Making provision for community languages: issues for teacher education in the UK Footnote¹

1. A note on terminology used in this paper:

Community languages are defined as all languages in use in a society, other than the dominant, official or national language. In the UK, where the dominant language is English, community languages include Urdu, Panjabi, Chinese, Polish, Italian and British Sign Language (BSL). Welsh and Gaelic, each of which has official status in Wales and Scotland respectively, are not considered to be community languages, but other so-called ‘indigenous’ languages, such as Scots or Cornish are included.

Modern languages are defined as languages studied at school or in other formal contexts. In the UK, these are typically French, German and Spanish, although a number of other languages are also taught in schools. The difference between modern language learning and community language learning lies not in the languages themselves (note that any ‘modern’ language can also be a ‘community’ language) but in the learners' experiences. Community language learners have had some (often extensive) prior experience of the languages before starting to study them in a formal context. Modern language learners begin studying the language from scratch in a formal context and usually have little or no exposure to the language outside the classroom.

Plurilingual refers to someone who can speak more than one language. The term is used in preference to ‘bilingual’ which indicates someone who can speak two (but not more) languages, in order not to have to distinguish between those who speak two and those who speak more than two languages. It is now well-established that someone described as ‘bilingual’ or ‘plurilingual’ does not necessarily have ‘native-like’ competence in both or all languages, although this tends to be a popular interpretation of the meaning of ‘bilingual’ (see discussions in Hamers & Blanc, Citation1989; Baker & Prys Jones, Citation1998). Most plurilinguals have acquired their languages in different contexts and use them for different purposes; in addition, they tend not to have equal access to education in each language. Their competences in each language therefore tend to vary and to complement each other.

Multilingual refers to societies in which more than one language is in use—although it is not necessarily the case that all the people in that society are plurilingual. This distinction between the ‘plurilingual’ person and the ‘multilingual’ society originates with the Council of Europe's Language Policy Division which supports the development of language education policies in its 45 member states. It reflects the fact that several European languages, including French and German, but not English, make this distinction.

Mainstream education refers to education provided by UK local authorities in primary and secondary schools, either during the standard school day (core mainstream)or after school hours, as part of a school's extra-curricular provision.

Complementary education refers to educational provision organized by communities, independently of the local authority. Complementary classes, schools or centres usually operate after school hours or at weekends, making provision for children to learn community languages, often because they do not have opportunities to study these languages in mainstream schools. Complementary classes, schools or centres are sometimes referred to as ‘supplementary’ or ‘community-based’ provision, but ‘complementary’ has become the preferred term for this sector.

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