A framework of reference for pluralistic approaches

CARAP ning keelte ja kultuuride mitmekesisus tähelepanu

Ülevaade mitmekeelsuse ja -kultuurilisuse raamdokumendist (CARAP)

Mis see on? Tegemist on deskriptorite loendiga, mis kirjeldab  õppeks vajalikke teadmisi, hoiakuid ja oskusi (raamdokumendi B-osas) ning toetavad üldpädevuste arengut.
Selle abil on lihtsam mõista teadmiste, hoiakute ja oskuste paljusust, mida õpilane vajab selleks, et omandada keelte- ja kultuurideülest pädevust. Raamdokument toetab Euroopa Nõukogu poolt soovitatud haridusvaldkonna eesmärkide saavutamist keelte ja kultuuride mitmekesisuse valdkonnas, nende väärtustamisel.

Mida tähendab keelte ja kultuuride mitmekesisus? Termin keelte ja kultuuride mitmekesisus tähendab keelteüleseid õpetamis- ja õppimismeetodeid, mis hõlmavad samaaegselt mitmeid keeli ja kultuure. 

Kellel on kasulik tutvuda Mitmekeelsuse ja -kultuurilisuse raamdokumendiga? Kõikide ainete õpetajad, kes on huvitatud mitmekeelsest ja kultuuridevahelisest haridusest ja õpetusest, õpetajakoolitajad, haridusametnikud, õppekava arendusega tegelevad inimesed, õppekirjanduse loojad.

Mitmekeelse ja -kultuurilise õppe raamdokumendi võimalused:
• süsteemne kirjeldus pädevustest ja ressurssidest (deklaratiivsed teadmised, suhtumised ja hoiakud, protseduurilised teadmised), mida saab pluralistliku lähenemisega arendada;
• õppematerjalide andmebaas;
• õppematerjalid õpetaja- ja täiendkoolituseks.

Keelte ja kultuuride mitmekesisus

The term Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures refers to didactic approaches which involve the use of several (or at least more than one) varieties of languages or cultures simultaneously during the teaching process. This is to be contrasted with approaches which could be called “singular” in which the didactic approach takes account of only one language or a particular culture, considered in isolation. Singular approaches of this kind were particularly valued when structural and later “communicative” methods were developed and all translation and all resort to the first language was banished from the teaching process.

Language teaching methodology has seen the emergence of four pluralistic approaches over the past thirty years. 

Teadlikkus keelelisest mitmekesisusest

Several European projects have enabled awakening to languages movements to develop on a broader scale, defining it as follows: “awakening to language is used to describe approaches in which some of the learning activities are concerned with languages which the school generally does not intend to teach.” This does not mean that the approach is concerned just with such languages. The approach concerns the language(s) of education and any other language which is in the process of being learnt. But it is not limited to these “learnt” languages, and integrates all sorts of other linguistic varieties – from the environment, from families… and from all over the world, without exclusion of any kind... Because of the number of languages on which learners work – very often, several dozen –  awakening to languages may seem to be the most extreme form of pluralistic approach. It was designed principally as a way of welcoming schoolchildren into linguistic diversity (and the diversity of their own languages) at the beginning of school education, as a vector of fuller recognition of the languages “brought” by children with other home languages, as a kind of preparatory course developed at primary schools, but it can also be promoted as a support to language learning throughout the learners’ school career.

L’Eveil aux langues (Awakening to languages) as it has been developed specifically in the Evlang and Jaling programmes is explicitly linked to the Language Awareness movement initiated by E. Hawkins in the 1980s in the United Kingdom. However, the éveil aux langues nowadays is to be seen as a sub-category of the Language Awareness approach, which is also generating research which is more psycho-linguistic than pedagogic and which does not necessarily involve confronting the learner with a number of languages. For this reason those promoting éveil aux langues prefer to use another term in English – Awakening to languages – to describe this approach.

Sugulaskeeltest aru saamine

In the approach termed Intercomprehension between related languages the learner works on two or more languages of the same linguistic family (Romance, Germanic, Slavic languages, etc.) in parallel. One of these languages is already known, being either the learner’s mother tongue, or the language of education, or even another language having been learnt previously.

In this approach there is a systematic focus on receptive skills, as the development of comprehension is the most tangible way of using the knowledge of a related language to learn a new one. Of course, this does not exclude some added benefits for productive skills.

 n the second half of the 1990s there was innovative work in this area with adult learners (including university students), in France and other countries speaking romance languages, as well as in Germany, Scandinavian and Slavophone countries. Many were supported at a European level in the programmes of the European Union. Examples of this approach are to be found in certain materials produced for awakening to language approaches, but in general there has been little development of intercomprehension in schools.

Lõimitud didaktika keeleõppes

Integrated didactic approaches are directed towards helping learners to establish links between a limited number of languages, which are taught within the school curriculum. Integrated didactics work on the central principle advocated by pluralistic approaches of capitalising on what is already known in order to access what is less known : the language of schooling for accessing the first foreign language, which can then be used as a springboard to facilitate the acquisition of a second foreign language etc., keeping in mind that mutual support between languages goes in both directions. This approach does not neglect, either, the home languages of the learners, especially when they are explicitly taught. One can therefore have two (or even three or four) languages which are being “tackled” simultaneously. 

This was an approach advocated as early as the beginning of the 1980s in the work of E. Roulet. It is also the direction taken by numerous projects exploring the idea of German after English when they are learnt as foreign languages (cf. the studies relating to Tertiary language learning). Other studies investigate ways of linking the language of schooling and other languages taught in an integrated perspective. It is also present in certain approaches to bilingual education, which seek to make learners identify similarities and differences between the languages used in teaching, irrespective of the subject being studied.

Eri kultuure põimiv käsitlus

The intercultural approach has already had a clear influence on the methodology of language teaching and is therefore relatively well-known.

Its many variants are all based on didactic principles which recommend relying on phenomena pertaining to one or more cultural area to approach phenomena pertaining to another one. They also advocate developing strategies to promote reflection about contact situations involving persons with different cultural background.

Miks räägime pädevustest ja ressurssidest?

Competences have to be understood as follows:

  • competences are linked to situations, to complex tasks which have social relevance; they are in this way “situated” and have a social function;
  • they are units with a degree of complexity;
  • they call on different internal resources (generally a mix of knowledge, attitudes and skills) and external resources (dictionaries, mediators, etc.).

The descriptions given in FREPA competences and resources concern essentially two domains of competences:

  1. The competence to manage linguistic and cultural communication within a context of otherness
  2. The competence of constructing and developing a pluralistic repertoire of languages and cultures

FREPA identifies resources which are mobilised through these competences. These resources are presented in the form of descriptors.

Resources (knowledge, attitudes and skills):

The term resources is generally used for internal resources. 

Internal resources (as well as the use of external resources, but not competences) can be taught in situations/ tasks which are at least partly decontextualised.

Competences are viewed mainly in the domain of social usage / needs, while resources seem rather to belong to the domain of cognitive (and developmental) psychology. In this view it is indeed competences which come into play when one engages with a task.

However, it is probably the resources that one can – to a certain point – distinguish and list, defining them in terms of mastery and working on them in educational practice.

Mitmekeelsuse ja -kultuurlisuse raamdokumendi deskriptorid

The descriptors are accessible in different ways and in different languages:

  • They are presented in this Website by using an hypertext format which makes visual exploration easier.
    You can see them either in English (click on tab Descriptors at the top of the present page), or in French (tab Descripteurs),or in German (tab Deskriptoren)
  • They are part of the document FREPA – Competences and resources     
    See under tab Components (English) / Éléments (French) / Instrumente (German) at the top of the present page.
    (For network members: if this document has been translated into your language, replace the last sentence through : See the version in LLL on the right pane !)
  • They are also presented in the online documentation FREPA - Tables of descriptors across the curriculum, using hypertext too, but with an additional graphical representation which situates each element of the tables in the learner’s curriculum.
    See under tab Components (English) / Éléments (French) / Instrumente (German) at the top of the present page.

The database

The database FREPA – Online teaching materials, offers teaching activities which fall within the scope of pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures.

The purpose of this collection of materials, which include input in different languages, is to facilitate access to classroom activities which will help learners master the knowledge, skills and attitudes which the framework lists as resources and which can be developed by pluralistic approaches. All the materials proposed refer explicitly to descriptors of resources as they can be found in the FREPA framework. 

The database can be consulted either in English (tab Teaching materials at the top of the present page) or in French (tab Matériaux didactiques).

You will find below some examples of materials in LLL.

under development