Multicultural awareness through English: a potential contribution of TESOL in Greek schools

Abstract

The cultural diversity now evident in Greek society creates educational challenges and opportunities. Space to address these is provided by the multicultural awareness aspects of the discourse of the Cross‐Thematic Curriculum Framework (CTCF). For English language classes, multicultural direction is provided through the disciplinary discussion of new teaching paradigm possibilities. In particular, these discussions encourage us to explore the repositioning of English teaching in Greek state schooling from a foreign language orientation towards a multicultural one. In this article, having set the context, we present the Multicultural Awareness Through English (MATE) paradigm. We conclude by illustrating the MATE paradigm in action.

Keywords:

• Greece
• multicultural awareness through English
• teaching English as a foreign language
• teaching English to speakers of other languages

Acknowledgements

This article has been much strengthened by the critical comments made by Susan Brown, Joseph Chrysochoos, Leah Davcheva, Magdalena De Stefani, Julian Edge, Christine Kataki, John Katsillis, Gary Motteram, Nicos Sifakis, Diane Slaouti, Julie Spinthourakis, Juup Stelma and Dina Tsagari. We also gratefully acknowledge the permission granted by the Pedagogical Institute to make use of the Funway 2 textbook materials in this article.

Notes

1. In this article, we do not follow the Council of Europe distinction between multicultural (a description of a society) and pluricultural (a description of person’s ability to function in a multicultural society).

2. TESOL, the abbreviation for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, is the umbrella term we use for the various contexts of English language teaching worldwide traditionally subdivided primarily into Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) and as a Second Language (TESL).

3. The emphasis in these quotes has been added by the authors to highlight the ideological force of the CTCF text.

4. Some of the quotations in this section are our translations of the original Greek documents.

5. The term TESL is often used to refer to the teaching of English to speakers of other languages in the USA, i.e. to TESOL provision in an Inner Circle context, provision less confusingly termed Teaching English as an Additional Language (TEAL).