EDUCATION

Modern Foreign Language & National Curriculum



Modern Foreign Language & National Curriculum

Introduction

The processes of globalization and economic liberalization, intercultural communication and the high rate of scientific progress and technological pressures exerted on our lives, require the development of communicative competence in one or more foreign languages to enable equal participation in global culture, without losing the sense of belonging to our culture. In response to this situation there has been foreign language education policies established. It aims to provide the ability to have more contact and experience with another language, another culture, and approach it from a strategic perspective that is conceived as a means to increase each student in their communication skills and their ability to integrate knowledge and simultaneously work in teams and to better understand the world situation and its effects from the UK perspective or context (www.asc-ih.ch).

"Learning a foreign language is to learn a new culture, modes of life, attitudes, ways of thinking, another logic, new, different, is to enter into a mysterious world in the beginning, to understand the behaviour individual increase his wealth of knowledge and new information, the own level of understanding”. Hence it is this aspect which makes it important for countries to include MFL in the national curriculum (Horwitz, E. K, 2008).

The cultural dimension of language

Language and culture are closely interrelated, language is both an element that makes up the culture of a community and the instrument using which the individual will express his vision of the world. The person carries all trace elements of cultural society one belongs to and it is through the words we discover the values ??of the people and it is the language which embodies the thought. Several elements of the cultural system, such as traditions or rules moral are manifested through language (Hall et al, 2000). In other words, language embodies the culture by making it active, it provides its setting in motion and it is on the side of social activity that language acquires its relevance. In this sense, language is the means of privileged access to cultural knowledge which otherwise is impossible. It provides knowledge of words and their meanings which can be understood and comprehended by people of a different culture. Each culture expresses itself in a different culture; each nation provides his thoughts and ideas by referring to the way they perceive the world and experience (www.ciltcymru.org.uk).

The intercultural approach and concept

It is essential that the teaching of a foreign language is associated with the culture in which that language is impregnated. It is then only that the purpose of incorporating it in the national curriculum will be served and the foreign language will be best understood. Language is the vehicle ways of seeing, the history of peoples, it embodies the values ??and artefacts of culture. Therefore, the interest in learning a language is greatly reduced if the language is de-contextualized (www.ciltcymru.org.uk).

It is in the space the interaction between the culture of the learner and that conveyed by the language emerges ...