Grasping French vouloir-dire by Polish-speaking students: what difficulties and what facilities?

The objective of this article is to analyze the question of French vouloir-dire from the perspective of second language acquisition. We start from the principle that each language has its own “genius” (Yaguello 1988) and that mastering a language means above all letting oneself be tempted by this genius. In this perspective, we focus on the study of the facilities and difficulties experienced by Polishspeaking students learning French as a foreign language. By presenting the results of an empirical study carried out in two universities in Poland, we show that it is possible to enumerate intuitive grammatical constructions and those whose logic remains difficult for both intuition and analytical thinking throughout the process of learning French. The study also discovers that there is a need to redefine the notion of vouloir-dire while taking into consideration language contacts and the linguistic biography of speakers.

The objective of this article is to analyze the question of French vouloir-dire from the perspective of second language acquisition. We start from the principle that each language has its own “genius” (Yaguello 1988) and that mastering a language means above all letting oneself be tempted by this genius. In this perspective, we focus on the study of the facilities and difficulties experienced by Polishspeaking students learning French as a foreign language. By presenting the results of an empirical study carried out in two universities in Poland, we show that it is possible to enumerate intuitive grammatical constructions and those whose logic remains difficult for both intuition and analytical thinking throughout the process of learning French. The study also discovers that there is a need to redefine the notion of vouloir-dire while taking into consideration language contacts and the linguistic biography of speakers.