TOPIC 2: PLURILINGUAL EDUCATION

Topic 2: Plurilingual Education

Plurilingualism refers to the coexistence of different languages either in the society or in the individual.

There are almost seven thousand living languages in the world and, among them, English has been considered a global language.

Plurilingual and pluricultural competence alludes to the ability of mediating between languages and cultures, and it is also the knowledge of and ability to use different languages by an individual or group of individuals for the purposes of communication, especially, in intercultural interaction.

Plurilingual and pluricultural competence is not the same as communicative competence, as it considers affective and identity aspects of the learner, since it includes his/her intercultural experiences, hence his/her knowledge of other cultures. Therefore, the learner is seen as an intercultural speaker, whereas communicative competence did not involve the identity of the learner.

We can implement students cultural and plurilingual competence through projects like the TILA project (telecollaboration), Erasmus, taking advantage of those students who are not Spanish, who come from other part of the world and speak a different L1 (like showing the rest of the class things about their culture), playing videos or films that can show them other cultures, through CLIL, and so on.