Educating Language Teachers To Enhance Pupils’ Language Awareness

Author(s):

Merja Kauppinen(presenting / submitting)Pia Kristina Bärlund(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

31. LEd – Network on Language and Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

31 SES 10, Teaching for Language Education

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

15:30-17:00

Room:

B006 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Ola Hendar

Contribution

One of the most integral goals in contemporary language education in basic education is to build and enhance pupil’s linguistic knowledge and language awareness. For this aim language education should be included more broadly in all learning and it should be created furthermore cross-curricular (Vollmer 2006). There are many cultural and organizational structures in school system which prevents enhancing linguistic competence of a pupil as a whole. One of them is dividing into school subjects (Fogarty & Brian 2009). It is hard to see the roles of languages from pedagogical perspectives in different school subjects, diverse roles of languages in non-linguistic subjects, if subjects are studied separately per se. From the pupil’s point of view the linguistic resources remain unused, if linguistic school subjects haven’t relations to other subjects. This is concerning also linguistic subjects, such as foreign languages and mother languages of immigrant pupils, which are tend to study separate e.g. in Finland (NCC 2004).

One way to enhance pupil’s language awareness and to encourage to use his language repertoire as a resource in learning is to develop the classroom activities more authentic (Aalto & Kauppinen 2011) and to increase the agency of pupil (Mercer 2012). In this case the learning experiences are embedded in meaningful whole language activities. For this purpose we have developed the Internet-space for creating pedagogical practices which are effective in our locales: in the language education system in Finland, and mother language instruction as a part of this system (cf. Wenger 1999). The ideology of shared space ActLib (Active Library, https://peda.net/oppimateriaalit/kirja-arkku) is based on the collaborative, peer learning of teachers and classes. The aim of creating materials to the ActLib is to make classrooms to the learning communities, which provide opportunities for pupils to negotiate meaning, expand their language resources, notice how language is used, and take part in meaningful communicative activities with textual and cultural dimensions. ActLib is based on the 3-dimensional language learning design: connections between cultural competence, authentic texts and linguistic knowledge (Bärlund 2012; Mishan 2006). According to Richards (2005, 25) this kind of communicative language teaching is concerned with the engagement of learners. It allows pupils to development their communicative competence, of with linguistic awareness is an important part.

Language awareness is seen in our presentation a broad concept for seeing languages from various aspects. It varies according situations, and can emerge in different levels (Andrews 2007). It consists of explicit knowledge about language, and conscious perception and sensitivity in language use. A way to enhance language awareness is learning through language: awareness of one’s linguistic repertories and develop this metalinguistic competence (Andrews 2007; see also van Lier 1996).

ActLib is a place to gather and build further collections of authentic texts of meaningful situations and spaces and exercises for purposes of linguistic and culture learning (Bärlund 2012 ). From the basis of ActLib material made by teachers of mother language we are studying 1) the possibilities for enhance pupils’ language awareness in mother language education and 2) the possibilities for share and develop the professional cultures of the teachers of mother language.

The research question is:

How to support language awareness of pupils’ in mother language instruction with authentic, cultural text material and from cross-curricular perspective?

What kind of authentic, cultural texts teachers have selected to ActLib and why?
What kind of activities they have created on the basis of these texts? What are the aims of these exercises in teachers’ mind?
What sort of language awareness and cultural competence are possible to develop via this kind of authentic material and the activities relating to texts?

Method

There were 13 teachers and 12 language learning groups, who started in the ActLib project in the semester 2013–14. The mother languages, which take apart to the development of instruction, were German, Arabic, English, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Kinyaruanda, Swahili, Thai, Turkish, Hungarian and Russian. The size of learning groups varied from 2 pupils to 10 pupils in age of 6 to 16. 5 from the 13 teachers had a recognition of foreign teachers qualification in Finland and 6 of them had no pedagogical studies. The data consists of two kinds of materials: 1) There is the learning material made for ActLib by teachers of mother language. This written data consists of web pages, which include authentic, cultural texts selected by teachers, and learning activities belonging to them. 2) There are also semi-structured interviews of teachers. They were asked about their text selection (reasons for it) and the activities relating to them. Also the functionality and learning motivation of pupils considering to the texts and exercises were under consideration. The interviews are used for accessing the teachers’ beliefs of language education (Lankshear & Knobel 2004, 198). Research method of the text material and exercises of ActLib was qualitative content analysis. The authentic texts were listed, and the activities relating to them were divided into categories according to several factors, e.g. possibilities for agency of a learner, developing cultural competence and linguistic knowledge as well as the designing authenticity into the language learning materials, which is a very important issue in the heterogeneous language learning groups. The results of analysis were compared to the beliefs of teachers. These were built by analyzing the semi-structured interviews of teachers. Interviews were analysed by content analysis into thematic groups that are alike, similar or homogeneous (categorical analysis, Lankshear & Knobel 2004, 270). This study reminds the ethnographic action research, because we take apart to the language learning process in many roles e.g. teachers, teacher educators, a mother and language learning material developers, not just as objective researchers who are above the theme. Because of this the ethical questions are especially relevant in this research (Lankshear & Knobel 2004, 110–112).

Expected Outcomes

The pre-results show that there are large scale of beliefs of authentic, cultural texts among teachers of mother language (cf. Barcelos & Kalaja 2011). They are reflecting the roles of personal and professional beliefs of teachers (Kumaravadivelu 2014). These beliefs seem to direct also the forms of activities and focuses of language learning. Some teachers prefer the genre knowledge, others e.g. the ethical issues of material. Although teachers are forced with the heterogeneityof the pupils, they are not able to design the authenticity into the language learning materials based on linguistic authentic texts. There are still possibilities for enhancing language awareness via authentic texts and activities relating to them: - There are some referencies about natural learning situations via authentic texts of ActLib. In these cases language learning is combining the cultural facts and other school subjects, e.g. geography, science, history, drama, music and visual arts. So the linguistic knowledge becomes a part of content knowledge of these subjects. - Learners have opportunities to study language at many levels in meaningful, authentic situations. - Many-sided activities offer learning rates for different learners, who have many needs and motivations for language learning.

References

Aalto, E. & Kauppinen, M. 2011. Tavoitteena monikielisyyttä tukeva äidinkielen ja kirjallisuuden opetus. [Towards to multilingualism in language education.] AFinLA-e. Soveltavan kielitieteen tutkimuksia 3, 6–21. http://ojs.tsv.fi/index.php/afinla/article/view/4453 Andrews, S. 2007. Teacher language awareness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barcelos, A. M. F. & Kalaja, P. 2011. Introduction to beliefs about SLA revisited. System 39(3), 281–289. Bärlund, P. 2012. Lernen ohne Lehrbuch im DaF-Unterricht – Initiierung eines Pilotprojekts in zwei mittelfinnischen Grundschulen. German as Foreign language 2–3, 157–184. Forgarty, R. J. & Brian, M. P. 2009. How to integrate the curricula. The 3rd edition. California: SAGE. Kumaravadivelu, B. 2014. Afterword: Rethinking global perspectives and local initiatives in language teaching. In S. Ben Said & L. Jun Zhang (eds.) Language teachers and teaching. Global perspectives, local initiatives. London: Routledge, 317–324. Lankshear, C. & Knobel, M. 2004. A handbook for teacher research. From design to implementation. London: Open University Press. van Lier, L. 1996. Interaction in the language curriculum: Awareness, autonomy, and authenticity. London: Longman. Mercer, S. 2012. The complexity of learner agency. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies 6(2), 41–59. Mishan, F. 2005. Designing authenticity into language learning materials. Intellect. UK: Bristol. NCC = National core curriculum for basic education 2004. Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education. Richards, J. C. 2005. Communicative language teaching today. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Vollmer, H. J. 2006. Intergovernmental conference languages of schooling: towards a framework for Europe. Strasbourgh: Language Policy Division. Wenger, E. 1999. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.

Author Information

Merja Kauppinen (presenting / submitting)

University of Jyväskylä

Department of teacher education

University of Jyväskylä

Pia Kristina Bärlund (presenting)

City of Jyväskylä, Finland

Basic Education

Jyväskylä

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