PPLI Primary Guidelines REVISED EDITION - Flipbook - Page 8
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Language and Languages in the Primary School Some guidelines for teachers by David Little and Déirdre Kirwan
1.1 The plurilingual approach to language education and the Primary Language Curriculum
Since the 1990s, the Council of Europe has advocated a plurilingual and intercultural approach to education in general
and language education in particular. Its commitment to the approach was reaffirmed in 2022, when the Committee
of Ministers adopted Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)1, on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education
for democratic culture.7 The approach rests on three principles: (i) all languages present in a given educational context,
including the languages that learners bring with them, should play a role in the educational process; (ii) education
should help learners of all ages to develop integrated plurilingual repertoires; and (iii) the cultural diversity that is often
a dimension of linguistic diversity should be treated as a source of educational enrichment.
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)8 distinguishes between plurilingual individuals,
who are able to communicate in two or more languages, and multilingual societies and communities, in which two or
more languages are present. This distinction accommodates two facts: plurilingual individuals do not necessarily live
in multilingual communities, and multilingual communities are not necessarily made up of plurilingual individuals.
The CEFR also distinguishes between multilingual and plurilingual approaches to language education. A multilingual
approach provides for the teaching of second and foreign languages in isolation from one another, “with the ‘ideal
native speaker’ as the ultimate model”, 9 whereas a plurilingual approach seeks to develop “a communicative
competence to which all knowledge and experience of language contributes and in which languages interrelate and
interact”. 10 If this latter approach is to become a reality, each language taught at school must be a fully integrated part
of each pupil’s communicative experience from the very beginning. As the CEFR acknowledges, the adoption of a
plurilingual approach entails a significant modification of the aim of language education, which is now “to develop a
linguistic repertory in which all linguistic abilities have a place”. 11 This is the goal of the Primary Language Curriculum,
which provides for an integrated approach to the teaching of English, Irish and MFLs while taking account of immigrant
pupils’ HLs.
The pedagogical implications of the plurilingual approach can be summarized in four principles, to which we shall
return from time to time in the following sections:
1. Teaching and learning should be grounded in language use that is spontaneous and authentic: spontaneous in
the sense that it arises naturally from the minute-to-minute activities of the classroom; authentic in the sense that
it reflects learners’ concerns both in the immediate context of learning and in their lives more generally. If teaching
and learning are to be truly spontaneous and authentic, classroom talk must be dialogic and exploratory. Although
the teacher always retains control, learners are expected to contribute at every turn by drawing on the experience,
knowledge and intuitions that they bring with them.
7
Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)1 and the accompanying Explanatory Memorandum can be accessed here: https://rm.coe.int/prems-013522-gbr2508-cmrec-2022-1-et-expose-motifs-couv-a5-bat-web/1680a967b4.
8
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Available at
https://rm.coe.int/1680459f97.
9
CEFR, p. 5.
10
CEFR, p. 4.
11
CEFR, p. 5.
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