Language Creates Different Discourses about the World

Beskrivelse

In primary and secondary education in Denmark, foreign language teaching must cover two dimensions, a linguistic and communicative dimension and a cultural one. However, an empirical study in upper secondary education points towards the challenge of integrating the two dimensions and not teach them as parallel skills (Tranekjær, Pedersen, Daryai-Hansen & Gregersen 2015).
This paper suggests a didactic design for combining progression in English language learning with the development of intercultural competence, exemplified by the Five-Phase-Model (Jensen 2022), developed as part of a major applied research and development project partly funded by the Danish National Centre for Foreign Languages (NCFF), and carried out in 2020-2022. Four language teacher educators and four practitioners, teaching respectively English and German in lower secondary school classes, developed four designs, focusing on digital teaching resources for improving intercultural and communicative competences, related to the themes: othering, identity and stereotypes.
Theoretically, this paper positions itself in the field between theories of teaching intercultural competence for democratic citizenship (Byram 2021) and theories about systemic functional linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014).
The applied research method is pedagogical design research (Dohn, Godsk & Buus 2019) covering the four phases: problem identification and literature studies, the development of didactical designs as a response to the identified problem, trial of designs and adjustments, and communicating results.
A didactic design was tried out in a lower secondary school English class and empirical data was collected in the form of observations (field notes and video recordings), teacher and learner interviews, and the collection of learner products.
Based on the analysis of the empirical data and further literature studies, the Five-Phase-Model was developed. The model offers an integration of issues on culture and students’ linguistic development by integrating a focus on how discourse analysis may elucidate how language creates different discourses about the world.

Periode	7 maj 2025 → 9 maj 2025
Begivenhedstitel	NoFa X: The 10th Nordic Conference on subject didactic
Begivenhedstype	Konference
Placering	Odense, DanmarkVis på kort
Grad af anerkendelse	International