PASSPORT TO PROFICIENCY: PLANNING FRANCOPHONE AND ROMANIAN JOURNEYS THROUGH PROJECT-BASED LANGUAGE LEARNING IN VETERINARY HIGHER EDUCATION

1 July 2026


Corina Georgeta Barna - University of Life Sciences “King Mihai I” from Timișoara, Romania https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8599-5411
Abstract

This article presents a classroom-based, corpus-informed case study of project-based language learning in veterinary higher education. It examines a mobility-oriented task in which 120 students produced 27 group travel projects in French or Romanian. The main corpus comprises seven French-language projects by second-year Veterinary Medicine students; the comparative corpus comprises twenty Romanian-as-a-second-language projects by first-year international students in French-medium and English-medium programmes. All artefacts were analysed through manual qualitative coding of task completion, functional vocabulary, budgeting language, intercultural content, professional relevance, multimodal organisation, learner-language features and possible digital mediation. The projects elicited meaningful language for planning, comparison and justification, while also revealing multilingual transfer, hybrid formulations and uneven digital support. Because the cohorts differed in year of study, target language and learning context, the comparison does not establish causal effectiveness or equivalence between groups. Instead, it shows how a shared project architecture can be adapted to distinct language-learning environments and how systematically archived learner artefacts can inform language scaffolding, assessment and curriculum development in technical higher education.

Keywords
French as a foreign language; French for specific purposes; Intercultural competence; Learner corpus; Project-based learning; Romanian as a second language.
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How to cite this article
Barna, C. G. (2026). Passport to proficiency: Planning francophone and Romanian journeys through project-based language learning in veterinary higher education. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education – JoLIE, 19(1), 7–28. https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2026.19.1.1