Curricular priorities
Even though there is a lot of diversity both within and between the various national contexts explored above, there are indeed also commonalities in relation to the positioning of language(s) within their respective curricula. They can all be considered as predominantly Anglophone countries (even if there are several languages that hold an official status) and, as such, the English language quite rightly holds a dominant place in the school curriculum. The position of FL learning, however, is less certain. Statutory entitlement (where it exists) is usually limited to just a few years of education during late primary or early secondary school, and uptake in language learning after (and in some cases, even during) the compulsory phase has been in steady decline in recent years. In such a climate of decreasing interest in studying FLs, there is therefore a growing need to promote the FL classroom as a key context for developing not only valuable communicative skills in the FL itself, but also important transferable skills related to language more generally. As stated by Kecskes and Papp (2000):
Foreign language is not just another school subject. FL learning requires and develops a complexity of skills that can have very beneficial effects on the general development of every student. FLs should be taught not just for themselves but for the general educational enhancement and development of students. (Kecskes & Papp, 2000: 122)
Yet, this is not reflected in the curriculum documents examined above. What emerged is that, in each of these countries, English and FLs are conceptualised differently and presented very separately at the level of the curriculum. Where references to potential links between the two do exist (although they are few and far between), these are situated exclusively within the FL curricula where students may be encouraged to make links to their knowledge of English or other languages. There are no references in the English language curricula to the potential links that could be made by L1 teachers to the skills and strategies developed by students in other languages, even though, as stated by Grenfell and Harris (2017: 216), ‘insights gained from the study of a foreign language can be used to reflect on the structure of the mother tongue and vice versa’. This could include (but is by no means limited to) encouraging students to reflect on the spelling and grammatical structure of languages, consideration of approaches to structuring texts in different languages, and drawing attention to the particular skills and strategies used and developed across languages. It seems, therefore, as though opportunities have been lost to acknowledge the potential contribution of FL learning to the understanding and use of language in general.
L1 and FL Teachers’ Conceptualisations of and Approaches to Language Teaching
While curriculum documents provide valuable insights into provision for and the relative status of school subjects at a national level, it is also crucial to consider how the teachers enacting these curricula conceptualise the subject(s) they teach. Of particular interest here is the way in which English and FL teachers perceive themselves as teachers of language. There is a growing evidence base that suggests that there is indeed, ‘little common understanding between L1 and L2 teachers’ (Grenfell & Harris, 2017: 187) which leads to distinct approaches and priorities when it comes to the teaching of language. In terms of priorities, Grenfell and Harris (2017: 189) suggest that while the main aim for FL teachers is to develop students’ ability to communicate in the language (alongside developing their cultural awareness), English teachers, on the other hand, are not only concerned with language, ‘but also with sociolinguistics and language variation, literary analysis and linguistic effects in texts, media concepts and drama’. This gap inevitably widens as students progress through their schooling and as the focus of the English curriculum shifts beyond basic literacy. This is consequently reflected in a difference in approach to language pedagogy in the classroom, where L1 teachers, who can often assume a certain level of proficiency among learners, are more likely to take a subconscious, synthetic, top-down approach, whereas FL teachers tend to take a more conscious, analytical, bottom-up approach (Kecskes & Papp, 2000).
Such issues were brought to the fore in the UK context in the mid-1990s with a study conducted by Mitchell et al. (1994) into English and Modern Language teachers’ beliefs and practices with regard to knowledge about language (KAL). The researchers noted substantial levels of KAL-related activity among both L1 and FL teachers and found some evidence of its positive contribution to learning, particularly in relation to writing development. However, they also noted that such activity was often fragmented and episodic. They found that L1 and FL teachers seemed to be conveying divergent and ‘largely unrelated messages’ (Mitchell et al., 1994: 14) about language to their students and called for more consistent policies and shared perspectives between teachers in the two departments.
This work was further developed in England by Cathy Pomphrey and colleagues, who conducted a series of studies exploring language awareness among trainee teachers of English and Modern Languages and subsequently implemented shared training sessions to promote cross-subject dialogue (Burley & Pomphrey, 2003, 2015; Pomphrey, 2004; Pomphrey & Burley, 2009; Pomphrey & Moger, 1999). What emerged, in line with the literature above, was that the subjects of English and FLs were perceived by the teachers as very separate areas with their own curriculum, subject culture and pedagogical practices:
There seems to be a continued tension between English and Modern Languages teachers in terms of perceptions of their aims, roles, classroom activity, relationship with pupils and a whole gamut of other aspects which lead to different priorities in their teaching of language and thus prevent cross-subject dialogue from taking place. (Pomphrey & Moger, 1999: 224)
In terms of differing approaches to language teaching, the authors found that whereas FL teachers placed emphasis on working at word and then sentence level in a more linear way, English teachers viewed text-level work as the starting point and therefore took a more top-down approach. Perhaps as a result of this, the English student teachers expressed more anxiety over explicit knowledge about language than their FL counterparts, which the authors identified as a specific factor that may inhibit conversation and collaboration between the two groups. The subsequent shared training sessions, however, succeeded in providing a space for dialogue and intercomprehension among the trainee teachers. They reported gaining valuable insights into the perspectives and practices of their counterparts and some participants even reported a shift in their own view of language. According to one L1 teacher, for example, ‘it is all too often the case that English in schools is no longer treated as a language that is still being learned even by native speakers’ (Burley & Pomphrey, 2003: 253). Evidence, on the whole, suggests that these sessions strengthened participants’ understanding of language more broadly and was particularly beneficial with respect to literacy. Yet, when followed up after their training year, the participants reported difficulty in establishing such cross-curricular links in their respective schools due, in part, to a lack of time and a lack of structures to support such collaboration.
Similar issues emerged within the X-LiST study. While the primary focus of the study was on the students, preliminary conversations were also arranged with two English teachers and two teachers of FLs (French and German) in order to gather some initial insights into their priorities and approaches in relation to teaching language and, in particular, writing. While notes were made during these conversations, they were not intended to constitute a formal part of the data collection process. Nonetheless, the information gathered proved useful in developing the subsequent intervention (as outlined in Chapter 5). In line with the previous studies cited above, there had been no previous