Maximising Intensivity and Continuity in Language Learning

Mount Gambier Cluster14-15 August 2013

Angela Scarino angela.scarino@unisa.edu.au Michelle Kohler michelle.kohler@unisa.edu.au

• An ecology:

• Policy dimensions

• Structural dimensions

• Curriculum dimensions

• ‘Cultural’/people dimensions

• Resource dimensions

A focus on transition

• Centrality of learning and continuity in learning

• The planned program/curriculum

• The lived program/curriculum

→Inevitable framing through local policies and practices

→Inevitable compression

The program as ‘proxy’ for learning

• Scope of learning

• nature, extent/depth, complexity of learning

• Level of learning

→ Cultures of understanding learning

→ Need to establish common understanding

The concept of ‘scope and sequence’

Rationale for the design:

● Learners and learning

● Reconceptualising Language, Culture and Learning

● Reconceptualising teaching and learning practices

● The specificity of particular languages

● Curriculum content and its sequencing

● Achievement standards

An introduction to the Australian Curriculum: Languages as a resource

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Learners and learning

● Increasing diversity of learners● Who are our learners linguistically and culturally?● The notion of life-worlds (experiences, affiliations, desires,

memories)● Learner ‘background’ or traits vs background as constitutive

of learning● Language and culture have a mediating role; learning

emerges through linguistically and culturally mediated, historically-developing practical activity (Gutiérrez & Rogoff 2003)

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Byrnes (2006) states:The profession is being challenged… to find principled ways of linking foreign, heritage and native language instruction, to suggest ways of engaging all language users in continued language development toward high functional multilingualism in diverse hybrid spaces.

Kramsch (2009, 2011) states:Today it is not sufficient for learners to know how to communicate meanings; they have to understand the practice of meaning-making.

language learning as a bi-or multilingual act (Scarino 2010; Liddicoat & Scarino 2013)

Beyond communicative language teaching

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Expanding language, culture and learning - 1

View of language

Language as word; structural, grammatical system; code

↔ Language as social practice involving diverse contexts of use

↔ Elaborate social practice to highlight not just the act or the practice itself, but people and their meaning-making. 

  ↔ Participants in a practice ↔ Elaborate participation as the reciprocal process of interpreting the language and culture, the person and the self, and of reflecting on the process of meaning-making, self and other.

View of culture

Culture as facts, artefacts, information

↔ Culture as social practices; ways of doing things in diverse cultures

↔ Elaborate to highlight not only diverse practices, but cultural practices as a lens through which people mutually interpret, create, and exchange meaning and reflecting on the cultural situatedness of self and other. 

View of learning

Acquisition of new knowledge

↔ Participation in use of knowledge/knowing how to use language

↔ Elaborate to highlight how learning as a process of making sense or coming to understand, involves becoming aware of how learners reciprocally interpret knowledge to others and themselves through their language and culture, and its use with others, and reflect upon the process of learning.

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A move towards – ● a conception of language as form, as a social practice and as the

interpretation and creation of meaning: this interpretive turn includes a reflective dimension that adds value to both communication and learning

● Understanding the crucial role of language and culture in meaning-making

● understanding the role of language and culture in learning when learning itself is understood as ‘learning how to mean (Halliday 1993)

● reflection

Expanding language, culture and learning - 2

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Consider the learning of language and culture

In learning to use the target language, learners learn to:

● exchange meanings reciprocally through interaction with people and/or texts

● ‘move between’ and come to understand the linguistic and cultural systems of the language they are learning, and at the same time referencing these to their own linguistic and cultural systems

● develop metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness of what it means to interpret and to act in the world, and to be interpreted reciprocally by others

(ACARA 2011)

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The Languages Design - Aims

● communicate in the target language

● understand language, culture, and learning and

their relationship, and thereby develop an

intercultural capability in communication

● understand themselves as communicators

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Strands and sub-strands

Communicating• Socialising and taking action• Obtaining and using

information• Responding to and

expressing imaginative experience

• Moving between/translating• Expressing and performing

identity• Reflecting on intercultural

language use

Understanding• Systems of language• Variability in language use• Language awareness• Role of language and

culture 

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Socialising and taking action

Sub-strand 1.1: Socialising and taking action

Socialising with others (orally and in writing) to exchange ideas, opinions, experiences, thoughts, feelings, intentions and plans, and to take action with others.

Students learn to socialise with others in the target language (both orally and in writing); to interact with others to build relationships and participate in shared activities; to negotiate, to make decisions and arrangements and take individual and collective action.

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Socialising and taking action Concepts

Text-types

Processes

friendship (experiences, values, conflict, reconciliation)relationships (family, generations)leisurecelebrationneighbourhood (geography, distance, environment)etiquette (greetings, politeness)naming 

attitudeeducation (learning, knowledge)journeycommunitytimespace/placenegotiationhealth/wellbeinginterconnection across concepts and actions

Conversation:face-to-face interaction; telephone conversations; participating in shared communicative activities, discussions, debates

Correspondence:emails, text messages, class blog/chat forums, notes, invitations, greeting cards, letters, postcards

listening, speaking, reading and writing explainingexpressing preferences and feelings persuadingcomparing advisingnegotiating commentingmaking decisions and arrangements describinggiving and following instructions debatinginviting transactingaccepting and declining thankingdiscussing planning and participatingexpressing connecting/relatingjustifying  

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Socialising and taking action: sequencingExamples of sequencing in broad terms (predominantly for second language learning)

Early primary years(pre-literacy/early literacy)

Upper primary(developing literacy)

Junior secondary(expanding literacy)

interacting/socialising is guided; often occurs as a whole-class response; is based on the learner’s own experience

interacting/socialising to give, share, role-play; articulate and exchange ideas, feelings, preferences

interacting/socialising to state and exchange thoughts, feelings, plans; begin to discuss/debate; take social/community action; express opinion; reflect on and compare self with others; understand reciprocally

interacting/socialising takes place within the context of the classroom and is connected to the home and local environment

interacting/socialising takes place within the neighbourhood and local community; beginning to take community action

interacting/socialising takes place in diverse contexts, local and global, in real time and virtual; taking group action; understanding consequences; communicating with parents/others

student as participant with teacher; students participate by naming, pointing, miming, participating in games and action-related talk

peer to peer; student to teacher; student to known people; with one of multiple participants

student to diverse participants

repeated language; active listening

accessing resources, including digital resources; can find out/research/ compare; supported writing

students vary their language according to age and gender; socialising through a range of texts, including narratives, diaries, records of experience; intercultural exchange

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Content descriptions: ItalianObtaining and using informationSub-strand 1.2: Obtaining and using information

Obtaining and processing information

Identify and order factual information from a range of spoken, written, digital and multimodal texts, and process and represent meaning, e.g. through classification, sequence and summary

[Key processes: ordering, classifying, tabulating]

obtaining information as a dimension of this sub-strand

  the fact that it is factual information suggests the

appropriate level  key processes here give a sense of the level of

information giving

Giving information

Convey ideas and information through a range of spoken, written, digital and multimodal texts in ways that allow comparison of diverse perspectives and practices

[Key processes: describing, presenting]

giving information as a dimension of the sub-strand

  the fact that it is factual information suggests the

appropriate level 

key processes here give a sense of the level of information giving

Note: This is an introduction only to the reality of diverse perspectives.

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An example: Signs in every-day life

Learners will be taught to:• recognise, identify, interpret and respond to the meaning being

communicated in signs (e.g. warning, instruction, direction) and other graphic representation (e.g. illustrations, cartoons)

Concept presentation• presentation and comparison of signs and placards used in signs• discussion of language used in signs (commands, instructions, warnings)

and their function in society• examination and discussion of cultural values reflected by the language

of signs e.g. responsibility of state for providing warning, expectations of public, shorthand ways of mediating meanings

Concept’s key language features• linguistic structures that convey commands, instructions and warnings

that require actions (Do x; Don’t’ do Y); demands (More parks now!)• examination of social consequences of language structures that indicate

power relations

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The interrelationship of the strands and sub-strands

The interrelationship of the strands and sub-strands is best seen as three facets of the same experience:

1. performance and experience of communication (performance)

2. analysis of various aspects of language and culture involved in communication (analysis)

3. reflection on the comparative and reciprocal dimensions of language learning and use (reflection)

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• Refer to handout

Content Descriptions and Achievement Standards

Discussion

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ReferencesACARA (2011) Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages

http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Draft+Shape+of+the+Australian+Curriculum+-+Languages+-+FINAL.pdf

ACARA (unpublished) The Australian Curriculum Languages Design Paper.

Byrnes, H. (2006) Perspectives, Modern Language Journal, 90 (2), 244-266.

Gutierrez, K. & Rogoff, B. (2003) Cultural ways of learning: individual traits or repertoires of practice, Educational Researcher, 32 (5), 19-25.

Halliday, M.A.K. (1993). Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education. 4, 93-116.

Kramsch, C. (2011). The symbolic dimension of the intercultural. Language Teaching. 44, 3, 354-367.

Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Scarino, A. (2010). Assessing intercultural capability in learning languages: A renewed understanding of language, culture, learning and the nature of assessment. The Modern Language Journal, 94(2), 324.

Liddicoat, A.J. & Scarino, A. (2013) Intercultural language teaching and learning. Malden. Wiley-Blackwell.

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