Plurilingual and intercultural competences two elements of a ......2 Overview 1.Foreign Language...
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Plurilingual and intercultural competences – two elements of a single European language policy Michael Byram University of Durham, England. [email protected]
Transcript of Plurilingual and intercultural competences two elements of a ......2 Overview 1.Foreign Language...
Plurilingual and intercultural competences–
two elements of a single Europeanlanguage policy
Michael ByramUniversity of Durham, England.
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Overview
1. Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) associal/political activity
2. European FLT policy and its meaning
3. FLT = plurilingual and interculturalcompetence
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1. FLT as socio-political action
Education policy = ‘what we want ourchildren to be and become’
1. effective ‘human capital’
2. good (active/contented) citizens of the(=our) state
[3. critical/independent lifelong learners]
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1. FLT as socio-political action
Contribution of FLT:1 Human capital = use FL for trade
2. citizenship = ‘international’ citizens with‘national’ identity e.g. ‘Japanese withEnglish abilities’
[3. critical… learners = ‘see ourselves asothers see us’]
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2. European FLT policy and its meaning
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2. European FLT policy and its meaning
European = supra-national (but same structure) –
‘White Paper’ (1995)1. Human capital
“Proficiency in several (…) languages hasbecome a precondition if citizens of theEuropean Union are to benefit from theoccupational and personal opportunities opento them in the border-free single market.
This language proficiency must be backed upby the ability to adapt to working and livingenvironments characterised by differentcultures.”European Commission 1995, Teaching and Learning. Towards the Learning Society. Bruxelles: European Commission.
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2. European FLT policy and its meaning
2. ‘Good citizens’“Languages are also the key to knowingother people. Proficiency in languageshelps to build up the feeling of beingEuropean with all its cultural wealth anddiversity and of understanding betweenthe citizens of Europe.”
[3. Critical …learners – no reference!]
European Commission 1995, Teaching and Learning. Towards the Learning Society. Bruxelles: European Commission.
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2. European FLT policy and its meaning
• Language proficiency (‘several languages’/ ‘MT + 2’)
AND• Cultural competence – ‘living and working
together’ / White Paper on ‘interculturaldialogue’ (www.coe.int)
- Described in Common EuropeanFramework of Reference for Languages
“plurilingual and intercultural competence”
Council of Europe 2001, Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
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3. FLT = plurilingual and intercultural
competence
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3. FLT = plurilingual and interculturalcompetence
Plurilingualism does not keep languages and cultures in
strictly separated mental compartments, butrather builds up a communicative competenceto which all knowledge and experience oflanguage contributes and in which languagesinterrelate and interact. In different situations,
a person can call flexibly upon different partsof this competence to achieve effectivecommunication with a particular interlocutor.”(CEFR p.4)
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3. FLT = plurilingual and interculturalcompetence
in a person’s cultural competence, the variouscultures (national, regional, social) to which thatperson has gained access do not simply co-existside by side;they are compared, contrasted and activelyinteract to produce an enriched, integratedpluricultural (= intercultural) competence, ofwhich plurilingual competence is onecomponent, again interacting with othercomponents. (CEFR: p.6)
Intercultural competence > plurilingualcompetence
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3. FLT = plurilingual and interculturalcompetence
Describing intercultural competence (CEFR andByram 1997):
Attitudes (savoir être): curiosity and openness,readiness to suspend disbelief about othercultures and belief about one’s own
Knowledge (savoirs): of social groups and theirproducts and practices in one’s own and in one’sinterlocutor’s country, and of the generalprocesses of societal and individual interaction
Skills of interpreting and relating (savoircomprendre): ability to interpret a document orevent from another culture, to explain it andrelate it to documents or events from one’s own
Byram, M. 1997, Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters
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3. FLT = plurilingual and interculturalcompetence
• Skills of discovery and interaction (savoirapprendre/faire): ability to acquire newknowledge of a culture and cultural practicesand the ability to operate knowledge, attitudesand skills under the constraints of real-timecommunication and interaction
AND – NOT IN CEFR:• Critical cultural awareness (savoir s'engager):
an ability to evaluate, critically and on the basisof explicit criteria, perspectives, practices andproducts in one’s own and other cultures andcountries
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3. FLT = plurilingual and interculturalcompetence
Describing communicative language competences(CEFR):
Linguistic competences:lexical, grammatical, semantic, phonological,orthographic, orthoepic
Sociolinguistic competences:markers of social relations, politenessconventions, register differences, dialect andaccent
Pragmatic competences:discourse (inc. text design), functional(schemata)
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ConclusionEuropean perspective:
Replace ‘communication’ (= exchanginginformation / “bridging information gap”
with ‘interaction /dialogue’ (= living and workingtogether / tolerance and understanding)
= teaching plurilingual and interculturalcompetences
East Asian /Japanese perspective ……????
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Appendix – policy forSecond Language Teaching
• New development focused not only onSecond Language Learners but includingthem as ‘vulnerable learners’
• Also on all language learners and theirlanguages in schools : ‘mother tongue’ ;‘second language’ ; ‘foreign language’ ;‘minority language’ etc etc
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Anna
and
Mustafa
and all
their
languages
With acknowledgement to Prof Hans-Jürgen Krumm
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Implications of plurilingualism
• Anna and Mustafa: no ‘mother tongue’, no‘foreign language’ – only ‘dominantlanguage’ for different contexts/domains
• Language education should be ‘holistic’– to respond to needs of existing plurilingual
pupils
– to create new (potential for) plurilingualism inmonolingual pupils i.e. NOT just one foreignlanguage
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Languages in / for education
LANGUAGES OF EDUCATION ANDVARIETIES REPRESENTED IN THE
SCHOOL(as elements of the curriculum and/or part of
pupils' repertoire)
Regional, minority and migrantlanguages and varieties
(when they are not the languageof schooling but recognised within
or outside the curriculum).
MAIN LANGUAGE(S) OFSCHOOLING/ INSTRUCTION(official, national or regional or
minority, if they are official media ofinstruction)
Foreign languages and varietiestaught in school
(which may become partial or secondlanguages of schooling, in the case ofbilingual teaching, partial immersion)
Language as a subject.linguistic competence,
metalinguistic knowledge,literary/cultural knowledge and
appreciation
Language across the curriculum(for teaching other subjects)
Diverse types of text and “rhetoricalstyles” of various subjects
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Languages in /for education
• Not all languages (present) in school arelanguages for schooling/instruction
• Languages in school: different categories,different status, but change is possible
• Language(s) for schooling/instruction: keystoneof all languages of school: achieving school’sobjectives and pupils’ successes.
• Concern: The relationship between mainlanguage(s) of school/instruction and languagesof pupils
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The needs of ‘vulnerable learners’ forwhom language of instruction is L2/FL
Cognitive-Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)Basic interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) (Cummins)
• The language of school and of science (CALP) demandsthe performance of other speech acts and discoursefunctions than in communicating about common topics(BICS). Transition from everyday language use to academiclanguage use requires precision, explicitness, rationalityand argumentative structures
• (For immigrant children) Conversational fluency is oftenacquired to a functional level within about two years of initialexposure to the second language whereas at least fiveyears is usually required to catch up to native speakers inacademic aspects of the second language(Cummins)
Cummins, J 2000, BICS and CALP. In M. Byram (ed) Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning. London: Routledge.
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‘Language across the Curriculum’ forAnna and Mustafa AND monolinguals
Example from Chemistry: Developing the notion of Reaction• Starting with everyday concepts/ understandings“reaction” = “emotion”, “response”
• Setting up experimental conditions for ownobservations and recordings
• Summarising + interpreting the data,• Formulating possible rules or regularities• Developing and testing own hypotheses• Defining REACTION in subject-specific terms
