Embedding Languages in the curriculum

Embedding Languages in the curriculum
During this session, we will have time to reflect critically on what it means to learn
and teach a language, and how that connects to your ‘professional values’ (HEA:
UKPSF). As time is limited, it would be helpful if you could read the following
quotes in advance and reflect on how they correspond to your own thoughts on
learning and teaching another language.
1. Teaching, I discover, is not really about my French, my body, and whether or not they’re correct. It’s about
generating words – other people’s words. Making people change, making them make mistakes, making them care
and not care, making them sensitive, but not oversensitive, to the nuances of language. Making them take risks. It
is physical, shockingly physical. (Kaplan, p. 134, my emphasis)
2. Language teaching methods make for a tale of enthusiasm and scepticism, hope and hope dashed [...]/ Whatever
the method, only desire can make a student learn a language, desire and necessity (Kaplan, p.131)
3. Les dictionnaires nous induisent en confusion, nous jettent dans l’effrayant magma de l’entre-deux-langues, là où
les mots ne veulent pas dire, là où ils refusent de dire, là où ils commencent à dire une chose et finissent par en
dire une tout autre. (Huston, p. 13)
Dictionaries lead us astray, throwing us into the terrifying magma of being in-between two languages in the very
place where words don’t mean anything, or refuse to say, where they start meaning one thing and end up saying
something completely different.
References
Bass, R. and Linkon, S.L., (2008) ‘On the Evidence of Theory: Close reading as a disciplinary model for writing about teaching and learning’,
Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 7 (3) 245-261.
Barnett, R., and R. Di Napoli (eds). 2008. Changing identities in higher education, London: Routledge.
Cantiello, J.W. (2009) Pedagogical Acts, Prose Studies: History, Theory,
Criticism, 31:3, 190-201.
Conway, Jill K. (2003) A Woman’s Education, London: Vintage.
Hoffman, E. (1998). Lost in Translation – A Life in a New Language. London: Vintage.
Huston, N. (1997) Perdre le nord suivi de Douze France. Arles: Actes Sud.
Kaplan, A. (1993). French Lessons – A Memoir. Chicago and London: Chicago University Press.
Linkon, S, and Chick, N.
Phipps, A., & Gonzalez, M. (2004). Modern languages: Learning and teaching in an intercultural field. London: Sage.
Phipps, A. (2011). ‘Travelling languages? Land, languaging and translation’ Language and Intercultural Communication, 11:4, 364-376