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ERIC Number: EJ967322
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1481-868X
EISSN: N/A
Introducing the CEFR in BC: Questions and Challenges
Wernicke, Meike; Bournot-Trites, Monique
Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique appliquee, v14 n2 p106-128 2011
In 2010, the British Columbia Ministry of Education introduced an updated version of its international languages curricula titled Additional Languages (AL) draft curriculum which set out a clear articulation of the province's language education as conceived and developed over the past 15 years. The strength of the draft curriculum lies in its emphasis on plurilingualism as a guiding pedagogical principle, a response to recent recommendations of the Council of Ministers of Canada to adopt the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in a Canadian context. The CEFR framing has been retained in the latest revision of the AL draft curriculum, the 2011 French curriculum, which has recently replaced the original 2010 draft document. Despite this latest revision, the original AL draft curriculum maintains historical relevance for language education in BC by highlighting the province's linguistic diversity and the choice to value more than one language in different ways. In its original conception, the AL draft curriculum operationalized the recognition of linguistic plurality within an officially bilingual context and thus represented a concrete attempt to acknowledge the very dynamic language practices of British Columbians. In this paper we examine how the draft curriculum sought to negotiate historical, political, cultural, and linguistic questions with regard to language education in BC, by first considering the historical development of BC language education within the context of official bilingualism, followed by a thematic discourse analysis of the document text to highlight the clearest yet also most challenging articulation of plurilingual language education in BC to date. (Contains 2 tables and 4 footnotes.)
Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics / Association canadienne de linguistique appliquee. Departement de langues, linguistique et traduction, Pavillon de Koninck, Universite Laval, Quebec, QC G1K 7P4, Canada. Web site: http://www.aclacaal.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Elementary Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A