Inglese nella scuola secondaria

25 / 28

Chapter 1 Europe languages 7
www.edises.it
learning and supercedes national systems, whilst maintaining the diversity of
specific social contexts. Most teachers or aspiring teachers will have heard
about it and had the opportunity to use it, even if only partially, in their
teaching experience. Considering its importance, it is worth drawing greater
attention to its objectives and structure, and understanding better its potential
and ability to affect development of language learning and linguistic
competence, which are useful for communicating and interacting with people
from different nationalities and backgrounds8.
1.2.1CEFR objectives
The European Council wanted to provide all learners, involved in both formal
education (students attending regular schools) and informal or individual
education (workplace, lifelong learning), with a tool to facilitate the foreign
languages learning process, in view of increasing international mobility (for
personal, reasons, work, leisure and study) according to different ages and
educational groups. Just as in a chain with strongly connected links, mobility
requires the language ability to communicate with foreign partners during work
negotiations or in international work groups and to maintain international
relationships with people who share our experiences (neighbours, colleagues,
students from other countries). It is necessary to gain awareness of personality
identity and different cultures in order to have good international social
relationship. It is also fundamental to access information and share opinions
with the people we meet in order to understand each other’s backgrounds. The
world is gradually expanding, embracing cultural experiences and values that
affect individuals and shifting from a national to an international landscape.
Due consideration must be given to mobility since it does not only concern two
countries, but all European countries thus the CEFR encourages the learner to
develop a plurilingual attitude. The difference between “plurilingualism” and
“multilingualism” is clearly expressed in CEFR chapter 1: “Plurilingualism differs
from multilingualism, which is the knowledge of a number of languages, or the co-existence
of different languages in a given society (...)The plurilingual approach emphasises the fact
that as an individual person’s experience of language in its cultural contexts expands, from
the language of the home to that of society at large and then to the languages of other peoples
(...), he or she does not keep these languages and cultures in strictly separated mental
compartments, but rather builds up a communicative competence to which all knowledge and
experience of language contributes and in which languages interrelate and interact (...)”9.
Therefore, foreign languages learners are encouraged not only to learn
different languages but to be able to use them and, at the same time, keep
8The CEFR complete document is available on the Council of Europe site: .
coe.int/t/dg4-Portfolio/documents/Framework. Printing a copy is recommended a copy
although it is a rather large document. The online version allows the adding of bookmarks
and comments if needed.
9 Cf. Common European Framework 1.3 “What is plurilingualism?”.