Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC)

Helmut Johannes Vollmer

University of Osnabrück, Germany

Strasbourg, October 16-18, 2006

2

Language Education in School• Language(s) as School Subjects

- National/Official Language of Country: LS- Foreign Language Education- Second/Heritage Language Education

• Language(s) as a Medium of Teaching and Learning Across the Curriculum (LAC)- Subject-specific language use/discourse comp.- Bilingual Education/Content and Language Inte-grated Learning (CLIL): a special case of LAC

3

Languages Across the Curriculum

• Extending skills and competences from LS (basis)

• Specifically new language requirements 1. Acquiring/Using Subject-specific terminology2. Learning new ways of looking at the world, of thinking and of communicating about it3. Observing specific thematic patterns, rhetorical structures+comm.conventions of discourse commun.

• Widening the concept of communication into the whole range of semiotics

4

Modes of communication• Listening: comprehending oral input/intake

• Speaking: constructing meaningful utterances

• Reading: understanding written texts

• Writing: producing written texts/discourse

• Viewing: attending to non-verbal signs/ information

• Shaping: using graphical/visual means of expression

• Watching: attending to movements/bodily developm.

• Moving: using the whole body/person/multi-medial expression

5

Content, Language and Thinking

• Language is a tool for content , for conceptualizing, for constructing and linking subject-specific information

• Language is linked to the thinking process/is used in it• Language supports or even carries mental activities and

precision in cognition; it is self-reflexive • Language helps to bridge between tasks, their internal

processing and the explicit formulation of solutions• Language materializes in different discourse functions

like naming, defining, describing, explaining, evaluating

6

A Model of Subject-Specific Competence

Content Knowledge Procedural Competence

Discourse CompetenceDiscourse Competence

7

Components of Subject-Specific Discourse Competence

• Comprehending, identifying, selecting and/or integrating new information/Restructuring inform.

• Expressing reconstructed knowledge as well as new insights / linking them into (existing) networks

• Constructing and communicating cohesive and coherent pieces of information (Texts/Graphs)

• Negotiating perceptions/insights/meanings/positions with others (=subject-specific interaction)

8

Linguistic Indicators of Subject-Specific Discourse Competence

• Expressing subject-specific concepts in the right terminology (register: single+ multi-word expr.)

• Using a rational, formal, explicit academic or pre-scientific style of expression

• Logic+Structuring of whole utterances/texts

• Communicating the right discourse functions

• Giving reasons or evidence/supporting one‘s findings or views/using argumentative structures

9

Cognitive-Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)

• Language of school /acedemic subjects/ of science

• requires the performance of other speech acts and discourse functions than in BICS (personal topics)

• requires the transition from everyday language use to academic or pre-scientific language use

• leads to the development of academic literacy = being able to use language for content purposes(TRANSFERABLE between subjects)

10

Example from Chemistry: Developing the notion of Reaction

• Starting with everyday concepts/understandings• Setting up experimental conditions for own

observations and recordings• Summarising+interpreting the data, • Formulating possible rules or regularities• Developing, testing + negotiating own hypotheses• Defining REACTION in subject-specific terms

11

Example from Mathematics

• Developing the concept of numbers as representing aspects of observed reality

• Ordinal numbers (1, 2, 3,......n)

• Cardinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd,........last)

• Relating numbers to other (observable) features like colour, shape, function, gender, money)

• Experiencing numbers as a secondary system or tool for communication (NUMERACY)

12

Example from Geography: Chinese Agriculture-a success

story?• Time line / Duration

• Definitions: ...is/means/can be defined as ...

• Modality: Permission versus Obligation

• Contrast: Winners - Loosers

• Realistic Conditions: focus on if-clauses (type 1)

• Causal chains:conjunct.+sentence linking adverbs

• Giving reasons and explanations

13

Obstacles to be overcome

• (1) Lack of a precise understanding of what LAC means and requires

• (2) Attitudes of teachers as subject teachers: Lack responsibility for language learning

• (3) Absence of an agent for cross-curricular planning and coordination

• Consequences for T.E.: Every learning is language learning, every teaching is language teaching, every teacher is a language specialist!!!

14

LAC: a way towards Plurilingualism

• LAC leads to a first/basic form of plurilingualism= acquiring new varieties of language use of LS (or L1) in different subjects

• Foreign or second language learning leads to a second form of external / explicit plurilingualism= a new language/a new language repertoire is ac-quired and thus a new means of communication

• Bilingual education or CLIL leads to both types

15

A Whole School Language Policy• relating language education in LS to subject-specific

language learning and competencies across all subjects• integrating content and language learning (CLIL) by

using foreign language(s) for subject-matter teaching• relating education in LS to foreign or second language

learning• relating the learning of the first foreign language to that

of other foreign languages• relating foreign language education to heritage language

education.