Maximising Intensivity and Continuity in Language Learning

1. Maximising Intensivity and Continuity in Language Learning Mount Gambier Cluster 14-15 August 2013 Angela Scarinoangela.scarino@unisa.edu.au Michelle Kohler michelle.kohler@unisa.edu.au

2. A focus on transition • An ecology: • Policy dimensions • Structural dimensions • Curriculum dimensions • ‘Cultural’/people dimensions • Resource dimensions

3. The program as ‘proxy’ for learning • Centrality of learning and continuity in learning • The planned program/curriculum • The lived program/curriculum →Inevitable framing through local policies and practices →Inevitable compression

4. The concept of ‘scope and sequence’ • Scope of learning • nature, extent/depth, complexity of learning • Level of learning → Cultures of understanding learning → Need to establish common understanding

5. An introduction to the Australian Curriculum: Languages as a resource Rationale for the design: • Learners and learning • Reconceptualising Language, Culture and Learning • Reconceptualising teaching and learning practices • The specificity of particular languages • Curriculum content and its sequencing • Achievement standards 4

6. Learners and learning • Increasing diversity of learners • Who are our learners linguistically and culturally? • The notion of life-worlds (experiences, affiliations, desires, memories) • Learner ‘background’ or traits vs background as constitutive of learning • Language and culture have a mediating role; learning emerges through linguistically and culturally mediated, historically-developing practical activity (Gutiérrez & Rogoff 2003) 5

7. Beyond communicative language teaching Byrnes (2006) states: The profession is being challenged… to find principled ways of linking foreign, heritage and native language instruction, to suggest ways of engaging all language users in continued language development toward high functional multilingualism in diverse hybrid spaces. Kramsch (2009, 2011) states: Today it is not sufficient for learners to know how to communicate meanings; they have to understand the practice of meaning-making.  language learning as a bi-or multilingual act (Scarino 2010; Liddicoat & Scarino 2013) 7

8. Expanding language, culture and learning - 1 10

9. Expanding language, culture and learning - 2 A move towards – • a conception of language as form, as a social practice and as the interpretation and creation of meaning: this interpretive turn includes a reflective dimension that adds value to both communication and learning • Understanding the crucial role of language and culture in meaning-making • understanding the role of language and culture in learning when learning itself is understood as ‘learning how to mean (Halliday 1993) • reflection 11

10. Consider the learning of language and culture • In learning to use the target language, learners learn to: • exchange meanings reciprocally through interaction with people and/or texts • ‘move between’ and come to understand the linguistic and cultural systems of the language they are learning, and at the same time referencing these to their own linguistic and cultural systems • develop metacognitive and metalinguistic awareness of what it means to interpret and to act in the world, and to be interpreted reciprocally by others • (ACARA 2011) 13

11. The Languages Design - Aims • communicate in the target language • understand language, culture, and learning and their relationship, and thereby develop an intercultural capability in communication • understand themselves as communicators 14

12. Strands and sub-strands • Understanding • Systems of language • Variability in language use • Language awareness • Role of language and culture Communicating • Socialising and taking action • Obtaining and using information • Responding to and expressing imaginative experience • Moving between/translating • Expressing and performing identity • Reflecting on intercultural language use 15

13. Socialising and taking action Sub-strand 1.1: Socialising and taking action Socialising with others (orally and in writing) to exchange ideas, opinions, experiences, thoughts, feelings, intentions and plans, and to take action with others. Students learn to socialise with others in the target language (both orally and in writing); to interact with others to build relationships and participate in shared activities; to negotiate, to make decisions and arrangements and take individual and collective action. 16

14. Socialising and taking action Concepts Text-types Processes 17

15. Socialising and taking action: sequencing 18

16. Content descriptions: ItalianObtaining and using information 19

17. An example: Signs in every-day life Learners will be taught to: • recognise, identify, interpret and respond to the meaning being communicated in signs (e.g. warning, instruction, direction) and other graphic representation (e.g. illustrations, cartoons) Concept presentation • presentation and comparison of signs and placards used in signs • discussion of language used in signs (commands, instructions, warnings) and their function in society • examination and discussion of cultural values reflected by the language of signs e.g. responsibility of state for providing warning, expectations of public, shorthand ways of mediating meanings Concept’s key language features • linguistic structures that convey commands, instructions and warnings that require actions (Do x; Don’t’ do Y); demands (More parks now!) • examination of social consequences of language structures that indicate power relations 20

18. The interrelationship of the strands and sub-strands The interrelationship of the strands and sub-strands is best seen as three facets of the same experience: • performance and experience of communication (performance) • analysis of various aspects of language and culture involved in communication (analysis) • reflection on the comparative and reciprocal dimensions of language learning and use (reflection) 21

19. Content Descriptions and Achievement Standards • Refer to handout

20. Discussion 22

21. References ACARA (2011) Shape of the Australian Curriculum: Languages http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Draft+Shape+of+the+Australian+Curriculum+-+Languages+-+FINAL.pdf ACARA (unpublished) The Australian Curriculum Languages Design Paper. Byrnes, H. (2006) Perspectives, Modern Language Journal, 90 (2), 244-266. Gutierrez, K. & Rogoff, B. (2003) Cultural ways of learning: individual traits or repertoires of practice, Educational Researcher, 32 (5), 19-25. Halliday, M.A.K. (1993). Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education. 4, 93-116. Kramsch, C. (2011). The symbolic dimension of the intercultural. Language Teaching. 44, 3, 354-367. Kramsch, C. (2009). The multilingual subject. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Scarino, A. (2010). Assessing intercultural capability in learning languages: A renewed understanding of language, culture, learning and the nature of assessment. The Modern Language Journal, 94(2), 324. Liddicoat, A.J. & Scarino, A. (2013) Intercultural language teaching and learning. Malden. Wiley-Blackwell. 23