MULTILINGUALISM

Diary entry #1

Multilingualism is the ability of an individual or a community of speakers to use more than one language. This post will try to reflect the monolingual situation in the city of Barcelona.

Immigration has been one of the major causes of multilingualism since it implied a greater and expanding exposure to different languages.

For instance, in Barcelona, if we compare the foreign population data from 2007 and 2017 we will be able to see that this population increased from 15.42% to 17.58% in a matter of 10 years, according to the data provided by Idescat (Instituto de Estadística de Cataluña). This percentage increase of 2.16% may not be very high but it is definitely significant.

Barcelona’s immigrant habitants come from every country in the world, each of which has its own mother tongue, and that causes the cohabitation of a wide range of different languages within the same territory.

This means that, for example, a family from Africa who speaks Arabic as their mother tongue will be exposed to at least 2 more languages which are Spanish and Catalan, the official languages of the land. However, if they have contact with families from Italy, China, Sweden or any other country they will also be exposed to these other languages, probably.

Idescat shows that in 2017, most of the immigrants came to Barcelona from 5 main countries: Italy, China, Pakistan, France and Morocco. These 5 countries have completely different languages but they all cohabitate in schools with the official languages of the territory (Spanish and Catalan) as well as with hundreds more although, unfortunately, not much attention is paid to them in academic terms because the language policies created by the European Union to support multilingualism do not include the languages of the immigrants (Baetens, 2009).

Another important cause of multilingualism is the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL).

The CEFRL was published by the Council of Europe to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and it states that all citizens in Europe should have the right to learn at least 2 foreign languages. This is the reason why schools in Barcelona teach English and another foreign language such as German or French.

Nevertheless, Barcelona is not the only place where English is taught as a foreign language. English has grown into a lingua franca, a common language used around the world to communicate and its learning has become essential everywhere. But why English? Let’s begin with an image.

The red countries represent the areas invaded by Britain, which gives us an idea of why the English presence is so wide. In the end, this language was necessary to carry out trading activities and businesses around the world and that situation fostered its growth.

In addition to that, it is important to take into account how the USA influence expanded after the Second World War. American companies started to grow and flourish and English became again the language used for commercial purposes, causing that schools all over Europe started teaching English as a foreign language.

Consequently, different initiatives have developed over the last decades in order to promote a better acquisition of the English language.

One of the main ones is CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning), which consists on teaching different school subjects such as Maths, Science, History, etc. using the English language. Instead of basing the lessons on memorizing grammatical rules, this method uses language as a tool or a means of communication to teach meaningful contents, which has proven to be rather efficient.

Another initiative which has gained importance lately is starting the acquisition of English as soon as possible, since there is a generalized belief that students will have a better chance of learning a new language the sooner they start getting familiar with it (Prats, 2014).

For this purpose, schools have started to introduce English at Pre-primary education and several private centres have emerged with methodologies that apply to very young children, even babies. These private centres follow the ideas of natural learning and language immersion and focus on fostering the students’ oral comprehension.

I myself work in one of these schools and I have witnessed how efficient these methods are. When we are born, the way we learn how to speak our own mother tongue is by being exposed to it constantly, even if we don’t pay attention to the conversations. It is through listening that we acquire a language and become able to use it, even though being totally unaware of any grammatical rules. When we start learning our first language’s grammar at school we have already developed our ability to speak that language.

This natural learning is what these schools try to imitate. They provide students with a wide range of stimulus in English to start building their knowledge through context, as we do with our mother tongue. Of course, grammar is necessarily taught later when they are old enough to assure understanding and efficient use of grammatical rules, but when students reach this stage of their learning process they already have a solid base of comprehension and expression in the English language.

We can definitely state that for various reasons English is now the global language which allows communication throughout the continents and brings every country closer to each other. That is why so many efforts keep on being made with the purpose of promoting the language, because in the end it represents and ideal of hope for a better future, a future in which we will be able to reach all the different cultures in the planet, learn from them and create a better world based on communication, understanding, respect and peace.