George Wilson, our Head of English Programmes, recently gave a talk about what English-language teachers can learn from regional-language teaching initiatives at the IATEFL Conference in Brighton. In this blog post, he shares some of his thoughts.
On the continent of Europe, there are currently 129 vulnerable or endangered regional languages - great languages such as Occitan, Breton, Welsh or Cornish. Such languages become endangered when parents stop speaking them to their children and, in such cases, education becomes the most important way of protecting them and bringing them back to life. Despite the importance of their work, regional-language educators often work in challenging situations, without the support, resources and training available to English-languages teachers. My talk argued, however, that the difficulties they face have often forced them to engage in important debates and innovative practices from which the English Language Teaching (ELT) community can learn useful lessons.
Multilingual Practices
The first of these lessons is around language use in the learning process. In line with our growing understanding of language acquisition, there is increasing recognition within the ELT community that languages are not learnt in isolation and that learners’ own languages can be used to support the learning of English. This shift remains gradual, however, and the idea of English-only classrooms remains deeply rooted in ELT training and practice. Regional-language teachers have long been experimenting with multilingual practices however. For example, the term ‘translanguaging’, which refers to the use of multiple languages to reinforce learners’ conceptual understanding, was first coined in Wales in the 1980s, and translanguaging has now received official recognition as a core skill in the new Curriculum for Wales. There is therefore much that the ELT community can learn from the experience of their regional language colleagues, whether it be in terms of assessment, teacher training or the design of teaching materials that respect the role of multilingualism in the learning process.
Language and identity
There is also much that can be learnt from the way in which regional-language teachers link language to their learners’ identities. The English language has become an international lingua franca that can seem to belong to everyone and to no-one at the same time. Indeed, as part of its Future of English study, the British Council interviewed various education stakeholders across Europe and concluded that English is now often considered to be “a means to an end” rather than a foreign language (Patel, Solly and Copeland). This is radically different to the way in which regional languages are taught. Breton teaching, for instance, is consciously and consistently linked to “a sense of place”, with classes emphasising the links between the language, the local environment and the learners’ everyday lives. Such an approach has interesting implications for ELT, suggesting it could be useful to explore ways of underlining the relevance of English for our learners’ own lives so that they develop real ownership of this international language.
