Languages of Schooling and Intercultural Education

Michael Byram

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William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.

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• Multiperspectivity – using the language/discourse of ‘other subjects’

• The teacher as a mediator of scientific/ geographic/ aesthetic etc language

• The learner becoming an interpreter of scientific discourses – (within the limitations of schooling)

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Foreign language

- Use a (English as a) foreign language to describe

“On the left there is a tree… on the right there is a school…”

- draw the picture from instructions…

(“information gap”)

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Draw a picture of a tree (Neuner)• Draw a picture of an abies sibirica

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Summary

• Sharing connotations – being part of the same group with a shared culture

• Identifications with language groups

• Interact with people of other language identifications – ‘French’ speaking to ‘German’ / physicists talking to artists

• The individual as member of all the above: pluricultural identifications→ learning to interact with others: intercultural

competence

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Multicultural societies

• Identifications with groups and networks – permanent and transient

• Using group/network discourse (another ‘language’ e.g. ‘French’ – another language/discourse e.g. ‘geography’

• i.e. plurilingual (because pluricultural) people in multicultural societies

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Schools

• Teach the language of all subjects (‘language as subject’/ geography/ biology etc)

• Facilitate identifications with subjects/ social groups (e.g. ‘physics’ or ‘the nation’)

• Develop capacity to understand other people’s languages and perspectives – Using the skills and knowledge of intercultural

competence– The linguist ‘tolerates/respects’ the physicist; the

French ‘tolerates/respects’ the German

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The Platform

• Explains/clarifies ‘languages’ and discourses and identities

• Languages of schooling (among others)

→ Reference function

• Provides descriptions of languages/ discourses – for languages of schooling AND others (e.g. reference levels descriptions and/or descriptors)

→ Resource function