Glossary

Can be defined as the ability to use language accurately, effectively and appropriately in a specific social context.

According to the CEFR, communicative language competence consists of three elements:

1. linguistic competences (refer to knowledge of and ability to use language resources, e.g. vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, to form well structured messages);
2. sociolinguistic competences (that is the ability to use language appropriately in different social contexts);
3. pragmatic competence (is concerned with the knowledge of how messages are organised, structured, arranged and sequenced, and used to perform communicative functions)

(Also known as physical mobility) involves moving to a different environment, for a short or long period, for different reasons and in different directions. For instance, students move to another learning environment to participate in a course, to complete teaching/vocational practice or to work on a project with partners from different learning contexts. They may move on their own, as in the case of university students who study for one or a few semesters at a university in a different city or country. Children and adolescents more often move in groups with their teachers; for instance, one or more classes from one school travel to meet their peers in a partner institution.

Intercultural competence can be defined as “the capacity to experience cultural otherness and use it to:

• reflect on matters that are usually taken for granted within one’s own culture and environment;
• evaluate one’s own everyday patterns of perception, thought, feeling and behaviour in order to develop greater self-knowledge and self-understanding;
• act as mediators among people of different cultures, to explain and interpret different perspectives.”

Ability to “take charge of one’s own learning is to have, and to hold, the responsibility for all the decisions concerning all aspects of this learning, i.e.:

• determining the objectives;
• defining the content and progressions;
• selecting methods and techniques to be used;
• monitoring the procedure of acquisition properly speaking (rhythm, time, place, etc.);
• evaluating what has been acquired.

The autonomous learner (Holec 1981, Little 1995):

• makes effective use of the learning opportunities;
• cooperates effectively in pair and group work;
• uses available materials for independent learning;
• organises and uses materials for self-directed learning;
• uses effective learning strategies;
• identifies his/her own needs and goals;
• plans and carries out tasks that help to accomplish the goals;
• is aware of his/her own strengths and weaknesses as a learner.

Can be defined as “specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new situations.” (Oxford 1990: 8)

Refers to educational experiences in new contexts that are explicitly aimed at enhancing the development of the plurilingual and intercultural (and professional) skills of students. The length of learning mobility activities typically ranges from a few days or weeks for primary and secondary school learners to a longer period, such as one or two university semesters in the case of young adults attending teacher training colleges or universities. Mobility can refer not only to cross-border contacts, but also to cooperation within one country, especially in the case of multilingual countries.

Example

One major challenge for education systems is to give learners, during their school education, language and intercultural competences which will enable them to operate effectively as citizens, acquire knowledge and develop open attitudes to otherness: this vision of the teaching of languages and cultures is referred to as plurilingual and intercultural education.

Definition

Plurilingual and intercultural education is defined in the Council of Europe’s papers as “a global language education, across all languages of the school and in all disciplinary domains, which provides a basis for an identity open to linguistic and cultural plurality and diversity, insofar as languages are the expression of different cultures and of differences within the same culture. All disciplines contribute to this language education through the contents which they carry and the ways in which they are taught. This global language education aims to develop plurilingual and intercultural competence.”

Comment

Secondly, it promotes personal development, so that individuals can realise their full potential: this involves encouraging them to respect and accept diversity of languages and cultures in a multilingual and multicultural society, and helping to make them aware of the extent of their own competences and development potential.

[...] Effective learning of one or more languages, awareness of the value of diversity and otherness, and recognition of the utility of any (even partial) competence are necessary for anyone who, as an active member of the community, has to exercise his/her democratic citizenship in a multilingual and multicultural society.” (Guide for the development and implementation of curricula for plurilingual and intercultural education, p. 15-16)

Example

“Plurilingual and pluricultural competence refers to the ability to use languages for the purposes of communication and to take part in intercultural interaction, where a person, viewed as a social actor has proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experience of several cultures. This is not seen as the superposition or juxtaposition of distinct competences, but rather as the existence of a complex or even composite competence on which the social actor may draw”.

Definition

The notion of plurilingual competence stands for the full range of an individual’s ability to express themselves in and across the different languages which form part of their linguistic repertoire. This includes phenomena of plurilingual discourse such as code-switching, and the notion of partial competences in different languages or varieties.

Comment

The term plurilingualism is in general use to refer to the entire linguistic repertoire of individuals, while multilingualism, traditionally a more widely used term in English, is used for the (mere) coexistence of more than one language in any given context (e.g. a society, a country). A similar distinction can be made between pluriculturalism, the extent to which individuals may identify with different cultural backgrounds (e.g. heritages), and multiculturalism, the coexistence of different cultures within a society. The notion of intercultural competence (see below) goes one step further than pluriculturalism, though, in that it involves the ability “to experience and analyse cultural otherness” (Language Policy Division 2009: 6).

Virtual mobility can be defined as any kind of contact situation where the individuals do not physically change places, but interact by means of audiovisual (typically electronic) technology. Typical forms include sending emails to penpals, co-constructing a common virtual space in the form of an Internet website, or communicating online and in real time using relay chat or a webcam application.