Page 38 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

Approaches to Language Teaching

Classroom Insight: Tea Time
Following an activity from the textbook to repeat the dialogue and all the names of
Happy Street pupils in the fourth grade were the fruit and they seemed to enjoy the ac-
drilling the following verse, adding differ- tivity. However, it occurred to her that they
ent food items (an apple, an orange, a cake, a might not know what was meant by the word
pear, a banana, an ice-cream): ‘tea,’ so she simply asked them to provide a
translation in Slovene. It was clear that the
Do you want an apple?
majority of the children did not realize that
An apple for your tea? in this particular context, ‘tea’ did not refer
Or do you want an ice-cream?
to ‘drink’ but to the English social custom of
An ice-cream, please!
‘an afternoon snack.’ A discussion followed in
Anja, their teacher, was glad to see that the which the pupils tried to find an equivalent
activity was going well, the pupils were able for ‘tea’ in Slovene.

sity among Europe’s key goals and priorities. Several initiatives have tried
to promote language diversity in Europe over the last two decades. They
aretoday referred to with thecommonname‘pluralisticapproaches to lan-
guage teaching’ (Bratož & Sila, 2022). The ‘language awakening’ approach,
for example, promotes the appreciation of language diversity in the class-
room. The main idea is to encourage learners to think about language as a
system and in this way start appreciating the role of language diversity in
their own lives and society as a whole (Darquennes, 2017). An example of
a framework designed for developing plurilingual competence is the ‘Lan-
guage Train Model’ developed by Bratož and Sila (2022). The model is based
on a metaphor in which developing plurilingual competence is conceptu-
alised as ajourney. Thisisanimportant aspect asitprovides the children
with a conceptual framework which helps them visualise their learning path
and thus build an awareness of diversity. As children travel through different
countries by an imaginary train, they experience the languages and cultures
they meet through multisensory perceptions (through movement, singing,
artistic expression, etc.). The journey by train is made more realistic with the
children actually going around the classroom following an improvised en-
gine and using the puppet of a station master, thus enhancing the journey
metaphor and the way pupils experience linguistic and cultural diversity.
On the language train journey, learners are exposed to various languages,
with English as the lingua franca or global language. They are exposed to lin-
guistic diversity in several ways, such as by listening and joining in the tune
‘Frère Jacques’ in the language of the country (‘Mojster Jaka’ in Slovenian,
‘Bruder Jakob’ in German, ‘Fra Martino’ in Italian, etc.). The tune thus works
as a scaffold, both phonologically and semantically. In addition to linguistic

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