Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competences in Secondary Education: Research into FL Teachers’ Insights

Proceedings of The 5th World Conference on Research in Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competences in Secondary Education: Research into FL Teachers’ Insights

Lucía Fraga-Viñas & Noelia Mª Galán-Rodríguez

 

ABSTRACT: 

Despite the fact that plurilingual and pluricultural competences have been promoted by the Council of Europe since the publication of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR, 2001), classroom reality often differs from this objective. It bears noting that language learning has increased in the last decades, triggered partly by the economic and sociopolitical demands of globalisation. However, that does not mean that plurilingualism and pluriculturalism are being implemented in these language learning contexts as languages are often considered separate entities with no interrelation among them. Hence, the concept of plurilingualism established by the CEFR (2001) and reinforced by its Companion Volume in 2020 is frequently overlooked. In Europe, the implementation of a second FL occurs in secondary education (Beacco et al., 2016, p. 13), therefore, it is at this stage when plurilingualism should be as its peak. Considering that FL teachers are one of the main agents in the promotion of students’ plurilingual and pluricultural competences, this study aims to analyse FL teachers’ uptakes on their own teaching practices concerning these competences. For this purpose, FL teachers from the autonomous community of Galicia (Spain) have answered a questionnaire on the aforementioned issues. Preliminary results show some awareness of the concepts plurilingualism and pluriculturalism on the participants’ side. In addition, translanguaging practices to provide students with clarification have been reported by these teachers. Curricular constraints have been found to be one of the main setbacks for the development of the plurilingual and pluricultural competences in the FL classroom.

keywords: CEFR, FL teaching, pluriculturalism, plurilingualism, teachers’ perceptions .