Language Creates Different Discourses about the World

In primary and secondary education in Denmark, foreign language teaching must cover twodimensions, a linguistic and communicative dimension and a cultural one. However, an empiricalstudy in upper secondary education points towards the challenge of integrating the two dimensionsand 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 withthe 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 DanishNational Centre for Foreign Languages (NCFF), and carried out in 2020-2022. Four languageteacher educators and four practitioners, teaching respectively English and German in lowersecondary school classes, developed four designs, focusing on digital teaching resources forimproving intercultural and communicative competences, related to the themes: othering, identityand stereotypes.Theoretically, this paper positions itself in the field between theories of teaching interculturalcompetence for democratic citizenship (Byram 2021) and theories about systemic functionallinguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014).The applied research method is pedagogical design research (Dohn, Godsk & Buus 2019) coveringthe four phases: problem identification and literature studies, the development of didactical designsas 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 wascollected in the form of observations (field notes and video recordings), teacher and learnerinterviews, and the collection of learner products.Based on the analysis of the empirical data and further literature studies, the Five-Phase-Model wasdeveloped. The model offers an integration of issues on culture and students’ linguistic developmentby integrating a focus on how discourse analysis may elucidate how language creates differentdiscourses about the world. 

References

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