TEACHING OF DIFFERENT LANGUAGES IN A PARTICULAR SCHOOL ACCORDING TO THE PLURILINGUAL APPROACH
Thinking about teaching different languages in the school that I’m working made me realise that teaching is a live fact that keep changing every year. There are so many factors involved in teaching languages. I would like to talk about some of them in this article.
I’m working in a school with a high level of immigrants’ percentage. It’s been an immersion school for many years now, so, the treatment of the languages had had the Catalan language as the main one, the Spanish language as a secondary one and the English language had been left a bit behind.
In the school we used to have a reception room for newcomers, where they were given the tools to learn Catalan in a more personalized way. The students with difficulties in Catalan were given reinforcement classes in small groups. English has been detached from what was worked in other linguistic areas. Language areas were worked on with books. And the hours of each subject were the compulsory ones: 3 hours of Catalan, 2 hours of Spanish and 2 hours of English per week. English was introduced at P5 (half group, 45 minutes per week).
During the last 6 years that I’ve been working in the school all of this has changed.
We have removed the books in most of the subjects. We created the language committee where we made some agreements about the textual typologies to teach languages. So, we plan the Catalan and Spanish languages from pre-primary to the 6thyear of Primary. But English wasn’t involved yet.
At that point Catalan is the vehicular language of the school were the students attend to 4 hours of Catalan subject (1 more than before to provide a session for oral skills). Spanish didn’t change the amount of hours but the textual typologies were implemented (In the initial cycle, the oral part of the language is prioritized). They don’t use books at all, but there is only English that still uses it.
This school year we move one step further. We are in the first phase of transformation of the school into a Learning Community. We believe that since the results are not good enough, perhaps the way in bringing families closer to school and making them participate in the educational community (in fact, taking them into account) could improve the results of the tests of basic competences of the Education’ Department. Thus, the methodology we are putting into practice has changed a lot in reference to the one before.
So, I think that we moved from a multilingual education, were each language was treated separately from the other to a plurilingual Education because the treatment of the 3 languages at the school is going to be connected among them and also the languages from the students. We moved from a monoglossic view to a heteroglossic view.
An example would be that we celebrate for the first time the International Day of mother tongue were we invite the parents to do a little activity with the students showing their culture using their language. For example some of them brought food from their countries, some others told a story in their language, some others teach how to write their names in their language…
Refering to the definition of Bilingual Education from Ofelia García 2009:9, I would say that I think that the school, I work no, is moving to that way. Where the main goals are:
–Plurilingual resources for communication. (Other terms: trilingual or multilingual education, CEF 2+1)
–Pluricultural resources for tolerance towards diversity.
So, the Multilingual pedagogies implied in the school might be based in Bilingual Education:
- Heteroglossic/Developmental immersion
It is accepted that children do not start out as monolinguals but have access to different language practices (children from different backgrounds together in the same class).
- Goal: Plurilingual development. Use of different languages to teach the target language.
We are making a new Projecte Lingüístic de Centre where all the methodologies are going to be specified. So, Project work is included in the timetable (1 hour and a half per week), Textual Typologies to work the languages (distributed in the three language subjects), oral skills emphasized, interactive groups (provided by 2 teachers in the class). This last one is the one I like most because the students work in groups, but they have 20 minutes to do the activity and then change to the next one and so on during 2 hours. In each group there is an specific skill worked, for example: writing skill, reading skill, grammar and ITC activity. The students have to do the activity talking about it, sharing their opinions, reaching a conclusion and doing it at the same time to make sure that all the students from the group had understood it. So communication, respect and agreements are involved.
Last year we participated in the pilot test in Mataró: The Celebration of “English Day“, an activity promoted by the CRP, where oral communication in English is enhanced through previous activities and included in English Day activity. This year for the second time and tutoring 4 more schools, we are participating again.
Here you can visit the blog we created last year: http://blocs.xtec.cat/englishdaycros/
Actually, I haven’t thought about the terms of multiculturalism or plurilingualism until I’ve read the readings and talk about them in the “Multilingüisme i Adquisició de l’anglès com a Tercera Llengua”, subject from the Posgraduate Degree at UIC University.
So, I’m sure that it will influence on the Projecte Lingüístic of the school I work and on the English teaching methodologies/strategies.