for this apparent absence of the L1 from their productions. The
first reason may be the fact that the production was written rather than oral. It is our
observation that students treat writing as ‘serious stuff’ and whereas they may more
freely express themselves orally; there is much more restraint when writing as it is con-
sidered ‘official’. Secondly, the nature of the exercise in a business French class is such
that the students have to deal with specialised or technical jargon and concepts, for
which they may not have acquired the linguistic equivalence in their local languages.
Limitations of the study
This study focused only on the written productions of students offering courses in non-
linguistic disciplines. However, we believe that comparing their written production with
16 E. K. KAIZA AND S. CHACHU
their oral production could have provided some insights into whether the observations
made concerning their translingualism could be generalised across modes of production
or whether there were differences based on their oral or written communication. This
comparative perspective could be explored in future research.
Conclusion
This study set out to explore translanguaging in the written production of students in the
French as a foreign language classroom in the University of Ghana. Foreign language
learning is indeed a complex process, and it is not always easy to distinguish among
the various constituting factors. Our first observation on two Ghanaian learners in
Benin indicates that they were able to make connections between French and
Akwapim twi in spite of the structural and lexical differences. A detailed study was con-
ducted on the written productions of students of French at the Business to understand
the mechanisms that come into play during the learning of a new language by a plurilin-
gual learner. It is evident from the data collected and analysed that plurilingual learners of
French as a Foreign Language have certain competencies that can be harnessed in the
classroom to facilitate teaching and learning. These include linguistic competencies,
sociolinguistic competencies, communicative and metalinguistic competencies. These
competencies seem to have been based primarily on only their competencies in the
English language for which they have a developed metalanguage, rather than on the
local languages that they speak but which are hardly written and read. This could be
because they cognitively perceive English as a « classroom » language and therefore
the most suitable language to use when learning any subject or writing examination.
We are of the view that these competencies serve as a premise through which French
language learning can be promoted among the learners if they are well exploited.
We therefore propose that teachers accept the plurilingualism in their classroom
language teaching. The language teachers can make full use of the noticing hypothesis
includes output and input enhancement with an emphasis being placed on form – for
example, underlining or bolding certain words or expressions that could indicate a depen-
dency on previously-acquired language or culture. This is because plurilingual pedagogy
can accept and promote partial competencies. Acceptance of plurilingual competencies
in class gives more confidence to learners who later come to terms with the appropriate
usage of the target language. Teachers can encourage learners to think about expressions
in English or their L1 and make comparison with French, the target language. Seeing plur-
ilingual competencies as a help and not an obstacle in classroom, teachers can take
advantage of these to help bring the learner to understand and appreciate the similarities
that exist in their previous languages and the target language and in this case French. We
therefore tend to agree with De Jong and Freeman (2010) that teachers can also teach
students to transfer linguistic knowledge from one language to another and that trans-
languaging in the multilingual classroom should be encouraged especially as this
research and others such as that of Yevudey (2014, p. 260), confirm the fact that ‘trans-
languaging in the classroom provides a “fertile” platform to harness learners’ linguistic
repertoires flexibly to achieve and maximize learning and teaching goals’. Translanguing
therefore presents opportunities, not just for the language teacher but also for the
language learners and if these are fully exploited, there is likely to be faster and easier
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTILINGUALISM 17
mastery of the target language. Indeed, the insights from this study highlight the value
and need to continue exploring the creative ways in which plurilingual students and tea-
chers can benefit from the myriad of resources they have as individuals and members of
communities.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
ORCID
Sewoenam Chachu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1236-5678
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