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Extracto de:
Plurilingual and pluricultural awareness in language teacher education
Edited by Mercè Bernaus
(project coordinator), Ana Isabel Andrade, Martine Kervran, Anna Murkowskaand
Fernando Trujillo Sáez
European Centre for Modern Languages Council of Europe Publishing
1.
Plurilingualism and pluriculturalism
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages helps us to
understand the sense of these terms. It states that “plurilingual and
pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use languages for the
purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where
a person, viewed as a social agent, has proficiency, of varying degrees, in
several languages and experience of several cultures” (Council of Europe, 2001:
168). And also: “Plurilingualism differs
from multilingualism, which is the knowledge of a number of languages, or the
coexistence of different languages in a given society …. Beyond this, the
plurilingual approach emphasises the fact that as an individual person’s
experience of language in its cultural contexts expands, from the language of
the home to that of society at large and then to the languages of other peoples
…, he or she does not keep these languages and cultures in strictly separated
mental compartments, but rather builds up a communicative competence to which
all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which languages
interrelate and interact”
Plurilingualism and pluriculturalism is a personal feature which is put
into action in a communicative situation. It is not a new competence, as we all
use different “registers” of the same language in different situations just as
we use different cultural repertoires in different situations. The new idea is
the development of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism as the result of a
process of language learning.
“Interculturality” is a term used to describe, firstly, the context of a
communicative situation, in which the people involved use all their capacities
to interact with each other, and, secondly, a set of communicative strategies
for that interaction. It is, then, definitely situational in comparison to the
“pluri-” and “multi-” concepts, which are personal and societal respectively
2. Plurilingualism and pluriculturalism in the context of teacher training
As we mentioned earlier, plurilingual and pluricultural competence is
not achieved by overlapping or juxtaposing different competences; rather it
constitutes a global and complex competence of which the speaker can avail
himself or herself in situations characterised by plurality (Council of Europe,
2001). And this complexity would seem to depend on four main dimensions:
·
the socio-affective dimension, which includes a certain predisposition,
motivation and readiness with regard to dialogue with the other and in which
the individual is willing at any time to rebuild his or her identity;
·
the dimension of linguistic and communicative registers, which includes
the ability to exploit a whole range of experience and knowledge and in which
different languages and cultures play different roles;
·
the dimension of learning strategies, which is expressed in the ability
to use different ways of processing spoken language in a procedure aimed at
resolving communication problems (situations of access to meaning or spoken
and/or written output, with or without collaboration);
·
the dimension of interaction management, which takes place in situations
of language contact in which speakers update different codes to manage the
communication output they produce in a conversation created by situations
characterised by linguistic and cultural plurality
Social and personal dimension
The aim here is to perceive the language teacher (who teaches the mother
tongue, the language of the school or foreign languages) as an individual who
has social responsibilities, including responsibilities towards oneself as a
plurilingual and intercultural speaker, and towards others. Amongst other
things, this would include:
·
observing the linguistic and cultural diversity of contexts and
individuals;
·
observing how educators can influence the attitudes of learners towards
languages, those who speak them and their culture, as well as their motivation
and curiosity with regard to languages;
·
recognising the linguistic and cultural complexity of individual and
collective identities;
·
recognising linguistic and cultural diversity as a positive
characteristic of groups and societies;
·
enhancing the role of languages and cultures in building societies that
are fairer, more supportive and more democratic;
·
by considering language and culture as a means of human development
(aimed at social inclusion and as preparation for exercising their
citizenship);
·
recognising the political character of the measures adopted with regard
to languages and cultures;
·
showing a critical mind towards measures of linguistic and cultural
policy;
·
combating exclusion and linguistic and cultural discrimination while
embracing the opportunities of a life together in society;
·
having a global vision of the exercise of one’s profession
(professionalism) as consisting of different dimensions;
·
knowing oneself as a language educator by reflecting on one’s own
abilities, knowledge, images and registers with regard to language
communication and didactics;
·
thinking about one’s teaching experiences (academic and professional
curriculum);
·
being capable of setting up self-training projects that take account of
linguistic and cultural diversity;
·
having confidence in one’s professional ability to develop educational
approaches in which taking account of linguistic and cultural diversity is a reality.
Professional dimension
·
being aware of the need for a new linguistic and cultural education
capable of promoting plurilingualism and pluriculturalism;
·
knowing and defending the reasons for an education favourable to the
development of plurilingual and pluricultural competence;
·
reflecting on the new roles and functions of the language teacher as
educator;
·
finding and communicating purposes in the pursuit of a new linguistic
and cultural education;
·
being aware of the challenges of language education policies; adopting a
position, in different contexts, with
regard to measures of language policy;
·
enhancing the school as a focal point of social and cultural
development, with
·
repercussions on the pupils’ life projects;
·
assisting in developing interactions between the various agents of
education;
·
observing, analysing and making use of – in didactic terms – the
diversity that exists in one’s teaching environment (individual and collective
repertories);
·
creating, experimenting with and evaluating educational projects
ultimately aimed at developing plurilingual and pluricultural skills;
·
creating synergetic effects between the teaching of different languages
and
·
cultures by co-operating with the teachers of other languages and other
subjects;
·
helping learners to set up individual projects for linguistic and
communicative development
Reconciling CLIL with
plurilingualism and pluriculturalism
This can be done by using an L2 to teach any subject in the curriculum
and by offering the pupils whose L1 is a minority language the opportunity to use
it for specific activities. At the same time, those pupils may contribute to
the enrichment of any topic presented in the subject in question, by comparing
the way in which the same topic is viewed in his or her country of origin.
Considering the key competences for lifelong learning, a
competence-based approach with a focus on tasks should be adopted. Focus on
task accommodates a focus on content – that is, text or input – which in turn
accommodates a plurilingual approach focusing on languages and their speakers –
that is, the learners.
It is likely that awareness of the potential of plurilingualism on the
part of the CLIL teacher will lead to the systematic integration of a
language-sensitive approach to content. Given that CLIL proposes that culture
permeates its conceptual framework, one simply needs to recognise the diversity
and dynamism that fundamentally characterise “culture” since there is no
culture of one. Similarly, if learners’ linguistic repertoires are actively
promoted in the classroom, the coexistence of languages, as well as the
linguistic and cultural influences, will emerge naturally. Hence, plurilingualism
becomes a useful instrument for the development of language learning strategies,
creates a cognitively enriching experience of the content and is a means of acknowledging
the languages of the class that, so often, remain unheard and separate from the
shared reality of learners during school hours.
Extracto
de:
PLURILINGUAL
AND PLURICULTURAL COMPETENCE
With a
Foreword and Complementary Bibliography
Studies
towards a Common European Framework of Reference for
language
learning and teaching
Daniel
COSTE, Danièle MOORE and Geneviève ZARATE 2009
Communicative competence
and the native-speaker model
Whatever the original characteristics of the concept of communicative
competence, it has developed, as far as language teaching is concerned, within
a model of an ideal native communicator: the characteristics of communicative
competence (seen as distinct from a strictly linguistic competence) are the
sociolinguistic and pragmatic abilities, knowledge and aptitudes of speakers
who are implicitly assumed to be monolingual native speakers The goals of
learning a foreign language, including the various threshold levels, fall short
of this native-speaker competence; furthermore, the learner is not explicitly
taken into account as a plurilingual subject (able, for example, to call on the
resources of his mother tongue(s) or of another foreign language of which he
already has some knowledge).
Communicative competence
and cultural dimensions
The dominant tendency in language education has been to interpret
communicative competence in linguistic rather than cultural terms. Attention
has thus been focused on the multiplicity of means of expressing language acts
or functions, taken as largely common and transversal, at the expense of the
variety of cultural circumstances in which these acts and functions take place
and assume specific meanings. Intra and inter-linguistic variation has been
regarded as of greater importance than intra- and inter-cultural differentiation.
This observation appears to be a perfectly normal one if the initial aim
is to learn a particular foreign language, and if it is considered that no
major cultural obstacle lies in the way of such learning.
FIRST APPROACH AND
GENERAL OPTIONS
Plurilingual
and pluricultural competence: a tentative description
Plurilingual and pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use
languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural
interaction, where a person, viewed as a social actor has proficiency, of
varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures. This
is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but
rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the
social actor may draw.
As thus initially defined, plurilingual and pluricultural competence
generally presents itself as unbalanced or uneven in one or more ways:
- general proficiency may vary according to the language
- the pluricultural profile may differ from the plurilingual profile (eg
good knowledge of the culture of a community but a poor knowledge of its
language, or poor knowledge of the culture of a community whose dominant
language is nevertheless well mastered).
Plurilingual
competence for a linguistic and cultural identity
Another key feature of what defines a plurilingual and pluricultural
competence is that it does not result of a simple addition of two (or more)
monolingual competences in several languages. It permits combinations and
alternations of different kinds.
This also means that the development of plurilingual and pluricultural competence
promotes the emergence of linguistic awareness, and leads to a better
perception of what is general and what is specific in the linguistic
organisation of different languages.
In this type of analysis, respect for the diversity of languages and the
recommendation that more than one foreign language be learnt at school are
significant.
The issue here is not just to increase future opportunities for young
people competent in more than two languages, but also to help learners to
construct their linguistic and cultural identity by incorporating in it a
diversified experience of otherness and to develop their ability to learn
through this same diversified experience as a result of relating to several
languages and cultures.
PLURILINGUAL COMPETENCE
The concept of
plurilingual competence
Ordinary bilingualism should be
understood as the bilingualism of any individual who develops an ability to communicate
in more than one language in order to meet his daily communication needs.
Plurilingualism does not describe fixed competences. Individuals develop
competences in a number of languages from desire or necessity, in order to meet
the need to communicate with others. Plurilingualism is constructed as
individuals pursue their lives, it is a reflection of their social paths,
whilst bilingualism appears to be only a particular case of competence in
multiple languages.
Plurilingual competence:
handling imbalance
The plurilingual individual employs a range of strategies to handle
imbalance between him and his interlocutor, and to negotiate the meaning and
form of their exchange in different languages. This language effort induced by
the imbalance, and the systematic handling of this imbalance by the
plurilingual individual, potentially favour the activation of a “moment of acquisition”.
Plurilingual competence:
principles for a description
Most plurilingual individuals use their languages for specific and
differentiated communication needs. It is infrequent, and seldom necessary, for
a person to develop equivalent competences for each language in her/his
repertoire. Plurilingual individuals therefore develop different competences in
each language, and these competences are neither necessarily equal nor totally
similar to those of monolinguals. They fulfil a range of different functions,
depending on what is necessary to meet specific and different communication
needs.
Learning a new language does not imply starting all over again, like a
small child learning to speak; it implies a reorganisation of linguistic and
language knowledge, with fresh linguistic tools.
The competences of a plurilingual
individual are necessarily complementary, as they do not quite overlap from one
language to another and the use of one
component of the repertoire or another (or their alternate use) is a matter of
strategic development of communicative competence
PLURICULTURAL COMPETENCE:
DESCRIPTIVE PRINCIPLES
The concept of
pluricultural competence
The concept of "pluricultural competence" is a neologism. It
derives from the concept of plurilingualism, which itself derives from the
concept of bilingualism.
Pluriculturalism is to be distinguished from "multiculturalism",
which is the subject in North America of a debate on linguistic and identity
aspects concerning ethnic minorities .
The specific nature of the concept of pluricultural competence involves a
high degree of familiarity with otherness, which implies an ability to make
choices, to manage risk optionally and to employ diversified strategies within
partly compatible social and cultural backgrounds.
Plurilingual individuals generally have contact with foreign languages
through school, but the education system plays only a small part in their
linguistic competence. In nearly all education systems, even when they assign
an important place to language learning, the juxtaposition of separate bodies
of knowledge (language by language) prevails over the creation of integrated
plurilingual competence. In nearly all cases, when second, third and even
fourth languages are added to studies in the mother tongue, each language has
its own syllabus and each, at a given moment in time, is presented and studied
in accordance mainly with the same methodological options and pedagogical
approaches as the others and with similar aims. For example, in many countries at
the present time, whatever the language taught, the four skills (oral and
written comprehension and expression) are covered and a communicative approach
tends to be employed. For each language, the implicit or explicit reference for
this long-term aim has been native-speaker competence for each language. In
other words, despite a possible multiplicity of educational opportunities the
underlying concept often remains the bilingual ideal.
This is to some extent confirmed by the school's difficulty in
recognising not only manifestations of transitional systems of interlanguage
and the successive adjustments in learners' grammar, but also mixed systems,
forms of code switching and occurrences of bilingual speech.
In the contemporary world, the school's task is to give learners an
active, thoughtful knowledge of several foreign languages and cultures in order
to prepare them to live and work in a world increasingly marked by
international movement and careers, and by contacts between languages and
cultures;
In the slow transportation that the school is undergoing, its function
will increasingly be, for languages and cultures as in other fields, to equip
young people with the means to exploit the learning resources which are
proliferating, and to develop in them an ability to manage these resources, to
adapt to other environments, and to learn how to learn, with a view
particularly to self-education.
But if the intention really is to give strong encouragement to
linguistic and cultural pluralism at European level and to ensure that every
individual is trained to live in an international plurilingual and
pluricultural environment, these aims will have to be taken fully into account
in the school project.
Everything suggests that the professional and personal futures of
individual pupils will depend more on the degree of openness of their range of competences
than on any particular initial specialisation. However, preparation for
autonomous, responsible choices cannot be made without learning about
plurality.
If, in the relationship with plurality, the school directly or
indirectly promotes attitudes of tolerance, of curiosity about things new and
different, of intercultural perception and of identity awareness and
affirmation in a world where levels and degrees of belonging display multiple
and complex aspects, it will play a full role in civic and ethical education which
today, in widely differing contexts (not unaccompanied by renewed debate) is at
the centre of much reflection about schools.
The digitalisation of information, the multiplicity of channels, the
growing, and ultimately less and less expensive, possibilities of interactivity
will produce in-depth changes in the conditions of contact with other languages
and cultures
Accordingly, the school language curriculum (not to be confused with the
sum total of individual language syllabuses) can usefully be conceived in terms
both of differentiation and circulation: differentiation of goals, content and
learning approaches according to language; circulation (transferability and transversality)
of language knowledge, and skills between the different languages.
The ultimate goal is that, on leaving the initial school system, the
learner should possess a plurilingual and pluricultural competence which is
deliberately heterogeneous, although unified, in one repertoire, but that he
should also have been able to work using varied materials, have tested various learning
routes and have accordingly complexified his own perceptions of languages,
cultures and learning pathways.
History, geography and the natural and human sciences, conveniently and
wrongly called "non-linguistic subjects", cannot be excluded from a
project to develop plurilingual and pluricultural competence.
Through the knowledge they supply, but equally through the documents
with which they work, the concepts they bring into play and the tools of
observation and analysis which they employ, they make a significant
contribution to the creation of knowledge, convictions and attitudes which play
and will play a role in the approach to and perception of other cultures and in
the importance attached to a particular language. History and geography come to
mind first here but it would be wrong to think that other school subjects
(including the exact sciences) are culturally and linguistically neutral. More
generally, as soon as emphasis on the construction of plurilingual and
pluricultural competence becomes part of a school project, this aim can result
in revaluation and in different forms of action at the level of each establishment
and each school community (parents included). Getting the most out of the
linguistic and cultural resources of the school and its and the treatment of plurilingualism and
cultural plurality as an altogether ordinary and desirable phenomenon are also
a collective responsibility.
Teaching and learning objectives may be understood:
a. In terms of the development
of the individual learner's general competences, and thus be a matter of declarative knowledge (savoir), skills and
know-how (savoir-faire), personality traits, attitudes, etc (savoir-être) or
ability to learn
.
b. In terms of the extension
and diversification of communicative language competence, and are then concerned with the linguistic component, or the pragmatic
component or the sociolinguistic component, or all of these. The main aim of
learning a foreign language may be mastery of the linguistic component of a
language (knowledge of its vocabulary and syntax) without any concern for
sociolinguistic finesse or pragmatic effectiveness. In other instances, the
objective may be primarily of a pragmatic nature and seek to develop a capacity
to act in the foreign language with the limited linguistic resources available
and without any particular concern for the sociolinguistic aspect. The options
are, of course, never so exclusive as this and harmonious progress in the
different components is generally aimed at,
c. In terms of better
performance in one or more specific language activities, and are then a matter of reception, production, interaction or
mediation. In the defining of objectives it is possible to attach significantly
greater importance to one aspect above others and this major focus, if it is
consistent, will affect the entire process: choice of content and learning
tasks, deciding on and structuring progression and possible remedial action,
selection of type of text, etc.
d. In terms of optimal
functional performance in a given domain, and thus concern the public domain, the occupational domain, the
educational domain or the personal domain. The main aim of learning a foreign
language may be to do a job better or to help with studies or to facilitate
everyday life in a foreign country.
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