DoL Teaching Forum: Plurilingualism and intercomprehension

http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanmkr/354776635/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Maria Luisa Perez Cavana and Tita Beaven, 16 May 2012

Plurilingualism and intercomprehension

Outline:

• What is it?

• 2 projects: MagiccVivre en Aquitaine

• Hands on: resources

• A role for it in our programme? What next?

Bridging the Wikipedia Language Gap

http://www.newscientist.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/article/mg21428645.600-wikipedia-busts-the-language-barrier.html

Plurilingual education in EuropeLanguage Policy Division, Strasbourg 2006

http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/PlurinlingalEducation_En.pdf

Plurilingualism

Plurilingualism

http:// www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/PlurinlingalEducation_En.pdf

Guiding principles underlying language education policy

http:// www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/PlurinlingalEducation_En.pdf

Modularising Multilingual and Multicultural Academic Communication

Competence for BA and MA level (2011‐2014)

Teaching Forum 16 May 2012

Maria Luisa Pérez Cavana

Overview

MAGICC

Call / Aims / Partners / WPs

The theoretical frame

Academic Competence

Plurilingual and Multicultural competence

MAGICC Call

LLP 2011 ‐ERASMUS, Multilateral Project

Support to the modernisation agenda for higher education

MAGICC combines the two strategic priorities of the LLP general Call 2011:

curriculum development

development of tools to assess and promote the employability of graduates

RationaleCompetence to communicate – new qualification

goal for different cycles (BA, MA)

Essential part of the development of students’ academic expertise and employability

CC is needed in both the mother tongue L1 and other languages

Academic and professional contexts increasingly multilingual and multicultural

Aim: Design a transversal module containing a set of curricular scenarios for developing students’ multilingual and multicultural communication competence

Aims of the project

Integrate multilingual and multicultural academic communication competence as graduate learning outcomes

Promote employability of graduates

Outcomes:

A conceptual framework (WP 1 and 2)

An academic ePortfolio (WP 3)

A transversal module of scenarios for both the BA and the MA‐cycle (WP 4)

Transparency tools for shared transnational understanding (WP 5)

MAGICC partners P1 ‐Université de Lausanne / University of Lausanne, CH

P2 ‐Jyväskylän yliopisto/ University of Jyväskylä, FI

P3 ‐The Open University, UK

P4 ‐Rijksuniversiteit Groningen / University of Groningen, NL

P5 ‐Universidade do Algarve / University of the Algarve, PT

P6 ‐Politechnika Poznanska/ Poznan University of Technology, PL

P7 ‐Fondazione AldiniValeriani, IT

P8 ‐Université de Fribourg / University of Fribourg, CH

P9 ‐Universitatea Babeş‐Bolyai/ Babeş‐Bolyai’ University, RO

P10 ‐Universität Bremen / University of Bremen, DE

P11 ‐Freie Universität Berlin / Free University of Berlin, DE

External evaluator: Assoc. Prof.Dr.Maria Stoicheva, Sofia University "St. KlimentOhridski" (BG)

Associated partner: European Centre for Modern Languages of the Council of Europe (ECML)

Defining the field of multilingual and multicultural academic competence

Academic competence (Adamson, 1993; Cottrell, 2003)

Receptive skills and strategies (Reading / Listening)

Productive skills and strategies (Speaking / writing)

Management of learning (General competences CEFR)

Definition: Multi/Plurilingual competence

Multi/Plurilingual competence means: being competent, at different levels, in more than two languages

Plurilingualism refers to a individual level / Multilingualism to an institutional or social level (CEFR)

Multilingualism is used in EU documents for both community and individual level

Plurilingualism –CoE docs for individual level

CEFR definitions

Multilingualism – co-existence of different languages in a given society

Plurilingualism “the ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as social agent, has proficiency of varying degrees, in several languages, and experience of several cultures. This is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the user may draw.” (CEFR, 2001, p.168)

Multilingualapproach

Abandon the search for a homogeneous level in only one language and monolingual approaches

Collaboration between languages - take into account in the learning process the links between languages

Break down artificial borders between languages

Defining the field of multilingual and multicultural academic competence

Projects:

INCA

CARAP (ECML)

http://carap.ecml.at/CARAP/tabid/2332/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

Lenz / Berthele (2010) Assessment in Plurilingual and Intercultural Education , CoE

Plulrilingual and Intercultural Competence(Lenz/Berthele, 2010)

Mediation

Polyglot Dialog

Intercomprehension

Intercultural Communicative Competence

Mediation (receptive/productive skills)

Mediation activities carried out by a third person make communication possible between persons who are unable to communicate with each other directly

CEFR about mediating activities the language user is not concerned to express his/her own meaning but to act as intermediary between interlocutors, normally speakers of different languages

Polyglot Dialogue (Interaction, Comprehension, Production)

“An interactional regime that allows for the use of two or more different languages or distant varieties in interpersonal interaction. Most often participants use one of their best-mastered languages productively and are capable of understanding the languages used by their interlocutors.” (Lenz/Berthele, 2010)

Intercomprehension

“Using available knowledge of all kinds of previous language learning in order to understand texts in genetically related languages” (Lenz / Berthele 2010, p.6)

Is intended to facilitate learners’ access to written texts in languages they have not expressly learned but which are related to languages present in their plurilingual repertoires.

Intercultural (Communication) competence

Intercultural communication – as situated communication between individuals or groups of different linguist and cultural origins (LANQUA, subgroup on IC)

“Ability to use (and thereby enlarge) their pluricultural and intercultural repertoire in interaction with otherness”

The Vivre en Aquitaine project

Miroirs: Intercultural competence

The original aim…

Texts in L1 and L2: reflection, mediation.

But also exploring ways in which “strategies used in the reading and decoding of […] texts in the readers’ own native languages can facilitate the processing of similar texts in a foreign language”

(Carter-Thomas 2009, reviewing

Lundquist: navigating in Foreign Language Texts, 2008)

Intercomprehension

Intercomprehesion: “A form of communication in which each person uses his or her own language and understands that of the other.”

Peter Doyé, Intercomprehension, 2005

Intercomprehension

Intercomprehension is defined as the process of developing the ability to coconstruct meaning in the context of the encounter of different languages, and to make pragmatic use of this in a concrete communicative situation (Capucho, 2004), thus involving the transfer of strategies and knowledge from known to unknown languages. This process is supported by awareness of cultural features.

Activating and training intercomprehension strategies comprises three levels: (1) the human ability to communicate meanings, (2) language learning (in a conscious or unconscious manner) as a process of strategies acquisition, and (3) the ongoing development of intercomprehension abilities and strategies (both in interpreting and producing discourse).

Alves and Mendes (2006)

Learners’ knowledge • General knowledge

• Cultural knowledge

• Situational knowledge

• Behavioural knowledge

• Pragmatic knowledge

• Graphic knowledge

• Phonological knowledge

• Grammatical knowledge

• Lexical knowledge

Doyé (2005): Intercomprehension. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Doye%20EN.pdf

Tellecollaboration project

October 2010/Feb 2011: “4 profs, 4 pays” UK/SP/IT/DE

October 2011/Feb 2012: “4 classes, 4 pays” UK/SP/IT/DE

Hands on! 4 groups

20 mins to familiarise yourselves with a resource and to think if it has a role in our programme – why, why not, how?

3 mins presentation to the group

Plenary discussion and next steps

Hands on! Group 1

FREPA (CARAP) A Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to languages and cultures

Quickly familiarise yourself with the project background: http://carap.ecml.at/CARAP/tabid/2332/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

Spend some time looking at the descriptors (knowledge, attitudes, skills): http://carap.ecml.at/Descriptorsofresources/Overview/tabid/2829/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

A role for this in our context?

Hands on! Group 2

EU & I

Welcome to the intercomprehension hotel!

Quickly familiarise yourself with the project background:

http://eu-intercomprehension.eu/

Spend some time exploring the hotel and trying out one of the activities:

http://www.eu-intercomprehension.eu/activities.html

A role for this in our context?

Hands on! Group 3

Babel Web

Quickly familiarise yourself with the website and spend some time looking at the activities:

http://www.babel-web.eu/

A role for this in our context?

Hands on! Group 4

Try out Manypedia, a tool that enables you to compare Linguistic Points Of View (LPOV) of Wikipedia different languages:

http://manypedia.com/

Try out different terms and different language combinations. You could try any of the following in several language combinations. Democracy, entente cordiale, indignados, Greek government debt crisis.

Can you think of pedagogic uses of this tool?

A role for this in our context?

Hands on! Group 5

EuRom5

Quickly familiarise yourself with the project aims:

http://www.eurom5.com/

Look at one of the texts in a language you don’t speak, e.g.:

http://www.eurom5.com/pg/it/lezioni-it/pt-01

A role for this in our context?

Plenary

Presentations of the 5 tools/resources

• So what?

• What next?