MULTILINGUALISM AND ENGLISH IN YOUR CONTEXT

To talk about the multilingualism in the town that I work as a teacher I’ve checked at the “Idescat” website. But to get more further, I’ve also read the “Projecte Lingüístic de Centre” from the school.

So, as you can see on picture 1 and picture 2, Mataró city has about 15% (19.000) of foreigners living there. And about 6.500 of them living in the neighbourhood where the school I work is located.

1: https://www.mataro.cat/web/portal/contingut/document/publicacions/estudi_poblacio/docs/Padro_mataro_2015.pdf

2: https://www.idescat.cat/poblacioestrangera/?b=10&geo=mun:081213

This two grids show you the variety of the students you can find in the school.Being a teacher, you should be aware and think about it for many reasons:

1. Taking into account the teaching English background we found:

–English as Lingua Franca in a multilingualism world which implies the importance of teaching English.

–Kachru’s Concentric Circles (1982) classification of English as a world language: which the 3 main circles are: Inner Circle (English as a mother tongue, L1), Outer Circle (English as a L2, used for a purpose of communication) and Expanding Circle (English is used as a foreign language).

–Britain has invaded the most of the countries in the world, so English was known all over the world. Which make the countries to change the point of teaching it at the schools.

2. Learning English in Europe has change also during the last years in different fields: what to teach (contents), how to teach (methods) and the ages of the students to start learning it.

Then, they had to decide what is important to acquire a language:

-Focus on grammar and form

-Focus on communication which is a significant way

-Studying abroad

So, here is when CEFRL (The Common Framework of Reference for Languages) gets the importance of thinking about the variety of the populations and how this effects on the way of teaching a new language and how to promote them all.

They want to regulate the European Languages and its main objectives are:

– protect and promote plurilingulism

– promote a common perspective on language learning

The common basis for languages but thinking in plural, with of all of them. So, all the citizens should have the rights of learning at least 2 foreign languages. It shouldn’t be only for rich people.

–Contributions of CEFRL:

1. Promotion of language learning across Europe (Communicative Approach and Learning by doing)
2. Common criteria for evaluating language skills
3. Distinction between Multilingualism and Pluralingualism

One of the examples of being aware of the learning process could be The European Language Portfolio which provides you the chance of collecting and reporting your process of learning a foreign language and to be conscious of it, within a common reference in Europe.

My reflections after all this researches are:

Being a teacher of English in the European Community implies being aware of the importance of learning a foreign language, especially English. But we should take into account that in the world and in Europe there are a wide range of languages that are as important as English for the people that speak them. So, we should take advantage of it and take care of them.

As a teacher I think that is very important to check for the type of population that you are going to find in the school where you work because both multilingualism and plurilingualism are important. It’s not only important to master other languages but also to build a communicative skill with all the languages we are going to learn even though we don’t have a high level of them.

So, let’s think in an open-minded way and teach in that way. Then you could teach languages in a more integrated way, to promote intercultural encounters and to value linguistic diversity among the student of the school. I think that the schools in Mataró are quite aware of it but there still a lot to do about it.

But I would like to mention that recently has been a change and that there are lots of projects around this issue running at the schools. I would like to explain the example of the school I work. We are in a phase of change towards a learning community where multiculturality and diversity will start to take into account as well as participation in the educational community of families in proposals and activities.