Abstract
This article aims to discuss the relationship between language policy, language-in-education policy and the foreign language teaching-learning process. In so doing, a critical review of relevant literature is offered with the purpose to clarify how the areas of enquiry related to language and language-in-education policymaking and enactment are intertwined to the practicalities of foreign language curriculum development and syllabus design. Such connection is represented by the politically-, ideologically- and socioculturally-driven choices of policymakers and policy enactors, as well as their influence on everyday foreign language practice. Criticality and authorship are advocated throughout this article as strategies on which teachers and students should rely in order to challenge predetermined and/or decontextualised directives concerning the foreign language teaching-learning process.
Highlights
Das mesas dos formuladores de políticas públicas para as salas de aula: a relação entre políticas linguísticas, políticas para a educação de línguas e o processo de ensino-aprendizagem
The process of developing curriculum for foreign language education might be one of the first stages of language-in-education policy enactment; it may be the first stage in which foreign language teachers participate
Richards (2001b) argued that the emphasis on the students’ needs and the influence of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) on foreign language education contribute to the development of a communicative-driven curriculum – which means, the curriculum organising principles aim to promote communication in the target language
Summary
Given that language and human experiences are implicitly and/or explicitly intertwined, an attempt to define language can be considered an attempt to define human beings (Kumaravadivelu, 2006). Kroskrity (2000) suggested that language ideologies are represented by a set of concepts consisting of overlapping sociocultural dimensions Those dimensions convey, through ideologically-grounded discourses, (a) the promotion and/or protection of the political-economic interests of dominant sociocultural groups; and (b) the rejection of multiplicity in order to limit membership to those dominant sociocultural groups. Language policies involve language practices, language beliefs or ideology, and language intervention or management In other words, they represent the disciplinary power of the state, who determines official varieties to specific functions and contexts, while establishing and expanding the dominant classes’ privilege (Sonntag, 1995; Tollefson, 1993; Wringe, 1996). Civil and sociocultural rights are usually more solely even, available in official national languages, full accessibility is only granted to the portion of society whose linguistic knowledge and/or abilities correspond to the standard variety(ies). The section discusses how language policies influence language-in-education policies to shape language teaching and learning into an apparatus through which access, participation and citizenship can be limited or expanded
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