Processes and outcomes in the European schools model of multilingual education

Bilingual Research Journal, Spring 2002 by Housen, Alex

Materials for L2-Subject and U-Content Teaching

Textbooks and materials used in L2-subject classes in primary school and in the lower grades of secondary school tend to be specifically designed as foreign language materials for younger learners. Materials for L2-subject teaching in the upper grades of secondary school are often designed for (monolingual) native speakers of the language and are supplemented with authentic and teacher-made materials.

Methods for L2 Teaching and Assessment

In general, communicative teaching methods prevail in the L2-classrooms in primary school. Pupils are not forced to use their L2 at this level but its active use is always encouraged. With the youngest children in the first three grades of primary school, the underlying language curriculum is rarely taught explicitly. The role of the L2 teacher is to provide exposure to, and practice in, useful structures and vocabulary by creating contexts that mimic real life. Strategies include handwork activities, projects, games, songs, drama, and film, together with short field trips and one or two longer stays (up to a week) in a country where the L2 is spoken. Less "communicative" strategies may also be employed in the early stages of L2 teaching, including repetition, pattern drilling, explicit error correction, and simple metalinguistic explanation. Systematic analytic teaching of the L2 and grammar instruction is officially deferred until secondary school.

The language skills needed for studying fiction texts or acquiring information from non-fiction materials are also demonstrated and practised in the L2-subject classes in the intermediate and higher grades. The specific language skills required for success in L2 medium classes are the province of both the L2-subject and L2-content teachers in secondary school. The structural underpinnings of such skill areas as note taking, summary, and the writing-up of science experiments, are explained to the pupils and practised in authentic contexts.

Preference is given to informal continuous assessment of language development rather than to formal achievement testing, which is deferred until the fourth year of secondary school. Only at the end of secondary schooling are ES pupils expected to attain near native levels of proficiency in their L2. This is assessed in a series of final oral and written examinations taken in the L2 for all the subjects taught through the L2 (i.e., L2-subject, geography, history, economics, sociology, religion, arts, physical education, and some advanced elective science courses). Course standards and examination criteria for obtaining the European baccalaureate are said to be as high as those in academically demanding national monolingual education systems (e.g., the French Lycees and the German Gymnasia), even for courses and exams taken in the L2.

Social Engineering and Extra-Curricular Support for Language Learning

The multilingual environment of the ES themselves and the process of social engineering provide additional reinforcement of the formal language learning process. Social engineering here refers to the deliberate mixing of pupils from different national and linguistic backgrounds for as many subjects and activities as possible (Baetens Beardsmore,1995). This mixing is started in the first grade of primary school in the L2-subject classes and increases as the pupils get older. The aim of social engineering is both to minimalise fragmentation of the school population on nationalistic-linguistic lines (a risk inherent to the presence of different language sections on the same site) and to enhance the foreign language learning process. Everyone in the ES regularly interacts in a foreign language, both inside and outside the classroom. The linguistic environment outside the school may provide a further extra-curricular source of contact with the foreign language. In 7 of the 10 ES, one of the three Us is the dominant language of the wider environment.