LANGUAGE ACROSS THE CURRICULUM – A WAY TOWARDS PLURILINGUALISM
Introduction
Language across the curriculum (LAC)
relates to linking different forms and aspects of language education within the
school, particularly emphasising the role of language in all subject-matter learning.
LAC has two meanings: in the narrow sense it is a concept suggesting the importance
of language work and language training in all non-linguistic subjects. In the wider
sense it is a concept demanding a comprehensive model of language education as the
basis of a whole school language policy. The latter includes linking all languages
as subjects (mother tongue education, foreign language education, second (or third)
language education) and the language dimension in all other subjects. In the following
I will focus on LAC in its narrow sense: extending the know- ledge and skills acquired
through the language of school (LS) into subject- specific language vari-eties and
discourse competencies, leading to a first (internal) or basic form of plurilingualism.
A second form of (external) plurilingualism develops, when other languages than
the LS and thus new language repertoires are acquired, through foreign language
education or CLIL. Both types of plurilingualism are indispensable for becoming
linguistically and culturally sensitive and knowledgeable and for developing
democratic citizenship and participation within Europe.
Language Across the Curriculum (LAC)
is a concept and a policy. As a concept it acknowledges the fact that language education
in school does not only take place in specific language subjects such as mother
tongue education, foreign language education, second language education etc., but
also in each and every other subject, in each and every activity in school, across
the whole curriculum. LAC leads to new forms of language use of Ll or LS (language
of the school), to new types of discourse behaviour, to extended linguistic competences,
the bases of which are already laid, mainly through early childhood socialisation
and through Ll/LS education in school.
This is in accordance with the latest
research findings on Reading Comprehension (which is demanded extensively in each
non-linguistic subject-matter learning) and with insights that LS/Ll as a subject
in school cannot be exclusively responsible for language education, but that the
development of language skills and competences has to be integrated also into subject-specific
teaching.
1. Language in subject-specific
contexts vs. foreign language education
LAC in the narrow sense focuses on
the role of language in subject--specific learning and teaching. In addition to
the many basic goals of LS/Ll, it leads to other forms of functional language use,
to mastering new domains and discourse types and moving towards a more explicit
or "pre-scientific" mode of thinking and communicating. In subject--specific
contexts language is used as a tool for cognitively demanding tasks and purposes.
This can be seen as an application of the existing language proficiency in new contexts
and as an extension and transformation of this proficiency unto a higher or deeper
level of cognitive-academic use.
New forms of language use are not only
happening in one non--linguistic subject, but in all of them. Thus we are talking
about a central educational experience which is substantial for the learner and
which will have a marked effect on his or her self-perception and learning biography.
Although each non-linguistic subject requires slightly different competences which
have to do with their specific ways of proceeding in gaining new insights and integrating
them into the existing knowledge structures, there is also a large area of overlap
in competence requirements between subjects (the cross-curricular nature of the
basic language categories, mental procedures and discourse components).
We know from research (e.g. Vollmer,
forthcoming) that these academic language skills and competences do not develop
all by themselves, simply through their use in subject-specific contexts alone.
Rather, they have to be sufficiently stimulated and trained through systematic development
and language awareness raising measures. Only then can we hope for all of our students
to arrive at a level of academic language use and discourse competence which will
allow them to participate successfully (or at least to a satisfying degree) in subject-
-specific learning experiences, in discussions and developments of the respective
disciplines (being the representatives of scientific thinking) and in the solution
of societal problems related to or based on the knowledge structures of those disciplines.
Being confronted with new content domains and being challenged by them mentally
as much as linguistically constitutes also - or at least supports - the development
of new identities within one and the same overall cultural macrostructure linked
to Ll/LS. By extending the knowledge and skills already acquired through Ll/LS into
subject-specific language varieties and discourse competencies, a learner develops
a first (internal) or basic form of plurilingualism.
In contrast, foreign language education
aims at the acquisition of another (mostly second or third) language system or language
repertoire in addition to that of Ll/LS, but it does so by focussing on the development
of the respective language itself as a code, as a system of rules. Consequently,
foreign language education is more concerned with the development of basic interpersonal
communication skills (BICS) than of cognitive-acade-mic language proficiency (CALP,
cf. Cummins l978). In doing so it adds to the development of plurilingualism in
its external or explicit form - explicit because a new language or a new language
repertoire is acquired and thus new means of communication developed, contrary to
LAC where new discourse types are acquired within the already existing language
system of Ll/LS.
As to Content and Language Integrated
Learning (CLIL) or "bilingual education" - this is a special case of LAC.
Bilingual education supports the development of both types of plurilingualism. On
the one hand, the mastery and knowledge of the foreign language is deepened by using
it more frequently in a meaningful, functional way; on the other hand, the
foreign language repertoire is used for cognitive-academic purposes,embedded into
content learning, leading to the development of subject--specific discourse competence
in L2/L3 etc. This in turn can transfer back to LS/Ll under certain favourable conditions
(cf. the inter- dependence hypothesis between Ll and L2 from Cummins l979 and the
model of a common underlying proficiency, driven by a central operating system).
CLIL can, in the best of all cases, lead to cross-linguistic and even cross-cultural
forms of thinking and communicating, provided there is room within CLIL teaching
for language work, for comparison of expressions, of discourse styles, of linguistically
mediated modes of thinking and of viewing reality (cf. Vollmer 2005).
LAC, as outlined so far, is
extremely important for qualifying young or adolescent learners so that they can
function well within the school as an academic setting, benefit from the subject-based
offers of the school, developing basic thinking and communication skills which are
absolutely necessary and vital for their personal development and their future career
in the workplace, in society, in trans-national encounters and in democratic actions:
language is the key to negotiation of meaning and informed decision-making in all
of these cases. Therefore the Council of Europe rightly suggests that each of its
member states should develop a comprehensive and coherent language education policy
including LAC and explicitly relate it to LS/Ll education. It cannot be overlooked,
however, that there are massive problems to be solved on the way to success.
2. Origins of LAC
LAC as a concept has been around for
some time in academic and pedagogic theoretical discourse, but less so in school
practice. It was developed in the late 70s/early 80s of the last century. It originated
in Great Britain, where the idea of linking LAC with school language policies as
a whole received formal recognition in the so-called Bullock Report (entitled A
Language for Life):
Each school should have an organised
policy for language across the curriculum, establishing every teacher's involvement
in language and reading development throughout the years of schooling. (DES
l975: 5l4)
A decade later this was underlined
in the Swann Report (Education for All):
Unless there is a school language and
learning policy across the curriculum there will be wastage of effort and often
confusion. (DES l985: 4l9)
The ideas of LAC itself, which had
received real impetus in that report, have somewhat changed over time, they were
also influenced by work outside Britain. Nevertheless, the basic tenets on which
LAC rests, have stayed the same: they focus on the importance of language in and
for school education, for all subject-matter learning, across the whole curriculum
(cf. Corson l990: 74):
l. Language develops mainly through its purposeful use (domains to be broadened)
2. Learning (often) involves talking, writing, shaping and moving
(normally in reaction to perceptions)
3. Learning often occurs through speaking or writing as much
as through shaping and moving
4. Language use contributes to /is a pre-requisite for cognitive
development
5. Language is the medium for reflecting learning, for improving
it, for becoming autonomous.
Much has been studied about the role
of language in learning and in cognition ever since (e.g. Bereiter/Scardamalia l993);
much has been learned about language processing and language use, its basic structures,
functions and similarities in all the activities and subjects in school (see Lemke
l990, for example). But the institution itself apparently has some difficulties
in accepting cross-curricular responsibilities; it also has difficulties in dealing
with differences in their clientele, with heterogeneity in their studentship and
particularly with disadvantaged learners for whose basic, successful education they
are equally responsible: The criticism of Bernstein (l969) that school does not
only not overcome these disadvantages, but rather reproduces them systematically
through their linguistic norms and procedures, is probably still valid today.
2.2. Goals of LAC
The goals of LAC are - simply speaking
- to support language development in each and every child, in all domains of language
use, in each learning activity in school. This implies to reflect about the strongly
language-mediated evaluation criteria for success in academic learning, in passing
tests and in getting good marks. All of these heavily depend on managing and manipulating
language as communication which therefore has to be learned by each and every student.
But this development should be based on the linguistic capacities and potentials
of the children themselves, on what they bring to school, not on the norms of the
school as a middle-class institution alone. These norms coincide, however, with
notions of a clear, precise, explicit, rational or pre- scientific language use.
At this point we move into a more political type of discourse influenced by the
important work of Basil Bernstein, his sociolinguistic findings in the l960s and
the consequences to be drawn on that empirical basis. This debate centres on the
issue whether the school should adapt to the learner or the learners to the school
- or to put it in Bernstein's terms: there are differences in language use on the
part of some learners (with a lower-class socio-cultural background), but no deficiencies
to be overcome or remedied, the restricted code of those learners is (or seems to
be) functionally equivalent to the one identified as elaborated - those were the
conceptual labels in the discourse of the time which point to the existence of "institutionalised"
educational inequalities and the search for measures and policies of overcoming
them ever since.
Two great changes have occurred in
the development of modern societies and consequently in the mental setup of school
children since the l960/l970s: For once, the possibilities to fail in school (and
thus to become a disadvantaged or "risk learner") have severely increased;
at the same time, the type of literacy prevalent in school children, their ways
of perceiving reality and of learning have also changed dramatically in the multi-media
age (cf. Kress 2003). LAC can no longer narrowly be seen as the exclusive domain
of Ll/LS education nor is it confined solely to the conventional four modes of language
use: In addition to Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking all non-verbal ways
of representation (in PISA partly identified as "discontinuous texts")
are rightly seen as part of the overall semiotic system that we have at hand and
that we use when communicating. These include visual, images, graphs, movements
etc. - all "physical" forms of human perception and expression. Thus,
we have to distinguish eight modes of human activities involving language (cf. Corson
l990: 72), namely:
• Listening: comprehending oral input/intake
• Speaking: constructing meaningful
utterances
• Reading: understanding written texts
• Writing: producing written texts/discourse
• Viewing: attending to visual signs/information
• Shaping: using visual means of expression
• Watching: attending to the movements
Moving: using the whole body, the whole
person.
The concept of LAC also claims that
language and learning are deeply linked. Therefore, wishing to acknowledge and develop
children's existing mental and linguistic capacities, LAC focuses on active, constructive,
potentially autonomous learning:
,Language plays a central role in learning.
No matter what the subject area, students assimilate new concepts largely through
language that is when they listen to and talk, read and write about what they are
learning and relate this to what they already know. Through speaking and writing,
language is linked to the thinking process and is a manifestation of the thinking
that is taking place. Thus, by explaining and expressing personal interpretations
of new learnings in the various subject fields, students clarify and increase both
their knowledge of the concepts in those fields and their understanding of the ways
in which language is used in each." (Ontario Ministry of Education l984; quoted
in Corson l990: 75).
Consequently, it is suggested that
all teachers participate in developing language within their fields of responsibility
and contribute to a school learning policy. Finally, the relationship between language
and thinking has become central for LAC, mainly supported by findings in cognitive
science, but also in linguistics and language pedagogy itself. In this context,
we can state the following beliefs:
·
Language
is more than communication skills
·
Language
is linked to the thinking process and is used in it
·
Language
is a tool for conceptualizing and for linking information
·
Language
supports mental activities and precision in cognition • which is particularly true
for subject-based writing
·
Language
helps to bridge between cognitively demanding tasks and their solutions in a more
and more de-contextualized manner
·
Language
helps to structure discourse and realise discourse functions.
So the overall goal is not just developing
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency, but "Conceptual Literacy" (see
below).
2.3. Difficulties
These goals have begun to spread slowly
within the last two or three decades, although they were never really fully put
into practice, as far as I know. There was never a wider application of them, at
least there is no documentation available about such a movement: apparently LAC
was never practised to any larger extent on a regular basis, neither in Britain
nor in North America - although the relevant literature quotes many well-meant proposals
and programmes from the l980s, for different levels of schooling, for different
contexts of formal education, for different genders and social groups. But since
there are no further reports about implementation, one can conclude that the concept
of LAC must have more or less failed - at least in the UK in the 70s and 80s.
Corson (l990: 76-77) lists a number
of the difficulties involved in making LAC work in practice: On the one hand, these
have to do with the attitudes of teachers, the objection or even resistance of many
subject teachers to become "language teachers" on top (at least in their
view), although this is clearly a misunderstanding of their role within LAC. According
to my knowledge, this has never been expressed explicitly nor is there any single
case study published which would have outlined the feelings and arguments or the
positions of the different proponents involved at the time. On the other hand, there
might not have been a clear or precise conceptualisation as yet of what it means
to do language education across the curriculum, to support subject-matter learning
through language work, nor didactic suggestions of how exactly to integrate content
and language learning in a specific course or subject. This could explain part of
the difficulties in realising LAC programmes and their possible failure.
Another obstacle lay in the fact that
there was no one centrally responsible in the school for such a cross-curricular
approach, except perhaps the head master or principal. But for an administrator
it would be impossible to see to it that LAC really works. This is a structural
weakness, in school as much as in university, since nobody can be identified who
is or feels responsible for this type of qualification in subject-specific language
skills, in conceptualising language learning in this functional way and in coordinating
the development of a whole school/whole university language education policy accordingly.
Unfortunately, all of the difficulties mentioned are still valid.
Introducing LAC requires a radical
change in the attitudes and mentality of the teachers involved, the ones already
in service as much as the ones still in teacher education. Every teacher has to
be confronted with the issues of academic language use, oral and written, and be
prepared and trained with fantasy for integrating language into the subject-matter
teaching at school. Every subject teacher student has to learn how to define minimal
goals in conceptual and discourse terms and what to do with the ones he either misses
or encounters in school. All of these decisions and skills require a high degree
of information and of professional competence on the part of the teacher in terms
of theory, curriculum planning and teaching methodology.
