Abstract
Since the European Cultural Convention of 1954, the European Union and its various entities and member states have sought ways to promote language education. Within the past two decades, the Council of Europe and the European Commission have made suggestions, action plans, and guidelines which serve to assist the member states to improve their language education policies. With the idea that most European youths should be competent in their mother tongue plus two additional languages, the Council of Europe has established educational policies which incorporate Plurilingualism and Interculturalism. Due to globalization and internationalization, the Council of Europe has offered approaches and guidelines at a macro-level to assist member states. With a macro-framework in place, the teachers and systems at the local level will be able to set up micro-frameworks which then can be used to support their efforts teaching Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). By having these types of frameworks in place, the member states will be able to support not just the official languages of the state, but they will be able to offer support to language minorities including languages and cultures of migrants.
Key Terms
- Content and Language Integrated Learning
- a program in which a second language is used to teach non-linguistic content matter, such as the teaching of mathematics in French to students in Italy
- Globalization
- "[A]n increasing internationalisation of markets for goods and services, the means of production, financial systems, competition, corporations, technology and industries. … Amongst other things this gives rise to increased mobility of capital, faster propagation of technological innovations and an increasing interdependency and uniformity of national markets." (OECD Statistics Directorate, 2018) [4]
- Hegemony
- cultural, political, economic, or military dominance of one group over others, often accompanied by a common-sense acceptance of the asymmetry
- Linguistic Diversity
- having an equitable representation of multiple languages in one context, either in languages taught, or in languages spoken at home
- Migrant
- A person "changing their residence to or from a giveb area (usually a country) during a given time period (usually one year)" (Eurostat, 2018)[1]
- Multiculturalism/Multilingualism
- the acknowledgment and respect of various languages and cultures within the same community
- Nationalism
- loyalty and the promotion of a specific nation or state
- Neoliberalism
- a form of liberalism that favors free-market capitalism
- Plurilingualism/Pluriculturalism
- the competent shift between more than one language and culture depending on the specific context (García, 2009)[3]
- Regional or Minority Language
- languages “different from the official language(s) of a given state, and are traditionally used within a part or region of this state by a group of its nationals that is smaller than the rest of the population (minority)” (European Parliament, 2016).[2]
- Social Integration/Cohesion
- Equal opportunities for mobility, education, employment, personal development, information access and cultural enrichment (García, 2009)[3]
- Translanguaging
- "multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds" (García, 2009)[3]