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Plurilingual and Pluricultural Competence PLURILINGUAL AND PLURICULTURAL COMPETENCE With a Foreword and Complementary Bibliography French version originally published in 1997 Studies towards a Common European Framework of Reference for language learning and teaching Daniel COSTE, Danièle MOORE and Geneviève ZARATE 2009 Language Policy Division, Strasbourg www.coe.int/lang The opinions expressed in this work are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Council of Europe. All correspondence concerning the reproduction or translation of all or part of the document should be addressed to the Director of Education and Languages, DGIV, Council of Europe, (F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex or [email protected]). CONTENTS Foreword .....................................................................................................................v Introduction...............................................................................................................vii 1. Preliminary considerations .................................................................................9 1.1. Purpose of the study ...............................................................................................9 1.2. Some paradoxes .....................................................................................................9 1.2.1 Communicative competence and the native-speaker model......................................9 1.2.2 Communicative competence and cultural dimensions ...............................................9 1.2.3 "Pluri", "Bi" and "Inter" ..............................................................................................10 2. First approach and general options .................................................................11 2.1. Plurilingual and pluricultural competence: a tentative description.........................11 2.1.1 Ordinary imbalance ..................................................................................................11 2.1.2 Plurilingual competence for a linguistic and cultural identity ....................................11 2.1.3 Partial competence and plurilingual competence.....................................................12 2.1.4 An evolving, malleable competence.........................................................................13 2.2. Major guidelines ....................................................................................................13 2.2.1 Positions and assertions ..........................................................................................13 2.2.2 General organisation ................................................................................................13 3. Ordinary plurilingual and pluricultural experience and schooling ...............14 3.1. Ordinary experience of linguistic and cultural pluralism ........................................14 3.2. The historical and institutional weight of initial schooling ......................................15 4. Plurilingual competence....................................................................................16 4.1. The concept of plurilingual competence................................................................16 4.2. Plurilingualism and semilingualism........................................................................17 4.3. Plurilingual competence: handling imbalance .......................................................18 4.4. Plurilingual competence and bilingual speech ......................................................19 4.5. Plurilingual competence: principles for a description ............................................19 5. Pluricultural competence: descriptive principles ...........................................20 5.1. The concept of pluricultural competence...............................................................20 5.2. Principles for a description of pluricultural competence ........................................21 5.2.1 Family paths and pluricultural capital .......................................................................21 5.2.2 Pluricultural capital, market and identity strategies ..................................................22 5.2.3 The identity strategies of the plurilingual individual in the school context ................23 iii 6. A school open to pluriculturalism and plurilingualism?................................23 6.1. Resistance to pluralism .........................................................................................23 6.1.1 Educational acquisition and pluriculturalism.............................................................23 6.1.2 Plurilingualism and educational compartmentalisation of languages.......................24 6.2. The desirability of a school contribution to the construction of plurilingual and pluricultural competences ......................................................................................24 6.2.1 Setting up an initial "portfolio"...................................................................................25 6.2.2 Learning to exploit existing resources ......................................................................26 6.3. Language curriculum and curriculum scenarios....................................................26 6.3.1 Languages elsewhere than in foreign-language courses.........................................26 6.3.2 Languages among themselves ................................................................................27 6.3.3 Plurality of languages and cultures, non-linguistic subjects school project..............27 6.3.4 Return to the concept of partial competence............................................................28 6.3.5 Towards curriculum scenarios..................................................................................30 6.4. Out of school or post-school learning and assessment.........................................32 7. Summing up .......................................................................................................33 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................35 Mathias, Wolfgang, Maria, Albert, Martine and the others (Interviews conducted and presented by Geneviève Zarate)................................................................................................35 Mathias ...........................................................................................................................35 Comment.................................................................................................................................35 Wolfgang ........................................................................................................................36 Comment.................................................................................................................................37 Maria...............................................................................................................................38 Comment.................................................................................................................................39 Albert ..............................................................................................................................40 Comment.................................................................................................................................42 Martine............................................................................................................................42 Comment.................................................................................................................................44 BIBLIOGRAPHY ORIGINAL BIBLIOGRAPHY (1997) ...............................................................................45 COMPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY (2009)................................................................48 iv FOREWORD This study was first published in French in 1997. At the time, the concept of plurilingual and pluricultural competence was new, and somewhat subversive. It defended the (sociolinguistic) notion that because plurilingual individuals used two or more languages – separately or together – for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people, and because their needs and uses of several languages in everyday life could be very different, plurilingual speakers were rarely equally or entirely fluent in their languages. Within these orientations, the focus on the individual as the locus and actor of contact encouraged a shift of terminology, from multilingualism (the study of societal contact) to plurilingualism. In the 1997 study, a tentative effort to conceptualize the nature of a plurilingual and pluricultural competence, described it as a life-long capital and a complex and unique reservoir of co-ordinate experiences, developing differently in relation to individual biographies, social trajectories and life paths: On désignera par compétence plurilingue et pluriculturelle, la compétence à communiquer langagièrement et à interagir culturellement possédée par un locuteur qui maîtrise, à des degrés divers, plusieurs langues et a, à des degrés divers, l’expérience de plusieurs cultures, tout en étant à même de gérer l’ensemble de ce capital langagier et culturel. L’option majeure est de considérer qu’il n’y a pas là superposition ou juxtaposition de compétences toujours distinctes, mais bien existence d’une compétence plurielle, complexe, voire composite et hétérogène, qui inclut des compétences
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