Association of Language Testers in Europe
ALTE
ALTE is an association of language test providers who work together to promote the fair and accurate assessment of linguistic ability across Europe and beyond.
ID: 455322530918-70
Lobbying Activity
Response to Improving language learning in Europe
23 Mar 2018
It is important to acknowledge the benefits of European citizens learning languages and the Commission’s aim to improve this in a multilingual way. However, it is perhaps necessary to consider whether the 2002 goal of “mother tongue (or language of schooling) + at least two other languages” can be adapted or expanded, given that it is now more than fifteen years old.
Since then, the shift in both theory and practice has started to move towards enhancing plurilingual competences, that is to say by enabling and promoting individuals to use many languages, including dialects, in the many contexts they find themselves in, rather than learning, and using, languages separately in isolation. The traditional classroom set-up of having an English class, then a French class, then a German class, for example, with no or little shared pedagogy between them, let alone the possibility of using other languages in other classes and situations, has consolidated this separate view of languages, and neither given the opportunity nor motivation to school-aged children to actually use a variety of languages in the contexts they find themselves in their daily lives.
In addition, the fact that many children in Europe have more than one ‘mother tongue’ and/or more than one ‘language of schooling’ does not seem to fit the Barcelona 2002 model, but if an education based on promoting plurilingual competences were to be pursued, then the situations that certain European schoolchildren find themselves in could be accounted for: an example being a bilingual Asian migrant in Ireland, who has two ‘mother tongues’, two more ‘languages of schooling’ (Irish and English), with a further language (French) taught at school, as well as the plurilingual competence to switch between the languages in appropriate contexts.
Conclusions from the European Survey on Language Competences (2012) showed that ‘a language is learned better where motivation is high, where learners perceive it to be useful, and where it is indeed used outside school’. That is to say, that children (and adults) must have a positive perception of learning languages because they see the real need for use of languages. Children must grow up seeing use of languages in, and as, a community, rather than languages in isolated lessons at school. The latter scenario is still commonplace in a majority of schools in Europe. Stakeholders in the community must encourage the use of multiple languages in multiple contexts: in school, of course, but also especially at home, and then with peers, in society, on TV, on the internet, etc. Interactions with users of other languages in the community should be encouraged, as well as taking opportunities to use other languages in other contexts to build language use (e.g. if you are a fan of Italian football, why not play a game of football communicating in Italian rather than your home language?) This is task-based learning. Furthermore, in the digital world, it is right to capitalise on various digital tools and resources, as these often prove to be motivational for learning languages if they are perceived as fun, low-cost and easy-to-use.
It is indeed right to look at the acquisition of communicative competences rather than mere participation in language learning, and this is where the role of quality language tests can come in to provide measurements, and interpretation of these measurements, to stakeholders. Formal, summative language tests are only a part of language assessment, as the concept of learning-oriented assessment shows us that there are many opportunities for language assessment stemming from language learning both inside and outside the traditional classroom.
Educational policies should therefore encourage language use centred on meaning-making in social contexts, by training teachers and headteachers, as well as parents and other stakeholders, to give them the tools, tips and resources to enact this in practice.
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