National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Faculty of English Language and Literature

Applied Linguistics in Foreign Language Teaching

Monolingual
practices in
mainstream
(foreign) language
teaching, learning
and testing in
Europe
Prof. Bessie Dendrinos
Language, languages around us
 Language is all around us, in textual form, as it is
displayed in the streets of our towns and cities –on street
and commercial signs, on posters, shop windows, traffic
signs– as it appears on pharmaceutical products,
appliances, on super market shelves, on the web!
 The texts we encounter are often not monolingual…
 bilingual trilingual

multilingual
quadrilingual
multilingual
multilingual
The multimodality around us
 The texts that we are surrounded by are like the texts we
just saw, or like this:
and like this:
Meanings are shaped multimodally;
That is, by combining any of the following semiotic modes:
 writing

 oral speech

 visuals (still or moving image, sculpture, craft, etc.)

 audio texts (music, sounds, noises, alerts, etc.)

 movement, physical contact and kinaesthesia

 gestures, expressions, eye movements and gaze, demeanours of the

body, dance, action sequences, etc.
 proximity, spacing, layout, interpersonal distance, etc.
 New text types & textual forms in a digital
age
past Textual parallels: present

business card, resume LinkedIn

Scrapbook Facebook
Diary, newspaper opinion column Blogs
Encyclopaedia Wikipedia
Broadcast TV Interactive TV, You Tube
Manuscript Google Docs
Broadcast radio, Playlists podcast, iPod
Photo album, picture book Flickr
Memo, letter Email,
Brochure Website
Telegraph, Telegramme Twitter, SMS
Learning how to mean…
 We learn how to make meanings with language –
 in combination with other semiotic modes (i.e., multimodally)

 as used in a variety of codes

 as used in different discourse environments

 as used in different cultural contexts

 We learn language
 by experience –direct or indirect

 in formal and informal educational contexts

 throughout our lives

Language learning
 Language learning occurs as a person's experience of language in
its cultural contexts expands from the language of the home, to that
of society at large and then to the languages of other peoples
(whether learnt at school or by direct experience).
 As this happens, the language learner does not keep the different
languages and cultures in strictly separated mental compartments,
but rather builds up a communicative competence to which all
knowledge and experience of language(s) contributes and in which
languages interrelate and interact.

cf. Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)

Plurilingual language learning
 The CEFR’s view of how language learning occurs is the basis upon
which a ‘plurilingual’ approach to (foreign) language teaching and
testing is supported and endorsed.
Plurilingualism – multilingualism
 Note that the CEFR distinguishes between
 societal multilingualism

 individual plurilingualism

 In this presentation, we employ the term multilingualism as used by

the European Commission, in an all encompassing sense, to refer
to:
 groups or individuals who speak a number of languages

 communities or institutions where several languages co-exist

 the mixing of languages in a communicative event

 school curricula offering several languages to pupils

 We use the term multilingualism in juxtaposition to the term

monolingualism and its ‘kin’ monoculturalism
Language teaching and testing
 Unlike language learning, all language teaching (foreign and mother
tongue alike) is monolingual, monocultural, and monomodal.
 The same is true of language testing, despite the efforts of
organizations, such as (ALTE) to convince us otherwise. In
agreement with Shohamy (2011):
 Just as language education programmes in Europe are still bound to
their monolingual ideologies and built around the ‘native speaker’
competence model, classroom tests and test papers of the most popular
examination batteries are constructed as monolingual instruments too.
Progress and proficiency tests are intended to measure test-takers’
language competence or performance in a single language, their
monolingual/ monocultural skills and awareness.
 The dominant paradigms in language teaching and testing are
based on monolingual views of language (developing alongside the
ideologies of national and linguistic homogeneities).
Monolingual, monoglossic Europe
 European states and citizens have been nourished by the ideals of
monolingualism, monoglossia and monoculturalism.
 These ideals and a monolingual ethos of communication were
cultivated during the previous two centuries, when the European
nation-states needed to build their political and social cohesion
around an official, standardized language (destined to dominate all
other linguistic varieties and languages).
European attitudes to language(s)
 Europeans seem to still need to be convinced as to the benefits of
multilingualism, viewed as:
 an essential aspect of European integration on a political,

economic, scientific, and cultural level.

 a contribution to a deeper awareness of cultural differences, to

mutual understanding, and avoidance of conflict

 a key to the European values of democracy, equality,

transparency, and competitiveness

 a means to empowering people, enhancing their creativity and

problem solving skills.

European attitudes to language(s)
 ‘Convincing’ the Europeans is warranted by that:
 the advantages of multilingualism are still seriously doubted given

that multiculturalism is viewed as a precarious outcome of our

postmodern condition and/or of economic globalisation
 a large potion of the population still believe the best way to

achieve academic, professional and social success is by way of

exhibiting mastery in English and perhaps also being proficient in
another ‘important’ European language.
Euro promotion of multilingualism
 The need for strategic action to promote multilingualism in Europe
was at the heart of a new action by the European Commission – the
development of the “Civil Society Platform” at the launch meeting of
which the key messages announced were:
 To promote multilingualism for social cohesion and intercultural
dialogue
 To provide opportunities for migrants to learn the language of the
host country and also to cultivate their own native language
 To take advantage of the media which have the potential to open
channels for intercultural dialogue
 To enhance multilingualism policy to secure the rights of all
European languages (official, regional, minority and migrant
languages)
 To secure language learning opportunities for all citizens,
throughout their lives
How has multilingualism been
promoted?
 Some researchers (e.g., Gal 2010, Krzyzanowski & Wodak 2011,
Phillipson 2003, Wright 2004) have argued that the EU perceives its
multilingualism in rather limited ways.
 Gal, for example, claims that the EU is positioned as a “top down regime
of multilingual standardization that tries to manage increased diversity in
the same ways nation states managed non-standard varieties.”
 I argue elsewhere (Dendrinos 2004) that the ideology articulated ‘at the
top’ favours a politics of difference that may provide a forum for creating
unity without denying the particular, the multiple and the specific. However,
such politics serve as ground to shift attention away from the problem of
how to make Europe's linguistic and cultural diversity a political referent
outside the antagonistic relations of cultural domination and subordination.
The discursive practices of member states arise from such antagonistic
relations, ultimately maintaining linguistic and cultural hegemony
(Dendrinos 1996; Macedo, Dendrinos & Gounari 2003).
Language education
recommendations
One of the “Civil Society Platform” WGs, appointed by the Commission
in 2010 to propose ways for effectively achieving European
multilingualism was concerned with Language Education. Participating in
the WG, as an EFNIL representative, the Report which in fact I prepared
included the recommendations below:
 Develop language inclusive (rather than language exclusive)

education policies
 Rethink language education from the perspective of multilingualism

 Adopt language didactic approaches which involve the use of more

than one language

 Provide conscious support for the teaching/learning of neighbouring

and of the less widely used and taught languages

 Raise awareness with regard to the benefits of early language

learning, lifelong language learning, and informal, as well as non-

formal language learning.
Rethinking (foreign) language education

 How can we begin rethinking about foreign language education in a

multilingual perspective?
 What types of foreign language education pedagogies are
appropriate for the development of multilingual competence(s)?
 How can a coherent multiliteracy pedagogy be translated into
pedagogical action?
 What types of tools are needed to measure and formally recognize
multilingual competence and multiliteracies?
Moving beyond monolingual
language education
 All articles included in the current special issue of the Modern
Language Journal argue for the expansion of the language learning
construct beyond monolingual views of language, toward different
forms of multilingualism.
 In these articles, as well as in the wider field of multilingual studies,
it seems that there are two main tendencies or approaches to
multilingual education:
 the first promotes the teaching/learning of multiple languages within the
same space (classrooms, schools, communities)
 the second promotes the development of a ‘multilingual ethos of
communication’ where boundaries between languages and codes are
disrupted
Multilingual education and ideology
 The two approaches are underlined by two distinct ideologies or
views of language:
 The first is a view of language as a closed and homogeneous

construct
 The second views language as a non-finite concept used to
negotiate and create meanings (characterized by hybridity, made
up by fusions and varieties that cross over in creative ways and
open up to different forms of negotiation.
Approaches to multilingualism and
pedagogies
 The multiple languages approach (building on arguments
concerning the positive transfer among multiple languages) is
connected with CLIL programmes, the European Schools model, the
teaching of foreign languages at a very early age school
programmes, and proficiency development following the ‘native
speaker’ paradigm in as many languages as possible
 The language fusion approach can be associated with
intercomprehension and partial skills development, with
translanguaging, intercultural and interlinguistic mediation
pedagogies.
Rethinking language education
Language education for multilingualism is not just about learning lots of
foreign languages but about:
 turning European schools (which remain monoglossic spaces of
learning) into multilingual topoi –places where a single language or a
single mode of semiosis does not dominate the curriculum but where
several languages and multimodality come into play and are used as
resources for meaning making.
 involving the languages that children bring to school with them rather
than crossing them out of the school language education policy.
 developing new types of programmes for the languages traditionally
included in the school’s foreign language curriculum with the
intention of developing students’ interlinguistic and intercultural
competence
Interlinguistic and intercultural competence
 My notion of interlinguistic competence derives from a
reconsideration of the aims of a foreign language pedagogy
oriented toward the native speaker –itself an outdated and
problematic term.
 Given the need for multilingual and multicultural literacy, my
interest lies in a foreign language pedagogy which prepares
learners to use the languages they are learning as meaning
making mechanisms and so increase the quantity and quality of
their communication with speakers of other languages
 I am thinking of a foreign language pedagogy which is oriented
toward developing in learners the competence to operate at the
border between a number of languages, manoeuvring their way
through communicative events by using the sociocultural
knowledge and skills they have developed as language users, by
making maximal use of their communication strategies, their
multiliteracy skills, their abilities to deal with the multimodality of
texts, and of their translinguistic and transcultural knowledge.
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