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TEACHING THE MOTHER TONGUE IN A MULTILINGUAL EUROPE This page intentionally left blank Teaching the Mother Tongue in a Multilingual Europe Edited by Witold Tulasiewicz and Anthony Adams continuum LONDON NEW YORK Continuum The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX 15 East 26th Street, New York NY 10010 www.continuumbooks.com © Witold Tulasiewicz and Anthony Adams and the contributors, 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. First published 1998 This paperback edition published 2005 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-7027-0 Typeset by Sam Merrell, Bath, England Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts Contents Acknowledgements vii The Contributors viii List of Maps ix Part I Mother Tongue: Definitions and Teaching Implications 1 1 What Is Mother Tongue? 3 2 Mother Tongue and Identity 14 3 Mother Tongue Standards 23 4 Teaching the Mother Tongue 30 5 Mother Tongues in a Wider Context 43 6 Language Policies in the European Union 63 Part II The Mother Tongues of Europe: Nine Case Studies 67 Introduction 71 7 Teaching the Mother Tongue in England 73 Robert Protherough 8 Teaching Welsh and English in Wales 87 Mary Rose Peate, Nikolas Coupland and Peter Garrett 9 Teaching the Mother Tongue in France 101 Franfoise Convey 10 Teaching the Mother Tongue in Spain 123 Antonia Ruiz Esturla 11 Teaching the Mother Tongue in Germany 137 Ingelore Oomen-Welke and Guido Schmitt 12 Teaching Majority and Minority Mother Tongues in Denmark 153 J. Normann J0rgensen and Anne Holmen 13 Teaching Mother Tongue Polish 163 Anna Berlinska vi Contents 14 Maintaining the Mother Tongue: The National Identity of the 174 Belorussians in Poland Elzbieta Czykwin 15 Russian and Other Mother Tongues in the Schools of the Russian 184 Federation and the Former Soviet Union James Muckle Part III Language Awareness in Mother Tongue Teaching 197 16 The Importance of Language Awareness 199 Bibliographies 207 Index 225 Acknowledgements The editors owe special thanks to Peter Gannon, who as HMI was secretary of the Kingman Inquiry into the Teaching of English; Dan Taverner QBE, formerly Chief Inspector of Schools in the London Borough of Newham; and Lionel Elvin, Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, for reading the manuscript and offering suggestions and corrections. We also ben- efited from discussions about the mother tongue in the changing socio-political situation in several countries, not only with those named above, but also with colleagues from a study group on Language Awareness, including George Labercane of the University of Calgary; Frieder Kron of the University of Mainz; Printz Pdhlson, Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge; and Jerzy Nikitorowicz of the University of Warsaw. We are also grateful to Alison Manson, the Graphics Unit, School of Education, University of Leeds, for providing the maps and to Martine Jago, Research Fellow of Christ Church College, Canterbury, for reading the proofs. The authors of the case studies in Part Two have been responsible for making the book a European study of the mother tongue, in which everyone concerned had a share in a number of bilateral and multilateral discussions. It is also a pleasure to recall a number of stimulating conversations with friends in several places, particularly with Keith Spalding of the University of Wales about vocabulary and vocabulary change, the Misses Wood of Kirby le Soken about the languages of the Channel Islands, and Uschi Kron of Mainz about computer technology. With a bibliography covering more than ten countries using words from many mother tongues requiring dozens of diacritics, we were greatly helped by the professional expertise of Ken Turner, Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge, a member of our original European Union- funded research into multicultural classrooms in Europe, Sheila Hakin, librarian and Gavin Courtney, technical officer, at the University of Cambridge Department of Education. The book would not have appeared in the form it has without the expert services of Ruth McCurry, commissioning editor, Seth Edwards, editorial assistant, and Helena Power, desk editor, at Cassell, and Mervyn Thomas of Thomas Editorial Services. The index was compiled by Martin Hargreaves. While acknowledging thanks to all those mentioned and others, the 15 contributors alone are responsible for omissions in what has always been intended to be a provocative book. Witold Tulasiewicz Anthony Adams The Contributors Anthony Adams is lecturer in English and Education at the School of Education in the University of Cambridge. Anna Berliriska is Assistant Professor in Polish at the University of Biafystok and is currently Lecturer in Slavonic Studies, University of Toulouse. Fran^oise Convey is Principal Lecturer in French at Trinity and All Saints College, University of Leeds. Elzbieta Czykwin is Assistant Professor in Education at the University of Biafystok. Nikolas Coupland is Professor and Director of the Centre for Language and Communication Research at the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, University of Wales, Cardiff. Antonia Ruiz Esturla was formerly Coordinator of Spanish Mother Tongue Teaching in London at the Spanish Embassy Education Office and is currently Senior Teacher of English, Granada. Peter Garrett is Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, University of Wales, Cardiff. Anne Holmen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. J. Normann Jergensen is Assistant Professor in the Department of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. James Muckle was formerly Senior Lecturer in Russian at the University of Nottingham and is currently researcher in Russian Studies at the University of Nottingham. Ingelore Oomen-Welke is Professor of Education at the Higher College of Pedagogy, Freiburg. Mary Rose Peate is Researcher at the Centre for Language and Communication Research, School of English, Communication and Philosophy, University of Wales, Cardiff. Robert Protherough was formerly Senior Lecturer in English Education at the University of Hull. Guido Schmitt is Assistant Professor at the Higher College of Pedagogy, Freiburg. Witold Tulasiewicz is Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge and currently Professor of Education at the University of Warsaw. List of Maps Figure 1 The states of Europe 68 Figure! Some linguistic minority areas of Europe 69 Figures The regional languages of the British Isles 86 Figure 4 The regional languages of France 102 Figures The regional languages of Spain 124 Figure 6 The regional languages of Germany 138 Figure? The regional languages of Denmark 154 Figures The regional languages of Poland 162 This page intentionally left blank Parti Mother Tongue: Definitions and Teaching Implications This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 What Is Mother Tongue? INTRODUCTION Throughout the writing and editing of this book the authors have been bedevilled by its title and the use of the term 'mother tongue'. Although we have tried to achieve some consistency in the editorial work we have done on the chapters in Part II, it will be seen that our various contributors have interpreted the term in different ways. This is to be expected since the historical and social linguistic situation which affects the status of the languages spoken in each of the countries discussed is very different. The term 'mother tongue' has been retained by us because it is a familiar one and one that most readers will intuitively understand. As with much else in the realm of language, what is intuitive is often misleading. By 'mother tongue' we understand what linguists usually refer to as LI, that is the language first acquired by a child and the first one to find expression developed from the Language Acquisition Device posited by Chomsky (1965). It may, however, also be the preferred language in a multilingual situation, which presupposes a choice made from two systems or more, and means it is no longer the mother tongue as defined above. For example, many immigrants to the USA will use English as their first language even though their mother tongue may be altogether different. Our own researches in the London Borough of Newham, funded by the European Union and conducted in 1989-91, revealed many occasions when the preferred language of school pupils was English even though their mothers might speak no English at all. On such occasions the oldest male child would frequently act as an interpreter negotiating between his parent and the school on such occasions as parents' evenings. By con- trast, in a demographically very similar area, in the City of Peterborough, a large number of pupils in one of the primary schools we studied saw little point in learning English at all, as they lived in a community where it was possible to survive without seeing or hearing a single word of English. Although they lived in a large city, English was for them - paradoxically - more of a foreign language than a second language (L2) of study. Perhaps it is because of the complexities surrounding the concept that comparative studies of the teaching of the mother tongue, which is usually