The joy of teaching languages and through languages
Le joie d'enseigner les langues et en langues
A tribute to Michèle Valentin
Hommage à Michèle Valentin
Published on Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Abstract
This special issue of Les Langues Modernes pays tribute to Michèle Valentin by celebrating the joy of teaching languages and through languages. At a time when teaching is often associated with difficulty, the aim is to highlight its positive dimension as a source of passion, creativity and fulfilment. Language teaching—whether of widely spoken, lesser-taught or regional languages—elicits deep emotions and often involves strong personal commitment. Teaching throughlanguages (CLIL/EMILE, DNL, ETLV…) likewise fosters creativity and wonder through intercultural and disciplinary mediation. Contributions may explore positive emotions in relation to learning, teacher-student relationships, peer collaboration or pedagogical innovation. The issue will welcome both research articles and practice-based accounts, from early childhood to higher education.
Announcement
Argument
This special issue pays tribute to Michèle Valentin, former president of the APLV, whose dedication to language education, to language teachers and to their students, has left a lasting mark on the educational community. Her unwavering commitment and resolutely optimistic outlook embodied the very essence of the joy of teaching—an experience this volume aims in turn to celebrate and highlight. (See her earlier special issue Enseigner les langues: Unequestion de confiance.)
At a time when teaching is often depicted through the lens of difficulties, workload overload and vocational crises, dedicating a special issue to the joy of teaching languages and through languages constitutes a deliberate and engaged stance. It reminds us that this profession, though demanding and complex, is also a source of fulfilment, passion and creativity.
Teaching languages encompasses the transmission of linguistic, cultural and intercultural competences associated with foreign and regional languages. It goes beyond the mere acquisition of knowledge, involving the development of cognitive, relational and emotional competences. This field spans a wide linguistic spectrum, from widely taught languages such as English, Spanish or German, to less widely disseminated languages such as Chinese, Arabic, Russian or Portuguese, as well as regional languages including Basque, Breton, Catalan, Corsican, Occitan, Tahitian (reo tahiti) and various Creole languages. For many teachers, commitment to these languages entails a strong sense of militancy, linked to the defense and transmission of fragile linguistic heritages.
Teaching through languages refers to pedagogical approaches where the foreign or second language is no longer solely the object of teaching, but becomes the medium of instruction for other disciplines. Relevant contexts include preparatory classes, European and international sections (Abibac, Bachibac, Esabac and others), CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) — known in French as EMILE (Enseignement d’une Matière Intégrée à une Langue Étrangère) —, early CLIL initiatives in kindergarten, and ETLV (Enseignement Technologique en Langue Vivante). In such settings, disciplinary content — whether history, science, geography or vocational training — is taught through the foreign language. These contexts multiply opportunities for intercultural encounters, creative exchanges and emotionally powerful experiences.
All these situations — whether teaching languages or teaching through languages — give rise to a wide range of emotions belonging to the family of joy. Following Plutchik (1980), emotions may vary in intensity and combine to create complex feelings. Joy may appear in milder forms such as contentment, satisfaction or pleasure, but also in more intense states such as ecstasy or euphoria. Combined with other emotions, joy may give rise to composite feelings such as wonder, born from the interplay of joy, surprise and admiration (Lemarchand-Chauvin, 2025).
As Cosnier (1994) has shown, in professional life, micro-emotions are more frequent than major emotional outbursts, yet they play a central role in shaping teachers’ affective experience. In the field of language education, emotions from the joy family arise often. Lemarchand-Chauvin (2021) has demonstrated that they emerge when teachers perceive strong student engagement, witness their success, feel they have delivered a good lesson, or experience moments of complicity and rapport with learners. Teachers also report the deep joy of teaching a language-culture they cherish and advocate for, sometimes in challenging conditions when class sizes are small or courses threatened. Such positive emotions sustain teachers’ motivation and reinforce their sense of professional efficacy (Fredrickson, 2001; MacIntyre & Gregersen, 2012; Lemarchand-Chauvin & Tardieu, 2018; Lemarchand-Chauvin, 2021, 2023, 2025).
To speak of the joy of teaching languages and through languages is thus to assert that the profession cannot be reduced to today’s difficulties. It is to bring to light the luminous moments that punctuate teachers’ careers, whether at the beginning or later stages, and to stress that these positive emotions are central to their wellbeing and professional commitment.
This special issue seeks to honor this luminous dimension of teaching, from early childhood to higher education. It will welcome both research articles and practice-based accounts or analyses. Contributions may explore the joy experienced in relationships with students, in collaboration with peers, or in teachers’ personal reflections on their professional journeys, successes, risks taken, and innovations trialed. They may also examine the role of joy in the teaching of less widely taught or regional languages, or in content-and-language integrated contexts such as CLIL, EMILE or ETLV, analyzing how these settings foster creativity, wonder and professional satisfaction. Other contributions may investigate the impact of positive emotions on teachers’ sense of efficacy, motivation, or collective dynamics within teaching teams.
Instructions for applicants
- Submission deadline for proposals: 30 September 2025
- Notification to authors: 15 October 2025
- Submission of full papers to the editor-in-chief: 20 December 2025
- Publication: June 2026
Proposals (maximum 3,000 characters including spaces and references, plus three keywords) should be sent to:
Marie-Claire Lemarchand-Chauvin (marie-claire.lemarchand-chauvin@univ-lorraine.fr)
and to: redaction.languesmodernes@gmail.com
Articles may be written in the language of your choice, provided they are accompanied by a French version, which will be made available via QR code.
Selection process
Peer review by the editorial board of Les Langues Modernes and return of final versions after revisions: 30 March 2026
Subjects
- Education (Main category)
- Mind and language > Language > Linguistics
- Mind and language > Education > Educational sciences
Date(s)
- Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- joie, enseignement des langues, enseignement en langues, émotions
Contact(s)
- Marie-Claire Lemarchand-Chauvin
courriel : marie-claire [dot] lemarchand-chauvin [at] univ-lorraine [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Marie-Claire Lemarchand-Chauvin
courriel : marie-claire [dot] lemarchand-chauvin [at] univ-lorraine [dot] fr
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« The joy of teaching languages and through languages », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Tuesday, September 16, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/14oet
