PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 20
ppli.ie
Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
2.1
Some pedagogical preliminaries
These guidelines address three educational challenges: to make Irish part of each pupil’s “everyday lived language”
(the Primary Language Curriculum), to include the languages of the new Irish in ways that benefit themselves, their
peers and Irish society (Languages Connect), and to support the introduction of a modern foreign language (MFL) in
stages 3 and 4 of the curriculum. As we explained in Part I, taken together these three challenges imply the adoption
of a “plurilingual” approach to language education, which is shaped by four pedagogical principles:
1. The teaching and learning of languages should be grounded in spontaneous and authentic language
use: languages are “lived” only when they are used for communicative and reflective purposes.
2. Teaching and learning should draw on all the linguistic resources available to learners.
3. Teaching and learning should acknowledge that languages are discrete entities.
4. Teaching should help pupils to develop awareness of language and of what language learning entails.
The first of these four principles requires that Irish and in due course the MFL should be fully integrated in everyday
classroom communication, while the second acknowledges that the HL of each pupil is his or her primary cognitive
tool and a valuable resource for the class as a whole. As we argued in 1.1, these principles imply that the
teaching/learning process should be dialogic and exploratory, at every turn encouraging pupils to make contributions
that draw on their action knowledge, including their linguistic knowledge and intuitions. The third principle reminds
us that the goal of all language education should be to develop the highest possible level of age-appropriate literate
proficiency in the languages in each pupil’s repertoire, and the fourth reminds us of the importance of developing
pupils’ reflective and metacognitive skills, their ability to take control of their learning.
Current theories of second language acquisition differ in their understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that produce
proficiency, but they agree that those mechanisms are driven by spontaneous and authentic language use. 25 They agree,
in other words, that it is impossible to teach languages in the traditional sense; the best we can do is create the
conditions that enable pupils to learn their target language by attempting to use it.
So our first priority must always be to involve pupils in genuine communication. This means providing them with the
words and phrases that enable them to participate, supporting their efforts to speak and write the languages they are
learning, and ensuring that classroom talk is dialogic and exploratory (cf. section 1.3), so that it encourages them to
take initiatives. The more initiatives pupils take, the more likely it is that teachers will be diverted from their lesson
plans. This is not something to worry about, however: if language proficiency arises from language use, all pupil-initiated
discourse will lead to learning. Its effect may not be immediately apparent, but it will inevitably play its part in the
hidden processes of language growth.
In order to meet the challenges of the Primary Language Curriculum and Languages Connect, we need to find ways
of scaffolding pupils’ attempts to use Irish, English in the case of EAL pupils, 26 and the MFL in stage 4.
25
26
See, for example, two chapters in J. W. Schwieter and A. Benati (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Learning, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2019: N. C. Ellis and S. Wulff, “Cognitive approaches to second language acquisition” (pp. 41–61) and J. Truscott and M. Sharwood
Smith, “Theoretical frameworks in L2 acquisition” (pp. 84–107).
The term “EAL (English as an Additional Language) pupil” is used to refer to all pupils whose home language is neither English nor Irish and who are
thus entitled to receive English Language Support.
PPLI delivering
20
Supported by
