Glossaire multilingue de termes clés de l’éducation aux langues

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is an internationally recognized system for describing language proficiency. The CEFR is designed to provide a transparent, coherent and comprehensive basis for the elaboration of language syllabuses and curriculum guidelines, the design of teaching and learning materials, and the assessment of foreign language proficiency.

“The competent and positive engagement with digital technologies (creating, working, sharing, socializing, investigating, playing, communicating and learning); participating actively and responsibly (values, skills, attitudes, knowledge) in communities (local, national, global) at all levels (political, economic, social, cultural and intercultural); being involved in a double process of lifelong learning (in formal, informal and non-formal settings) and continuously defending human dignity.”

The quality of parts meshing together to make up a holistic entity. For example, parts of a programme (objectives, teaching, assessment) or parts of a text (beginning, middle, end). Joined-up thinking.

In the context of this project, collaboration in teachers’ work is seen as an essential component for transforming educational practices, because it breaks teachers’ isolation and facilitates change. Collaboration involves professional interactions that are more or less interdependent, determined by common tasks or objectives (Dochy et al., 2015: p. 23), such as the desire to co-construct a school culture marked by pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures. Here we adopt a strong interpretation of the concept of collaboration as a fundamental means of transforming teaching knowledge and practices. This includes cooperation between teachers and/or with other actors within the educational community, and is reflected in actions of assistance, support, and capable of leading to a plurilingual and intercultural education.

Further information

As explained by Villavicencio, Jaffe-Walter & Klevan (2021), “The literature on teacher collaboration emphasizes that effective collaboration involves a ‘deprivatization’ of practice (Little, 1990) as teachers come together to reflect on and share information related to teaching and learning, engage in inquiry into students’ needs, and learn new pedagogical strategies (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999; Datnow, 2011; Little, 2003; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001)” (p. 103-227). In this sense, collaboration is considered essential if teachers want to change established teaching methodologies and act to make plurilingual and intercultural education a reality in language and culture teaching/learning contexts.

A group of people with expertise in relevant areas, here regarding (language) curriculum structuring, implementation and evaluation.

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who share a craft and/or a profession, or a concern or interest for something they do, and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. This definition reflects the fundamentally social nature of human learning.

The distinction between the ability of getting a message across and the level of quality of the language used. Often referred to as fluency versus accuracy, the opposition highlights the need for targeted focus on either element at different moments of the teaching/learning process.

The ability to do something successfully or efficiently by applying one’s knowledge and skills.

The capacity to call upon one’s personal resources, consisting of knowledge, attitudes and skills, to perform a task. In the use of languages, communicative competence draws on linguistic (lexicon and functioning of the language), sociolinguistic (social rules in use of the language) and pragmatic components to perform a communicative task. Communicative competence is therefore based on knowledge about the functioning and use of languages, skills in implementing that knowledge and the capacity to adopt a favourable attitude to communication (e.g. ability to listen, desire to exchange with others, etc.).

The capacity, based on knowledge acquired about the history, civilisation and culture of a country or a group of countries with at least a partly shared history, to identify, understand and respect references shared by the inhabitants of a cultural area, their collective behaviour and the ways of living together which are prevalent there. When people have cultural competences related to several different areas, they possess a pluricultural competence which also enables them to put this knowledge into a relative perspective.

Competences not specific to language, called upon for actions of all kinds, including language activities; defined in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) as savoir (declarative knowledge), savoir-faire (skills and know-how), savoir-être (‘existential’ competence) and savoir-apprendre (ability to learn).

The ability to communicate and interact effectively and appropriately with people of other national, regional or social cultures.

Capacity to interact positively, i.e. critically and empathetically, with any form of otherness. This competence is based essentially on skills and attitudes, but is developed through verbal interaction with educators and peers on the occasion of encounters with manifestations of otherness in the immediate or more distant environment. It is distinct from cultural competence and pluricultural competence (cf. cultural competence).

Intercultural competence can be defined as “the capacity to experience cultural otherness and use it to:

• reflect on matters that are usually taken for granted within one’s own culture and environment;
• evaluate one’s own everyday patterns of perception, thought, feeling and behaviour in order to develop greater self-knowledge and self-understanding;
• act as mediators among people of different cultures, to explain and interpret different perspectives.”

Communicative language competence refers to the qualitative aspect of an individual’s overall language proficiency. In the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), the communicative language competence comprises linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic competences.

Includes lexical, grammatical (morphological, syntactic), semantic, orthographic/orthoepic and phonological knowledge and skills.

An individual’s capacity to call upon the different resources represented by his/her knowledge and skills in different languages in order to handle as effectively as possible the communication tasks with which he/she is confronted. The levels of competence in the different languages may be unbalanced, but they complement one another to form a single competence which should be built upon and of which it is important to be fully aware.

Example

“Plurilingual and pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social actor has proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures. This is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the social actor may draw”.

Definition

The notion of plurilingual competence stands for the full range of an individual’s ability to express themselves in and across the different languages which form part of their linguistic repertoire. This includes phenomena of plurilingual discourse such as code-switching, and the notion of partial competences in different languages or varieties.

Comment

The term plurilingualism is in general use to refer to the entire linguistic repertoire of individuals, while multilingualism, traditionally a more widely used term in English, is used for the (mere) coexistence of more than one language in any given context (e.g. a society, a country). A similar distinction can be made between pluriculturalism, the extent to which individuals may identify with different cultural backgrounds (e.g. heritages), and multiculturalism, the coexistence of different cultures within a society. The notion of intercultural competence (see below) goes one step further than pluriculturalism, though, in that it involves the ability “to experience and analyse cultural otherness” (Language Policy Division 2009: 6).

1.1. “Plurilingual and intercultural competence is the ability to use a plural repertoire of linguistic and cultural resources to meet communication needs or interact with other people, and enrich that repertoire while doing so.

Plurilingual competence refers to the repertoire of resources which individual learners acquire in all the languages they know or have learned, and which also relate to the cultures associated with those languages (languages of schooling, regional / minority and migration languages, modern or classical languages); pluriculturality denotes the ability to participate in different cultures, inter alia by acquiring several languages.

Intercultural competence, for its part, is the ability to experience otherness and cultural diversity, to analyse that experience and to derive benefit from it. Once acquired, intercultural competence makes it easier to understand otherness, establish cognitive and affective links between past and new experiences of otherness, mediate between members of two (or more) social groups and their cultures, and question the assumptions of one’s own cultural group and environment.”

1.2 Plurilingual and pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social actor has proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures.

KEY WORDS

Competence, Repertoire, Communication, Languages, Languages of schooling, Regional and minority languages, Migration languages, Modern and classical languages, Intercultural interaction, Otherness, Mediation

1.1 „Unter mehrsprachiger und plurikultureller Kompetenz wird die Fähigkeit verstanden, das plurale Repertoire an sprachlichen und kulturellen Ressourcen für Kommunikationsbedürfnisse oder für die Interaktion mit Alterität zu mobilisieren und dieses Repertoire zu entwickeln.

Mehrsprachigkeit bezieht sich auf das Repertoire einer Person, bestehend aus Ressourcen, die in all diesen bekannten oder erlernten Sprachen und Kulturen erworben wurden (Unterrichtssprache, Regional- und Minderheitensprachen oder Migrationssprachen, moderne Fremdsprachen oder klassische Sprache); Multikulturalität bezieht sich auf die Fähigkeit, an vielen sozialen Gruppen und ihren Kulturen teilzunehmen.

Interkulturelle Kompetenz bezieht sich auf die Fähigkeit, Alterität und kulturelle Vielfalt zu erfahren, diese Erfahrung zu analysieren und davon zu profitieren. Die auf diese Weise entwickelte interkulturelle Kompetenz zielt darauf ab, Alterität besser zu verstehen, kognitive und affektive Verbindungen zwischen den Errungenschaften und Beiträgen einer neuen
Erfahrung der Alterität herzustellen, eine Vermittlung zwischen verschiedenen sozialen Gruppen zu ermöglichen und die allgemein berücksichtigten Aspekte zu hinterfragen, die als selbstverständlich innerhalb der eigenen Kulturgruppe und des eigenen Milieus gelten.“

1.2 Mehrsprachige und plurikulturelle Kompetenz wird definiert als die Fähigkeit, sprachlich zu kommunizieren und kulturell mit einer Person zu interagieren, die in unterschiedlichem Maße mehrere Sprachen beherrscht und in unterschiedlichem Maße Erfahrung mit mehreren Kulturen hat, und die in der Lage ist, dieses gesamte sprachliche und kulturelle Kapital zu verwalten.

Schlüsselwörter

Kompetenz, Sprachrepertoire, Kommunication, Sprachen, Unterrichtssprachen, Regionale Sprachen und Minderheitssprachen, Migrationssprachen, Moderne Fremdsprachen und klassische Sprachen, Interkulturelle Interaktion, Alterität, Mediation

“Plurilingual and pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social agent has proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures. This is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the user may draw.” (CEFR, p. 168)

Concerns the functional use of linguistic resources; the ability to use language effectively in a contextually appropriate way.

Refers to the conditions for language use in social situations; the ability to use language appropriately in the given social context (level of formality, register, politeness conventions, etc.).

Competences of a general and transferable kind; acquired competences and skills that can be applied in new surroundings, e.g. language awareness, communicative strategies and learning to learn.

The ability to use one or more language varieties to communicate according to the context.

As with the Framework of reference for pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures (FREPA) (see the entry Pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures in this glossary), we have adopted the following theoretical framework, drawing from various works in the field of educational sciences:

Competence refers to “the ability of a subject to mobilise, in an integrated way, internal resources (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and external resources to effectively address a set of complex tasks” (Beckers, 2002: p. 57).

Candelier et al. (2012) give an example of the link between a competence (adaptation) and the internal resources set out by FREPA (pp. 84-91). As for external resources, we might think of a dictionary, or a person with competence in a language whom we can ask for help.

Further information

As Le Boterf (1994: p. 16) points out: “While it is clear that a competence can only mobilise internal resources if the individual disposes of these resources, and that therefore working towards mastery of a competence presupposes working towards mastery of the internal resources that it mobilises, most authors insist that "competence does not reside in the resources (knowledge, abilities, etc.) to be mobilised, but in the actual mobilisation of these resources”.

It is worth noting that another Council of Europe reference framework uses the distinction between competences and resources, the Reference Framework of Competences for a Culture of Democracy (https://www.coe.int/en/web/reference-framework-of-competences-for-democratic-culture/rfcdc

Well-suited, appropriate for its designated role or purpose; shown to work.

The capacity to call upon one’s personal resources, consisting of knowledge, attitudes and skills, to perform a task. In the use of languages, communicative competence draws on linguistic (lexicon and functioning of the language), sociolinguistic (social rules in use of the language) and pragmatic components to perform a communicative task. Communicative competence is therefore based on knowledge about the functioning and use of languages, skills in implementing that knowledge and the capacity to adopt a favourable attitude to communication (e.g. ability to listen, desire to exchange with others, etc.).

See competence

Language awareness refers to the ability to adopt a reflective attitude towards linguistic elements and their use, otherwise stated as the ability to reflect on language ... in order to develop metalinguistic abilities (according to www.unipress.dk/media/3546132/srogforum_58__moore3.pdf).

This term is broad, and it may focus on different elements in different contexts. Hawkins (1999) sees language awareness as a “pentagon” of five elements: mastering the mother tongue; language awareness in the curriculum; education of the ear; ouverture aux langues; and learning how to learn the foreign language. (Boeckmann et al. 2011: 73)

The ability to consciously reflect on the nature and use of language.

Defined criteria that are understood and shared by users of different kinds.

A descriptive, educational planning document that defines the content of a course. It usually includes a clear indication of the objectives and expected outcomes, as well as the time to be allocated to main elements.

Cyclical is used to describe things that are regularly patterned or that occur in regular intervals.