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    Programme 2020-2023
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    Home language competences
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    Preconceived ideas


COMPLEX CHALLENGES
linked to the diversity of mobility and travel situations


HOW TO WORK WITH THE DIVERSITY
of languages when dealing with assessment


SOME OF THE PRECONCEIVED IDEAS
that the RECOLANG resources seek to transform


LEARNER
STATEMENTS


EXPLORATORY
RESEARCH

Some of the preconceived ideas that RECOLANG resources seek to transform

"Assessing home languages is not important because they are not part of the school curriculum - there's no point in having a diploma in Lingala, for example."

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Assessment should help motivate learners to make progress. Assessing learners' home language competences can encourage them to continue learning and to further develop their language and cultural competences, which are key to their social and professional inclusion. For example, "Migration provides important potential for the development of the private sector. Migrants are very interested in creating commercial links with their countries of origin and are sharing innovative ideas with private companies on how to fill gaps in the market and how to better profit from existing opportunities. They can also act as consultants on the transfer of technologies and investment opportunities". (Report "Migration, an opportunity for European development", Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly 2017, 2.1,16)

"Assessing home languages may be useful for "major languages" / languages with "official language" status. It is only useful for languages with a national or international dimension, not for languages which are local."

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"You can't assess languages that aren't written. You can't assess languages that vary from region to region."

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"Assessment is used to check on learning. Assessment is useful for introducing a standard."

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"You can't assess something that hasn't been explicitly learned."

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"Assessing oral competences is complicated, difficult and time-consuming. It's impossible to assess home languages in their spoken form."

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"To assess home languages, you need experts."

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The assessment of home language competences is based on a local partnership between stakeholders and experts in the languages concerned and the school and its stakeholders. It can also form part of a wider network which is regional, national or international via cultural institutes, embassies or other bodies concerned with maintaining language learning (language of origin, for example). Those involved in the various home language education schemes, translators/ interpreters and intercultural mediators, are key contacts. This type of assessment is organised through collaborative and committed networks.

On the one hand, UNESCO* stresses the importance of the role of local communities in developing inclusive approaches to education (UNESCO, 2017). On the other hand, it is important to identify potential partners for the collective educational action implied by assessing the wide diversity of home languages present in schools. Such partners may include language experts, teachers of languages of origin, translators and intercultural mediators (networks of cultural institutes, in particular).

*Community-based Learning for Sustainable Development - UIL Policy Brief No. 8, UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, 2017.

"It's easier / simpler to assess knowledge than to assess competences".

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The framework for reflection and the tools proposed have been designed with a view to assessing communicative competence, focusing on the type of learning proposed in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages Companion Volume and the Framework of Reference for pluralistic approaches. These are the competences that are mobilised when one needs to solve a task in a concrete situation. Linguistic aspects are included, but so are other competences. From the perspective of a dynamic repertoire model, transversal competences (cognitive, non-cognitive) and the skill of learning how to learn, for example, are also included.

From this point of view, communicative competence involves mobilising the speaker's (internal) resources, which include knowledge, but also interpersonal competences, for example, readiness to perform a task, and know-how, for example, the ability to compare two pieces of information. Knowledge by itself is not enough. Research is converging towards positive assessment as opposed to assessment as punishment. This move towards a formative approach to the assessment of competences that supports the learner’s language development is close to the real uses of language. Language competences are assessed through a variety of tasks (rooted in everyday life), tools (e.g. portfolios), and levels of responsibility of those involved (assessment organised by the school, at national level, in a local partnership between school and assessment body, etc.).

The diversity of learners means broadening the methods and content used to assess competences by choosing multilingual methods of assessment. These may be similar to those used to assess competences in the languages of the curriculum or may be the result of innovation. The methods may involve mediation or translanguaging activities. In this sense, the idea is not to prioritise the assessment of specific language competences (e.g. grammatical knowledge), but to verify the ongoing development of communicative competence in a repertoire where languages, and in particular the language(s) of schooling, co-exist, interact and are in synergy with each other. The aim is to identify and make use of learners' developmental potential.

"There's no point in assessing ... in a dialect of Arabic, for example."

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"If the learner doesn't write his/her language, he/she can't have a level."

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"Mastering the language is everything: you have to know how to speak and write."

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