Tool(s) – Toolkit (after Virginie Mamadouh)

Conventional understandings of languages as separate entities, and of language speakers as, either mother tongue (L1) speakers, or foreign language (L2) speakers, are too simplistic to provide a proper account of the diversity of observed encounters in multilingual contexts.

When individuals are labelled as plurilingual individuals or linguistic situations as multilingual encounters, misconceptions are common and outdated. While it used to be common (and often still is among monolinguals) to expect a bilingual person to speak both languages as L1, it is now widely acknowledged that competences in the two languages might be partly overlapping and complementary and asymmetrical. Likewise multilingual encounters are more diverse than the stereotypical interaction between a L1 speaker and a L2 speaker. They include also encounters of speakers with different L1 using a common language of communication and users with differentiated competences in a language.

The linguistic tools available to individuals include not only different languages (like English or German) and different styles or genres (appropriate for different situations), but also different modes. Beyond the formal mode of a standardized language (these are generally languages supported by state institutions and formal education as national and/or as foreign languages, NL and FL), modes of communication include lingua franca (LF), code switching (CS) and lingua receptiva (LaRa).

In the LF mode, the common language is negotiated between interlocutors according to their linguistic background and to the situation, and language norms are neglected (whether norms transmitted/imposed through foreign language formal education or through formal and informal interactions with L1 speakers). In the CS mode, speakers switch between different languages to convey content, assuming their interlocutor(s) can understand these elements. In the LaRa mode, speakers speak different languages and have enough passive knowledge of the other language(s) to understand each other.

Other tools include auxiliary languages (like Esperanto), the aid of mediators (human ones like translators and interpreters, or manufactured ones like dictionaries and automatic translating devices), cognitive resources regarding (intercultural and interlingual) communication in general and the cultural and linguistic background of one's interlocutor in particular (for example if one knows of typical pronunciation deviance, different ways of using tenses or unfamiliarity with prepositions or with gendered names), as well as attitudes towards multilingualism (such as flexibility, open mind).

The Toolkit aims at developing scientific and public knowledge about the use of these different tools of communication and focuses especially on (combinations involving) two types of languages of wider communication (these are languages with sizeable numbers of L2 speakers): English and Languages of (cross-border) Regional Communication (ReLan), and three types of modes: LF, CS and LaRa.

Subsequently it aims at raising awareness among interlocutors potentially involved in multilingual encounters and organizations that have to depend on multilingual encounters and regulate them (businesses, universities, EU institutions and agencies, civil society transnational organizations, translation and interpreter companies, etc.) regarding the possibilities of modes other than standardized foreign languages. Finally, it aims at drawing conclusions for the improvement of language teaching in formal education and beyond, to enable individual EU citizens to use more creatively and effectively their linguistic resources (or repertoire).

Instruction:Making inferences and understanding indirect information given in the text. There are questions that require you to make inferences. The answers to these questions are not directly provided in the passage – you must "read between the lines." In other words, you must make conclusions based indirectly on information in the passage. Many text readers find it difficult to infer why the author of a text mentions some piece of information, or includes a quote from a person or a study, or uses some particular word or phrase.

Sample questions:

Read the following paragraph:

Territorial modern states have also regulated linguistic practices in their bounded territory, and linguistic characteristics have often been used as key markers to mobilize people as a nation within an existing state or alternatively to secede from an existing state and establish a separate state. As a result, state borders often coincide with linguistic boundaries and they reinforce each other. In multilingual states, language arrangements are often territorial, delimitating juxtaposed monolingual regions. In those cases administrative borders might reinforce linguistic boundaries.

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<== попередня сторінка	\|	наступна сторінка ==>
Guidelines for extensive reading of ESP texts	\|	Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

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