Mehrsprachigkeit in Europa: Plurilinguismo in Europa ... - EURAC

Christer Laurén
included in the programme — were not used for cognitively exciting and new contents. Normal
people have something to say when they talk or they want to show e.g. a positive attitude
towards the partner by saying something. Normal people have a real message. This very seldom
has been the case with textbooks for modern languages and for language classes.
Far too few European students really learn to communicate via such programmes at school.
Far too many drop out from more advanced programmes because they cannot acquire language
through grammar. Grammar is a very abstract and a highly incomplete description focused on
only some of our linguistic means of communication within one language. We try from one point
of view only, the linguistic one, to formulate what we know about this rapid interaction called
communication. In order to be successful we have to automatize our linguistic behaviour. I do
not at all deny the necessity of grammar, I strongly want to stress the necessity of fi nding the
right role for grammar.
It is our heritage from the Latin school which makes us overemphasize the role of grammar.
Some hundred years ago the task of grammar was to give access to understanding of texts
in classical languages. It was mainly other sorts of practices which were used in order to
train fl uency in Latin: rhetorics, theology studies, philosophy etc. We have just forgotten and
misinterpreted good traditions.
Partly I have given a caricature of the situation but it also tells an uncomfortable thruth
about dominating tendencies. The Latin school, the monastery schools, the medieval universities
had one very interesting tradition, learning language by using it as a tool. As far as I know,
also old Russia had its monastery schools, Latin-Greek schools, forerunners to the Lomonossow
University of Moscow etc., and they have left traces behind them in modern language pedagogy
of Russia as well.
Modern language pedagogy
But now, let us take a step towards our time. Modern society needs effi cient communication
in many languages. Therefore, we, all of us, are looking for better ways of learning a second,
third, fourth, fi fth language etc. One of the best models seems to be the oldest one, to learn
a language by using it for meaningful purposes. And meaningful purposes are NOT those neat
stories of text-books used at school. To be meaningful a content and a communication situation
must be real. It must give something at a cognitive and non-linguistic level to those participating.
In a way, the Latin school could have been a good model.
One of my friends, let us call him Otto, manages about 30 languages, all Slavonic, all
Germanic and all Romanic languages and some more. Of course, he is a university professor in
Austria, Vienna, and you may say that he is a genius but his story about how he approached
his languages illuminates some potential pedagogical principles. Otto is now a pensionist but
very early he proceeded on his own from one cognate language to the other, starting with
German, Czech and Latin. Those three languages formed entrances to three branches of the
Indo-European language family, they were for him ”Papier- und Büchersprachen”. He used to
emphasize that to him language is something written. Speaking and listening he describes as
two one-track lines. He can, for exemple, speak but does not understand spoken Danish. On the
other hand, he understands Italian better than he speaks it.
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