cohesion - European Centre for Modern Languages

26. Language teaching
in a multilingual and multicultural Europe:
outcomes and challenges from the point of view of the
FIPF
Janina Zielińska
The International Federation of French Teachers (FIPF) is made up of 172 associations
from 130 countries, which are grouped together in seven regional committees and one
inter-regional committee (French as a mother tongue). With 80,000 members forming a
network of highly qualified professionals, it covers the entire planet.
The general secretariat in Sèvres in France is the contact point which facilitates the
pooling of the activities of the Federation’s member associations. Its executive bureau
is international and the whole world is represented on its management board.
The term “monolingual federation” often used to describe the FIPF therefore seems
inappropriate. Being made up of teachers from different cultures who speak thousands
of different languages and dialects, it is a key forum for promoting multilingualism and
a federation that brings together teachers of several languages.
The statutes of all FIPF member associations include activities to promote the
languages the members teach. The associations recognised long ago that these must
take place in a multilingual context and should involve support for the teaching of
several languages. The activism which the associations’ members have had to engage
in to protect the language they work with, i.e. French, is therefore also harnessed for
promoting the development of a multilingual and multicultural society.
In Europe, the Federation’s members are very often the driving forces of language
teaching projects. To give only the example of the countries in the FIPF committee for
central and eastern Europe which I have the honour of chairing, in Hungary, Latvia, the
Czech Republic and Poland, it is active members of French teachers’ associations who
co-ordinate language projects such as the ELP and language awareness.
The great success of the 2007 FIPF annual colloquy (“The European Framework: a
global reference tool?”) among European and non-European participants alike bore
witness to the interest of French teachers’ associations worldwide in the Council of
Europe’s projects aimed at strengthening social cohesion through language teaching. It
is therefore to be expected that all ECML projects relating to this issue will meet with a
very favourable response from the members of our entire community.
161