Page 35 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

(6.) Encourage linguistic diversity – with respect for the mother tongue – at all levels of education, wherever possible, and encourage the learning of multiple languages from an early age [...].
Chapter 5.3 Learning and teaching intercultural competences of the Council of Europe White Paper on Intercultural Dialogue states:
Additional methodological materials should be developed to help students develop skills based on self-efficacy, including skills concerning critical reflection on their own reactions and attitudes towards their experiences with other cultures [...].
Between 2010 and 2015, the term plurilingualism has been broadened in Europe and now refers to language education in the broadest sense, with the inclusion of national/teaching languages. It emphasises an individual's ability to use a language / languages or regional varieties of a language communicatively for different purposes (Kotarba-Kańczugowska, 2015, p. 11). Here we are talking about knowledge of the mother tongue and additional languages. Neither the notion of a foreign language (prestigious), nor a second language (taught in the country), nor a regional language is introduced separately. Thus, multilingualism is understood as a common meaning system for the mother tongue, the second language (Polish as a foreign language), a foreign language, a minority language or a regional language.
As I mentioned above, it is now recommended by the Council of Europe that plurilingualism should form the basis of educational programmes in compulsory education (Kotarba-Kańczugowska, 2015, p. 45). Among other things, to minimise exclusion in society. Below I present some examples of practices of integrating plurilingualism into school curricula in Europe.
Example 1
Marta Kotarba-Kańczugowska describes an interesting project and approach to multilingual education in her book (2015, pp. 97–101). It is certainly an attempt to approach the challenges of education with students from many different nationalities. The Sprachenkarussell (Language Carousel) project from Austria was a response to the school's problems of a lack of tolerance and acceptance, and a number of aggressive attacks by students. The main aim of the project was to show the pupils (9- and 10-year olds) that no language or culture is better than another. The project consisted of one 60-minute class per week. The pupils in the project were asked to choose one language they wanted to learn in a given year (in the following year they chose another language). This could be one of the languages of the children attending the school, in this case Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Turkish, Hungarian, or Italian. The language could not be the pupils' mother tongue. The implementation of the classes depended on the person teaching. Teachers and volunteer tutors tried to adapt the activities to the students' activities, abilities, and interests. They often sang songs, read stories, or played games with the pupils during the activities. The activities in the classes were closely linked to the respective culture and language. There were no textbooks used in the project. During the classes the teachers allowed free language communication in different languages. They did not correct pupils' mistakes; instead, they simply supported their speech in the language they were learning. After all, multilingualism is about knowing the language and culture acquired during our experiences and being able to move between languages and cultures in order to communicate effectively (CoE, 2007, CoE, 2018).
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